March 3, 2025 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Joshua Yaffa’s fascinating “Shadow Warrior.” It tells about Ukrainian spy Roman Chervinsky and some of his audacious exploits. Yaffa starts with the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. That story alone makes this piece worth reading. Yaffa writes,

In November, 2023, a suspect emerged. A joint investigation by Der Spiegeland the Washington Post, citing sources in both “Ukrainian and international security circles,” identified Roman Chervinsky, a former Ukrainian intelligence officer, as the operation’s alleged lead organizer. By then, Chervinsky, who had spent two decades directing secret operations for Ukraine’s intelligence services, including assassinations and multiple acts of sabotage, was under house arrest in a suburb of Kyiv. He had been charged in two separate criminal investigations, for extortion and abuse of authority, both of which he denies. Neither case, at least formally, had anything to do with Nord Stream. When I visited him recently, at his apartment, he was unequivocal about his involvement in the Nord Stream attack. “I didn’t do it,” he told me.

Note that “two decades directing secret operations for Ukraine’s intelligence services, including assassinations and multiple acts of sabotage.” Chervinsky is a bold and formidable operative, who, in person, appears to be quite ordinary. Yaffa describes him:

Chervinsky, who is fifty, with a slight frame and a head of thinning hair, wore a loose-fitting polo. An electronic monitor was affixed to his ankle. He made a pot of tea, and we sat at his kitchen table. “You look at him and see this absolutely ordinary person you could imagine standing next to on the bus that morning,” one person who has collaborated with him told me. “Then you come to understand who he is and what he’s capable of.”

Yaffa recounts a number of Chervinsky’s adventures. One of the most memorable is the assassination of a vicious pro-Russian militant named Arsen Pavlov in an elevator in a Donetsk apartment-building. How did he do it? Yaffa tells us:

Chervinsky had another idea. He had enlisted an agent to wear a pizza-delivery uniform and to sneak into Pavlov’s building. The agent reported that Pavlov was usually accompanied by a security guard who stood watch outside Pavlov’s apartment, which was on the seventh floor. But there was one place where the pair were confined and usually alone: the elevator. Chervinsky sent two other agents—a Donetsk local and a former special-forces soldier—to Chernobyl, where, in an abandoned apartment building, they practiced the basics of the operation: prying open the doors to the elevator shaft, jumping down to the compartment’s roof, placing an explosive packet on top and a surveillance microphone in the ventilation slats, and making a quick exit. The whole sequence took about a minute. “They were motivated,” Chervinsky said. “They knew what they were doing and why.”

Back in Donetsk, the pair took up a position down the street from Pavlov’s entryway. When one of Pavlov’s guards came outside for a smoke break, the local agent—“He looked like the most peaceful guy, you’d never suspect him of anything,” Chervinsky said—caught the door before it closed. He and his partner got into the elevator shaft and out of the building without being noticed. A week later, Pavlov arrived at his building and walked inside. The agent from Donetsk called Pavlov’s cell phone and heard, via the hidden microphone, that it was ringing inside the elevator. Pavlov picked up. “Is this Arsen Pavlov?” the agent asked.

“Yes,” Pavlov replied.

“This is the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper—we’d like to interview you.” The agent pressed a button, detonating the explosives. S.B.U. officers in Kyiv had tapped Pavlov’s wife’s phone, and listened in as she frantically called her husband, who didn’t pick up.

Yaffa tells about other Chervinsky operations that are equally daring. I’m allergic to spy fiction. But Yaffa’s “Shadow Warrior” isn’t fiction. It’s real life. I found it riveting.