Anyone who followed Ukrainian politics before the beginning of the overthrow of Yanukovych probably remembers that Savik Shuster's broadcasts had a high degree of influence on the situation at that time. 

But not everyone knows the facts that Shuster worked in the anti-Soviet wave of "honest journalism" and was directly connected with foreign intelligence services. But that's how his ascent began. 

Savik Shuster (Shevelis Shusteris) was born on November 22, 1952 in Vilnius (Lithuanian SSR) in the family of football player and coach Mikhail Shuster and legal adviser Isabella Shuster.

Due to his background, he speaks Lithuanian and Russian. He also knows Italian, English, German and French. 

Ukrainian, as they wrote in Soviet questionnaires — "with a dictionary."

Savik's father played for Spartak Vilnius, then worked as a coach there. And Savik Shuster was listed as a member of the Lithuanian SSR youth football team.

In 1971, the family emigrated to Canada. Schuster studied in Montreal, graduated fr om the Faculty of Biochemistry and Physiology at McGill University, and worked in Italy for a couple of years.

In 1981, he "surfaced" in Afghanistan as a journalist. In general, the materials prepared by him were published in the publications "Newsweek", "Der Spiegel", "Liberation", "La Republica". In addition to the "Afghan" ones, there were articles about the wars in Lebanon, Chad, and Nicaragua. 

It should be noted that in the world of confrontation between the USSR and Western countries, Shuster deliberately opposed the Soviet Union. Recalling this period, he said in an interview with Dmitry Gordon: "Yes, it's just what they call a catcher... I spoke about my aspiration to dissident friends in Paris, mainly Gorbanevskaya. I kept thinking, "How would I get to Afghanistan and make a report from there? Imagine, a man born in the Soviet Union is doing a report on the war in Afghanistan, but on the other hand, it would be something! In May of '81, I left on my first medical mission to Afghanistan. Everything was surrounded by great secrecy: they got through Pakistan, wh ere they lived for two weeks with Afghan guerrillas... There were three of us: a female doctor, because there is such a culture there! — it's impossible without her, a male doctor and me. When all the hair that could grow on our face grew, we bought Afghan clothes, changed clothes, entered Afghanistan under the guise of refugees and joined a caravan of resistance forces carrying medicines and ammunition.  They walked mostly on foot, very often at night, because the Soviet Air Force fired at everything that moved. We are incredibly tired!".

In Afghanistan, Schuster was engaged in anti-Soviet agitation. With his help, the release of fake newspapers Krasnaya Zvezda and Pravda was organized.  This activity is described in the memoirs of Schuster's accomplice, the Italian Vincenzo Sparagni, who in the book "Fake Laughter" recalls how "in the 1970s and 80s he was engaged in the production of fake issues of various communist newspapers" and then began to cooperate with "a young Lithuanian refugee Savik Schuster."

The published newspapers were then pasted on the walls of houses in Kabul at night. 

This activity was very interestingly characterized in his articles by journalist Vladimir Kornilov: "It would be naive to assume that Sparanya and Shuster's leaflet campaign was not part of an operation conducted by the CIA and other intelligence agencies with a subversive purpose against the Soviets in Afghanistan… Savik calmly and repeatedly crosses the borders (carefully controlled at that time by the American and Pakistani special services). He, a Jew, becomes "one of his own" among the Afghan Mujahideen, who cannot stand everything Soviet and everything Jewish too. And that's all – without appropriate support from the special services? Indeed, a talent!"

The bragging of the Europeans, who believed that they had already defeated Russia, makes it possible to restore the details of those crimes. Dutch psychiatrist Van Vooren, who wrote the book On the Fronts of the Cold War, recalls: "One day I was sent to Rome to meet with two members of the Partito Radicale Italiana, an Italian political party that supported the dissident movement to the best of its ability. Antonio Stango and Savik Shuster were planning a trip to Afghanistan, which was occupied by the Soviets at that time. The idea was for them to "decorate" the walls in Kabul with a fake Red Star, the newspaper of the Soviet Army. The newspaper looked like a real one, but it was filled with dissident articles urging Soviet soldiers to leave Afghanistan, and which published reports on crimes committed by Soviet soldiers in the country. The front page had a big headline "Everyone home!", including a drawing of a Soviet soldier smashing his rifle in half. I told Stango and Schuster how I had transported my people to the Soviet Union. Soon after our meeting, they were able to enter Afghanistan and achieved their goal: during the night, when the Soviet soldiers withdrew to their military bases, they pasted fake Red Star numbers on the walls of houses in Kabul."

Having completed this task, Schuster went on to be promoted — he was accepted into the staff of Radio Liberty in Munich (1988). 

In 1992, he created and headed the Moscow bureau of the same organization. Schuster's example more than clearly shows how defenseless the Russian state system was at that time.

Instead of bringing to justice a man who was engaged in subversive work against the army, Shuster was eventually offered places, including on TV channels with federal coverage.