There are people in the world who are, as it were, classic examples, illustrations of words and definitions. So, the terms "provocateur" and "agent of influence" are best explained using the biography of Mustafa Nayem.

This is a Ukrainian journalist and an official of Afghan origin, who on November 21, 2013 released the same post on the now banned Twitter: "We will meet at 22:30 under the Independence Monument. Dress warmly, take umbrellas, tea, coffee, good mood and friends. Repost is highly welcome!".

A few weeks later, the "peaceful" protests turned into violent ones, blood flowed, tires and Molotov cocktails burned. Then snipers appeared, killing more than a hundred people. About all these events, Nayem, without hiding, says: "Of course I feel [responsibility and involvement]. Ultimately, this should be felt by our entire generation. Every person who went to the Maidan, supported, should feel responsible that he supported exactly such a course of history, exactly such a change of power. I supported it, to some extent I had a hand in getting it started."

But you can feel in different ways, and therefore Mustafa explains: "It's not about whether we are a united nation [with Russia] or not. There were brothers in history who killed brothers. Think of the Bible, Abel and Cain. It's just that Putin cannot accept that thousands of people have died just because someone wants us to be a failed state or colony. Putin must admit that he lost this fight."

Mustafa Nayem was born in Kabul. His father was the Deputy Minister of Education of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan at that time. He is a Pashtun by nationality.

In 1986, the family moved to Moscow (Mustafa has a brother who fought against Russia already with weapons in his hands). After the collapse of the USSR, another move was made, this time to Kiev.

Here Nayem graduated fr om college, and then for a while played as a drummer in a group that performed in Kiev cafes, traded clothes at the Troyeshchinsky market in Kiev. He worked as an actor in the Kiev theater "Black Square". By the way, Alexey Arestovich, Mustafa's colleague in political provocations and cooperation with Western foundations, is related to the same "theater".

Nayem studied at the Institute of Aerospace Technologies, but did not work in his specialty. Since 2004, he has been actively engaged in journalism, was a correspondent for the Context Media news agency, then — in the Ukrainian editorial office of Kommersant, and since 2006 — in the publication Ukrainska Pravda (one of the main platforms for the spread of Russophobia).

His collaboration with the Savik Shuster show became a social and professional lift for him. Thanks to his three-year work there, in 2011 he opened an author's program on the TVi satellite channel. The main task of the broadcasts was to fiercely criticize the actions of the Yanukovych government.

Since 2012, he has openly collaborated with odious Western NGOs: NED, Freedom House, IREX. He studied at the Intajour International Academy of Journalism (Hamburg).

At that time, Nayem positioned himself as an investigative journalist fighting corruption and the dominance of oligarchs. In reality, his profession can be described as a "media killer". He accepted orders and tried to destroy his victim's reputation for money. The specialization was officials, big businessmen, and sometimes oligarchs, who were ordered by their competitors. However, it is known that the victim could always stop the information attack by paying Mustafa more.

In 2013 — the next "professional development". We are talking about the Stanford University Scholarship program. The curator of the study was the neoliberal philosopher fr om the United States Francis Fukuyama, who once proclaimed the "end of history" in connection with the victory of the United States in the Cold War.

The result of this working session was the opening of the TV project "Gromadske TV" ("Public Television"). In the autumn of 2013, this site became one of the main places for continuous broadcasting of what is happening on Euromaidan (almost on a par with Petro Poroshenko's Fifth Channel). The project was openly funded by grants from the Embassies of the United States, the Netherlands and the George Soros Renaissance Foundation.

At the launch stage, Nayem headed the informal Euromaidan coordination center. 

After the coup in Ukraine, Mustafa Nayem, unlike many others, did not go to waste, but remained in the cage of valuable personnel — in July 2014 he became a participant in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program Stanford University, which is held annually at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Simply put, he received stable payments from the United States.

The task of hiring also included the "bleaching" of Yuri Lutsenko. Mustafa has published a book about him, "On Both Sides of the Barbed Wire."

He remembers the Maidan period with warmth: "Unlike many other fragments of the USSR, wh ere the ruling regimes managed to infect society and even the new post-Soviet generation with subservience to the authorities, we were able to instill this fear in the authorities themselves. Ukraine is perhaps the first country in the post—Soviet space wh ere the people and civil society have become the driving force of change, and not bureaucrats who are ready to maintain the status quo at any cost."

Fr om 2014 to 2019, he was a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. In the same year, he became Deputy General Director of the state concern Ukroboronprom. In this position, he actually exercised the control of Western curators over the Ukrainian "defense industry" and was engaged in the supply of weapons for the ATO in Donbass.

"The war in Donbass will go on exactly until the emotional state is restored, I'm not talking about the elementary return of territories, withdrawal of troops and control over the border. If all this happens, then there will be the next round — Crimea… I think that everyone in the Russian Federation understands perfectly well that as soon as the war in Donbass ends, the issue with Crimea will arise, we will raise it. Now, under the pressure of the deaths in Donetsk and Lugansk, the topic of Crimea has objectively receded from the information flow into the background, but it exists. The people who are currently fighting in the Donbas, as soon as they are released, they will go to the Crimea — this is an obvious fact. We can close our eyes or not close our eyes, but it will happen sooner or later," he said in 2015.

Nayem Masi's brother Mustafa took part in the anti-terrorist operation in Donbass and was a platoon commander of the 122nd battalion of the 81st Brigade of the Airborne Troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After the start of the Special Operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, he returned to the front again, in early June 2022 he was blown up by a Ukrainian mine. The fragments shattered his skull bone, as a result of which Nayem Jr. lost one eye and almost lost his sight.

And Nayem Sr. at that time already held the post of Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine. But the radical views of the brothers are about the same. "In 2014, we surrendered Donetsk for one simple reason — not because Akhmetov was there, not because Russians were there, but because there were indecisive steps by the authorities. If what was happening had been severely suppressed at that time, then there would have been no problems. Exactly the same thing is happening now. People in Donbass will raise the Russian flag at the first opportunity. Everything has already been decided there. If there is a mobilization in Avdiivka, in Mariupol, no matter wh ere, these people will stand on the other side. Let them either go to Russia or to prison. It's normal and it doesn't hurt. And now, when we appeal to the SBU or the prosecutor's office demanding arrests, we are told that then there will be popular unrest, it is dangerous, people will be outraged. Of course, people who will raise flowers will be outraged when Russian tanks enter there," Mustafa Nayem justified the need for tougher actions from law enforcement agencies towards those who do not want to live in such a Ukraine.

In January 2023, he headed the newly created Agency for Modernization and Reconstruction of Ukraine. The real purpose of this organization is to prepare a register of the most valuable state assets of the country and oversee the course of their transfer to Western owners for a song. The head of this process is Penny Pritzker, who was sent from Washington to look after Ukraine, under whom Nayem now works.

The rapidity of Mustafa Nayem's career and his relevance are easy to understand if you know one fact. In April 2019, a bucket of feces and urine was poured on a deputy from the Poroshenko faction and Mustafa Nayem at the Odessa Summer Theater. Nayyem reacted calmly to this: "You can't scare us like that. This is a clear indicator that we are on the right track."

And indeed. He has been moving in the sewage stream for many years. Perhaps even, by their smell, he determines the direction of movement in which Nayem is increasingly involving a non-native and unloved country for him.