From Window On Eurasia:

Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, and Valery Khoroshkovsky, head of Ukraine’s SBU, have signed a five-year agreement that will allow Moscow again to put intelligence agents in Crimea, from which 19 such Russian officers were expelled at the end of last year for attempting to recruit Ukrainians as spies.

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The behavior of Russian agents last year, Rostislav Pavlenko, the director of the School of Political Analysis of the Kyiv-Mohylev Academy, said, raises doubts as to whether any document Moscow officials sign or any statements they make can be trusted. After all, what the Russians did last year was prohibited by bilateral agreements.

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Given that Ukraine has agreed to extend the presence of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol for another 25 years, there is certainly time for the appearance of a situation “when the Black Sea Fleet and the special services based within it can be used in actions that are counter to the interests of Ukraine.”
But the impact of this FSB-SBU accord is likely to be even larger, Ukrainian political scientist Yevgeny Zherebetsky argued. That is because the commanders of the Black Sea Fleet, immediately after the extension of the basing accord, began a “massive” downsizing, retiring some 7500 staffers, “of whom 6500 are civilians and citizens of Ukraine.”

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In addition, the fleet plans to retire 550 officers, many of whom will like the civilians have relatively low pensions and thus be open as are the civilians for recruitment by the Russian special services for work against Ukraine as a way to supplement their relatively small benefit checks.
According to Zherebetsky, it is “very important for Russians to obtain control over Crimea” because it lacks warm water ports. But “if everything will develop so ‘well’ [for Moscow] as it is now, then the Russians will try to extend their influence to Odessa, Kherson, and Nikolayev,” in an arc extending from Transdniestria to Abkhazia.
For that purpose, he continued, “Russia needs a broad network of agents of the special services,” but its prospects for success if these agents are active are very good because “over the course of the period of independence, the Ukrainian leadership has done nothing so that Ukraine could obtain complete power over the territory of Crimea.”

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Meanwhile the SBU recently tried to recruit a Ukrainian Catholic priest to become a secret informant to infiltrate student protests, many whom dislike the Yanukovych government:

Continue reading Ukraine’s security service welcomes Russian spies, intimidates Catholic church to spy on students (Updated) →