Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
- Russia sent masses of cash to pay off officials in Ukraine ahead of the war, the FT reported.
- It was part of a plot to install MP Viktor Medvedchuk as Ukraine's leader, but it failed.
- Most of the collaborators just vanished or informed Ukrainian authorities of the plan, per the FT.
A carefully constructed network of Ukrainian collaborators, paid to support President Vladimir Putin's invasion, quickly melted away after Russia launched its invasion, according to the Financial Times.
As Putin drew up plans to invade Ukraine, he looked to Viktor Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian former opposition leader and longtime Kremlin ally, to help him bolster native support for Russia's invasion, the FT reported.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long said that Medvedchuk was Putin's pick to become his puppet leader in Ukraine.
According to the FT, Medvedchuk tried to convince Putin that Ukrainians would welcome Russian forces — prompting Putin to send large amounts of cash his way in order to pay off local officials and build a collaborator network.
With that supposed wellspring of pro-Russian support in Ukraine, the Kremlin envisioned installing Medvedchuk as leader the moment Kyiv had fallen.
But none of this happened. Some of the paid-off collaborators assisted the invasion, and helped in the swift capture of areas including Kherson, in southern Ukraine, but most either disappeared with the cash or reported the plan to Ukrainian authorities, the FT reported.
Ukraine has had to grapple with the presence of collaborators, many of whom spring from the pro-Russian minority that, in many parts of the country, held only small sway ahead of the invasion.
Nationwide, Ukrainian police were investigating more than 1,300 suspected cases of cooperation with the enemy as of last fall.
But none of it was enough to produce the groundswell that Medvedchuk so confidently depicted to Putin, the FT reported.
Medvedchuk was arrested by Ukrainian security services in April last year and handed to Russia in a prisoner swap. He has since been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and voted out of Ukrainian parliament by the country's MPs.
He characterizes the criminal charges against him as political persecution.