Security Service of Ukraine


The Security Service of Ukraine is the main internal security agency of the Ukrainian government. Its main duties include counter-intelligence activity and combating organized crime and terrorism. The Constitution of Ukraine defines the SBU as a military formation, and its staff are considered military personnel with ranks. It is subordinated directly under the authority of the president of Ukraine. The SBU also operates its own special forces unit, the Alpha Group.
The SBU was created after the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991, succeeding the Ukrainian branch of the KGB and inheriting much of its personnel, facilities and infrastructure. The agency has been 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.
The SBU has since been involved in operations against Russia, pro-Russian separatists in Donbas and other Russian sympathizers after the start of the war in Donbas and the wider Russo-Ukrainian War. The agency has also begun to perform operations outside of Ukraine, some of the most notable actions include the 2022 Crimean Bridge explosion, Operation Spiderweb, and involvement in multiple assassinations in Russia.

Duties and responsibilities

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.
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.
The SBU carries out operations that in many other countries are the responsibility of the police and special forces rather than counter-intelligence services.

Organization and structure

The headquarters of the SBU is at 32–35, Volodymyrska Street, Kyiv.
The Constitution of Ukraine defines the SBU as a military formation, and its staff are considered military personnel with ranks. It is subordinated directly under the authority of the president of Ukraine.
The general structure and operational methods of SBU appear to be very similar to that of its predecessor with exception 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, with the total number of active officers being as high as 30,000 personnel. It is six times larger than the British domestic MI5 and external MI6 combined.

Ukrainian security services prior to independence in 1991

On January 14, 1918, the Ukrainian People's Republic founded its Security Services.
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. This was a much more effective agency than its predecessor due to the incorporation of former employees of Okhrana. After the fall of the Ukrainian State and the return of power of the Ukrainian People's Republic in December 1918, the new UNR authorities destroyed virtually all of the state infrastructure of the Ukrainian State. Therefore, the new secret services founded in January 1919 had to start practically from scratch. It never became as well-led, nor as successful, as its forerunner, the security services of the Ukrainian State. The security services of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on the other hand were well-organized. The West Ukrainian People's Republic were formed in March 1919 as the Field Gendarmerie of the Ukrainian Galician Army. There was no cooperation between the security services of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic.
In 1924, former head of intelligence of the Ukrainian People's Republic Mykola Chebotarov started intelligence work on his own initiative for the Ukrainian People's Republic government in exile on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
The All-Ukrainian Cheka was formed on December 3, 1918, in Kursk on the initiative from Yakov Sverdlov and Lenin's orders. The commission was formed on the decree of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine and later adopted on May 30, 1919, by the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. To support the Soviet government in Ukraine, in Moscow was formed a corps of special assignment with 24,500 soldiers as part of the All-Ukrainian Cheka. In spring 1919, there was created the Council in fight against counterrevolution and consisted of Adolph Joffe, Stanislav Kosior, and Martin Latsis. In its early years the security agency fought against the "kulak-nationalistic banditry". On August 19, 1920, the All-Ukrainian Cheka arrested all members of the All-Ukrainian Conference of Mensheviks after accusing them of counterrevolutionary activity. On December 10, 1934, the State Political Directorate of Ukraine was dissolved, becoming part of the NKVD of Ukraine.

Post-independence

1990s–2005

The SBU originated from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's Branch of the Soviet KGB, keeping the majority of its 1990s personnel. It was created in September 1991 following the August 1991 independence of Ukraine. 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.
Since 1992, the agency has been competing in intelligence functions with the 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 the SBU teamed up with local criminals taking part in privatization of state property 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.
Reports of SBU involvement in arms sales abroad began appearing regularly in the early 2000s. Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged these sales and arrested some alleged participants.
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 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, 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 Mykola Mel'nychenko, the communications protection agent in President Leonid Kuchma's bodyguard team. Mel'nychenko was the central figure of the Cassette Scandal —one of the main events in Ukraine's post-independence history. SBU became involved in the case when Mel'nychenko accused Leonid Derkach, SBU Chief at the time, of several crimes, e.g., of clandestine relations with Russian mafia leader Semyon Mogilevich. However, the UDO was subsumed into the SBU after the scandal, so Mel'nychenko himself has never been an SBU agent.
Later, the SBU played a significant role in the investigation of the Georgiy Gongadze murder case, the crime that caused the Cassette Scandal itself.
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.
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. 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.