The SBU was created after the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991. The agency was viewed negatively by the Ukrainian public for much of its history, as it was widely regarded as corrupt and was best known for arresting and intimidating political dissidents. After the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the SBU went through a restructuring with the transition to the new government, because of its corruption and possible infiltration by intelligence agencies of Russia.[6]
The SBU has since been involved in operations against
The Security Service of Ukraine is vested, within its competence defined by law, with the protection of national sovereignty, constitutional order, territorial integrity, economical, scientific, technical, and defense potential of Ukraine, legal interests of the state, and civil rights, from intelligence and subversion activities of foreign special services and from unlawful interference attempted by certain organizations, groups and individuals, as well with ensuring the protection of state secrets.[8]
Other duties include combating crimes that endanger the peace and security of mankind, terrorism, corruption, and organized criminal activities in the sphere of management and economy, as well as other unlawful acts immediately threatening Ukraine's vital interests.
Organization
The general structure and operational methods of SBU appear to be very similar to that of its predecessor (KGB of
Ukrainian Border Guards and department responsible for security of high-rank state officials. Both of them became independent institutions. However, the SBU keeps under its control special operation Alpha units with bases in every Ukrainian province. According to British political expert Taras Kuzio the organizational structure of SBU remains bloated in size compared to its predecessor, the Soviet Ukrainian KGB, because the total number of active officers is as high as 30,000 personnel. It is six times larger than the British domestic MI5 and external MI6 combined.[9]
Structure
Central Apparatus (consists of some 25 departments)
Main Directorate on Corruption and Organized Crime Counteraction
Regional Departments of the SBU (26 departments)
Special Department
Anti-Terrorist Center cooperates with numerous ministries and other state agencies such as the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Emergencies, State Border Guard Service, and others.
In May 1918 the Department of the State Guard of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian State started to form a new intelligence service.[10] This was a much more effective agency than its predecessor due to the incorporation of former employees of Okhrana (the secret police force of the Russian Empire).[10] After the fall of the Ukrainian State and the return of power of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) in December 1918, the new UNR authorities destroyed virtually all of the state infrastructure of the Ukrainian State.[10] Therefore, the new secret services founded in January 1919 (with two divisions – domestic and foreign) had to start practically from scratch.[10][11] It never became as well-led, nor as successful, as its forerunner, the security services of the Ukrainian State.[10][11] The security services of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on the other hand were well-organized.[10] The West Ukrainian People's Republic were formed in March 1919 as the Field Gendarmerie of the Ukrainian Galician Army (it also served as military police).[10] There was no cooperation between the security services of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic.[10]
In 1924 former (April–July 1919) head of intelligence of the Ukrainian People's Republic
Stanislav Kosior, and Martin Latsis. In its early years the security agency fought against the "kulak-nationalistic banditry"[14] (peasants who resisted having their land confiscated and being forced into collective farms). On August 19, 1920, the All-Ukrainian Cheka arrested all members of the All-Ukrainian Conference of Mensheviks after accusing them in counterrevolution.[15] On December 10, 1934, the State Political Directorate of Ukraine was dissolved, becoming part of the NKVD of Ukraine.[13]
independence of Ukraine.[10] The last Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's Branch head Colonel-General Nikolai Golushko stayed on as chairman of the newly formed Security Service of Ukraine for four months before moving to Russia.[10] (Golushko headed the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service in 1993 and 1994.[10]
)
Since 1992, the agency has been competing in
intelligence branch of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Despite this, a former Military Intelligence Chief and career GRU technological espionage expert, Ihor Smeshko
, served as an SBU chief until 2005.
According to Taras Kuzio during the 1990s in some regions of Ukraine (Donetsk) the SBU teamed up with local criminals taking part in privatization of state property (so-called prykhvatizatsiya) ignoring its operational objectives and sky-rocketing level of local violence. A notorious incident took place in December 1995 in Western Ukraine when a local citizen Yuriy Mozola was arrested by SBU agents, interrogated and brutally tortured for three days. He refused to confess in trumped up murder charges and died in SBU custody. Later it turned out that the real killer was Anatoly Onoprienko. He was arrested the next year.[9]
Reports of SBU involvement in arms sales abroad began appearing regularly in the early 2000s.[16] Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged these sales and arrested some alleged participants.[16]
In 2004, the SBU's Intelligence Department was reorganized into an independent agency called Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. It is responsible for all kinds of intelligence as well as for external security. As of 2004, the exact functions of the new service, and respective responsibilities of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine were not regulated yet. On November 7, 2005, the President of Ukraine created the Ukraine State Service of special communications and protection of information, also known as Derzhspetszvyazok (StateSpecCom) in place of one of the departments of SBU and making it an autonomous agency. The SBU subsumed the Directorate of State Protection of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Управління державної охорони України), the personal protection agency for the most senior government officials, which was the former Ninth Directorate of the Ukrainian KGB.
The SBU's State Directorate of Personal Protection is known for its former Major
Semyon Mogilevich
. However, the UDO was subsumed into the SBU after the scandal, so Mel'nychenko himself has never been an SBU agent.
In 2004, General Valeriy Kravchenko, SBU's intelligence representative in Germany, publicly accused his agency of political involvement, including overseas spying on Ukrainian opposition politicians and German TV journalists. He was fired without returning home. After a half-year of hiding in Germany, Kravchenko returned to Ukraine and surrendered in October 2004 (an investigation is underway).
Later, the agency commanders became involved in the scandal around the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko—a main candidate in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Yushchenko felt unwell soon after supper with SBU Chief Ihor Smeshko, at the home of Smeshko's first deputy. However, neither the politician himself nor the investigators have ever directly accused these officers. It is also important to note that the Personal Protection department has been officially responsible for Yushchenko's personal security since he became a candidate. During the Orange Revolution, several SBU veterans and cadets publicly supported him as president-elect, while the agency as a whole remained neutral.
2005–2010
In 2005, soon after the elections, sacked SBU Chief Smeshko and other intelligence agents stated their own version of the revolution's events. They claimed to have prevented
militsiya from violently suppressing the protests, contradicting the orders of President Kuchma and threatening militsiya with armed involvement of SBU's special forces units. This story was first described by the American journalist C.J. Chivers of The New York Times and has never been supported with documents or legally.[citation needed
]
An episode of human rights abuse by SBU happened during the case of serial killerAnatoly Onoprienko. Yuriy Mozola, an initial suspect in the investigation, died in SBU custody in Lviv as a result of torture. Several agents were convicted in the case.[18] The SBU remains a political controversial subject in Ukrainian politics.[19]
, Schuller posted a quote from one of his other interviews:
All my experience until now indicates that I am a patriot. ... I see through economic intrigues, crime, know methods of money laundering, banks that illegally exchange currency. ... My knowledge is much wider than most of those who work here.
When
U.A. Inter Media Group which owns major shares in various Ukrainian TV channels including Inter TV.[25] 238 members of the Verkhovna Rada voted for Khoroshkovsky, however the head of the parliamentary committee for the National Security and Defense Anatoliy Hrytsenko stated that the committee accepted the decision to recommend Verkhovna Rada to deny the candidature of Khoroshkovskiy on the post of the chairman of Security Service of Ukraine.[26]
Khoroshkovskiy said the SBU's main duty was to protect the president rather than the interests of Ukraine. On July 26, 2010, it arrested an internet blogger, producing a warrant for his arrest the next day. SBU accused the blogger of threatening the
A SBU raid against organized crime at the Sumy Oblast
On May 22, 2012, Volodymyr Rokytskyi, Deputy Head of the SBU, was photographed in public wearing a $32,000 luxury wristwatch despite the fact that its price amounts to his yearly official income. The instance happened at a joint Ukrainian-American event dedicated to fighting the drug trade.[30]
The SBU uncovered seven spies and 16 special service agents in 2009.[31] A large number of arrests and searches occurred in 2011.[32]
In February 2014, numerous documents, hard drives, and flash drives, including data on over 22,000 officers and informants, were stolen or destroyed in a raid on the SBU allegedly ordered by President Viktor Yanukovych.[33]
Late February 2014 opposition MP
BBC Ukraine analyst Olexiy Solohubenko many tactics discussed in the paper had indeed been performed.[34]
Ukrainian parliamentary Committee on National Security, after Russia's annexation 10% of SBU personnel left Crimea.[36] According to the SBU itself (in November 2017) 13% did so.[37]
In 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) expressed concerns about a situation with "freedom of opinion and expression" in Ukraine which facing "mounting challenges". According to the UN reports the SBU is taking advantage of broad interpretation and application of Ukrainian Criminal Code against independent Ukrainian journalists, bloggers, and media activists.[39] According to reports of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the SBU personnel is responsible for multiple cases of human rights abuses including sexual violence and torture.[40][41]
A new fifth directorate of SBU was created in 2015 to act as a saboteur force. It was associated with several assassinations of prominent pro-Russian commanders in Donbas: Alexander Zakharchenko, Mikhail Tolstykh and Arsen Pavlov.[42]
On December 21, 2017, two Ukrainian civil servants were arrested by the SBU for spying on behalf of Russia, one of them being an SBU employee while the other, Stanislav Yezhov, worked for various cabinet ministers.[7]
On July 8, 2019, the SBU announced that they conducted a raid into Donbass to apprehend Vladimir Borysovich Tsemakh, who was head of the air defense in Snizhne and a 'person of interest' when a Buk missile launcher was used to shoot down MH17.[46] The SBU mentioned that he's a witness to the incident.[47]
On April 14, 2020, the SBU announced the arrest of Lt. General Valeriy Shaytanov [uk], who was recruited in 2014 by the FSB during a Russian-Ukrainian anti-terrorist working group under the command of Colonel Igor Anatolievich Egorov [uk].[48][49] He was known to head the anti-terrorist division who had played a prominent role in negotiating ceasefires and prisoner exchanges with Russia-backed militants in Eastern Ukraine.[48] He had planned the future assassination of Adam Osmayev, a Chechen in the International Peacekeeping Battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev which is defending Ukraine against Russia aggression.[50][51]
Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (GUR) disclosed the information that he was their agent and that he "died while performing special tasks" for the GUR.[59]
On April 12, 2022, the SBU announced they had arrested Viktor Medvedchuk, an ally of Vladimir Putin, in what Bakanov called a "a lightning-fast and dangerous multi-level special operation"; a treason case was opened against Medvedchuk the previous year and in February, and authorities said that Medvedchuk that escaped from house arrest.[60]
July 17, 2022, Head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov was dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[61] While a long-time associate and personal friend of Zelenskyy, Bakanov was accused of allowing treason and collaboration of SBU agents with Russia, and failing to uproot them.[62][63]Vasyl Malyuk, the first Deputy Head of the SBU, was appointed as acting Head of the SBU.[63]
(in Ukrainian). April 14, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
Radio Svoboda
(in Ukrainian). October 8, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
^Стек, Левко (Stek, Levko); Гриценко, Олексій (Gritsenko, Alexey) (July 16, 2018). "Адам Осмаєв про замахи, Аміну Окуєву і чеченців на Донбасі. Ексклюзивне інтерв'ю" [Adam Osmayev about the assassination attempts, Amin Okuyev and the Chechens in Donbas. Exclusive interview]. Radio Svoboda (in Ukrainian). Retrieved October 19, 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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