| Служба безпеки України | |
 Emblem of the Security Service | |
 Flag of the Security Service | |
| Agency overview | |
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| Formed | 20 September 1991; 34 years ago (1991-09-20) |
| Jurisdiction | Government of Ukraine |
| Headquarters | 32–35, Volodymyrska Street,Kyiv, 01034[1] |
| Employees | 29,000 (November 2017)[2] 30,000 (February 2014)[3] |
| Agency executive | |
| Parent agency | President of Ukraine |
| Child agency | |
| Website | Official website |
| Footnotes | |
| Overseen by the Presidential Commissioner | |
| History of state security of Ukraine |
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 Ukrainian State |
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 Ukrainian SSR |
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| Ukraine |
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| Ukraine portal |
TheSecurity Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian:Служба безпеки України,romanized: Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy[ˈsluʒbɐbezˈpɛkɪʊkrɐˈjinɪ]; abbreviated asSBU [СБУ] orSSU) is the maininternalsecurity agency of theUkrainian government. Its main duties includecounter-intelligence activity and combatingorganized crime andterrorism. TheConstitution 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 thepresident of Ukraine.[5] The SBU also operates its ownspecial forces unit, theAlpha Group.
The SBU was created after theDeclaration 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 theRevolution of Dignity in 2014, the SBU went through a restructuring with the transition to the new government, because of its corruption and possible infiltration byintelligence agencies of Russia.[6]
The SBU carries out operations that in many other countries are the responsibility of the police and special forces rather than counter-intelligence services.
The SBU has since been involved in operations against Russia,pro-Russian separatists in Donbas and other Russian sympathizers after the start of thewar in Donbas and the widerRusso-Ukrainian War.[7]
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.
The SBU carries out operations that in many other countries are the responsibility of the police andspecial forces rather than counter-intelligence services.[9]
The general structure and operational methods of SBU appear to be very similar to that of its predecessor (KGB ofUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) with exception ofUkrainian 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 operationAlpha units with bases in every Ukrainian province. According to British political expertTaras 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 domesticMI5 and externalMI6 combined.[10]
On January 14, 1918, theUkrainian People's Republic founded its Security Services.[11]
In May 1918 the Department of the State Guard of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of theUkrainian State started to form a new intelligence service.[11] This was a much more effective agency than its predecessor due to the incorporation of former employees ofOkhrana (the secret police force of theRussian Empire).[11] After the fall of the Ukrainian State and the return of power of theUkrainian People's Republic (UNR) in December 1918, the new UNR authorities destroyed virtually all of the state infrastructure of the Ukrainian State.[11] Therefore, the new secret services founded in January 1919 (with two divisions – domestic and foreign) had to start practically from scratch.[11][12] It never became as well-led, nor as successful, as its forerunner, the security services of the Ukrainian State.[11][12] The security services of theWest Ukrainian People's Republic on the other hand were well-organized.[11] The West Ukrainian People's Republic were formed in March 1919 as the Field Gendarmerie of theUkrainian Galician Army (it also served asmilitary police).[11] There was no cooperation between the security services of the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic.[11]
In 1924, former (April–July 1919) head of intelligence of the Ukrainian People's RepublicMykola Chebotarov started intelligence work on his own initiative for the Ukrainian People's Republicgovernment in exile on the territory of theUkrainian SSR.[13]
The All-UkrainianCheka was formed on December 3, 1918, inKursk[14] on the initiative fromYakov Sverdlov andLenin's orders. The commission was formed on the decree of theProvisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine and later adopted on May 30, 1919, by theAll-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. To support theSoviet 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 ofAdolph Joffe,Stanislav Kosior, andMartin Latsis. In its early years the security agency fought against the "kulak-nationalistic banditry"[15] (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 theAll-Ukrainian Conference of Mensheviks after accusing them of counterrevolutionary activity.[16] On December 10, 1934, theState Political Directorate of Ukraine was dissolved, becoming part of theNKVD of Ukraine.[14]
The SBU originated from theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's Branch of the SovietKGB, keeping the majority of its 1990s personnel.[17] It was created in September 1991 following the August 1991independence of Ukraine.[11] The last Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's Branch head Colonel-GeneralNikolai Golushko stayed on as chairman of the newly formed Security Service of Ukraine for four months before moving to Russia.[11] (Golushko headed the RussianFederal Counterintelligence Service in 1993 and 1994.[11])
Since 1992, the agency has been competing inintelligence functions with theintelligence branch of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Despite this, a former Military Intelligence Chief and careerGRU technological espionage expert,Ihor Smeshko, served as an SBU chief until 2005.
According toTaras 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-calledprykhvatizatsiya) 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 wasAnatoly Onoprienko. He was arrested the next year.[10]
Reports of SBU involvement in arms sales abroad began appearing regularly in the early 2000s.[17] Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged these sales and arrested some alleged participants.[17]
In 2004, the SBU's Intelligence Department was reorganized into an independent agency calledForeign 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 theForeign 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 MajorMykola Mel'nychenko, thecommunications protection agent in PresidentLeonid Kuchma'sbodyguard team. Mel'nychenko was the central figure of theCassette Scandal (2000)—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 withRussian mafia leaderSemyon 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 theinvestigation of theGeorgiy Gongadze murder case,[18] the crime that caused theCassette Scandal itself.
In 2004, General Valeriy Kravchenko, SBU's intelligence representative in Germany, publicly accused his agency of political involvement, including overseas spying on Ukrainianopposition 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 thepoisoning ofViktor Yushchenko—a main candidate in the2004 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 theOrange Revolution, several SBU veterans andcadets publicly supported him as president-elect, while the agency as a whole remained neutral.
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 preventedmilitsiya from violently suppressing the protests, contradicting the orders of President Kuchma and threateningmilitsiya with armed involvement of SBU'sspecial forces units. This story was first described by the American journalist C.J. Chivers ofThe 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 ofserial killerAnatoly Onoprienko. Yuriy Mozola, an initial suspect in the investigation, died in SBU custody inLviv as a result oftorture. Several agents were convicted in the case.[19] The SBU remains a political controversial subject in Ukrainian politics.[20]
The former Security Service of Ukraine HeadValeriy Khoroshkovsky was involved in several controversies during his tenure. The rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in LvivBorys Gudziak heavily criticized a visit from the SBU, forcing Khoroshkovskiy to apologize. Later the head of the Kyiv Bureau of theKonrad Adenauer Foundation,Nico Lange, was detained for a short while and released only after several high-ranking officials from theGerman Chancellery vouched for him. The Security Service described the incident as a misunderstanding.[21] Khoroshkovskiy, as the Chairman of the SBU, eliminated the main competition of Ukrainian TV-giantInter,[citation needed] officially owned by his wife Olena Khoroshkovskiy, in the face ofTVi andChannel 5. In July 2010, Konrad Schuller of theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that Khoroshkovskiy had connections withRosUkrEnergo.[22][23][24] The most important source of Khoroshkovskiy's[clarification needed] came from RosUkrEnergo.[citation needed] The President's spokesperson,Hanna Herman, in an interview with this newspaper, did not dispute thatDmytro Firtash was one of the sponsors of the PresidentialParty of Regions, with the help of which Khoroshkovskiy was appointed to the position of the State Security chairman. Khoroshkovskiy denied any connections to RosUkrEnergo. However it is a fact[citation needed] that Firtash possesses certain privileges in Inter. Schuller also stated that the SBU acts in direct association with RosUkrEnergo, arresting their main opponents (seeRosUkrEnergo) to recover their invested money in the recent[which?] presidential campaign. Khoroshkovskiy having declined to give an interview toFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 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.
WhenMinister of Finance Fedir Yaroshenko resigned on January 18, 2012, Khoroshkovsky replaced him in the post on the same day.[25] Khoroshkovsky is also the owner ofU.A. Inter Media Group which owns major shares in variousUkrainian TV channels includingInter TV.[26] 238 members of theVerkhovna Rada voted for Khoroshkovsky, however the head of the parliamentary committee for the National Security and DefenseAnatoliy 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.[27]
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 thePresident of Ukraine, citing his comment "May thunder strike Yanukovych!"; he was released after a short discussion.[28] However, SBU showed a rather passive reaction to the statements of the Russian state official who claimed thatCrimea andSevastopol belong to theRussian Federation.[29]Protest groupFEMEN said that afterthe early 2010 election of PresidentViktor Yanukovych the SBU attempted to intimidate the FEMEN activists.[30]
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.[31]
The SBU uncovered seven spies and 16 special service agents in 2009.[32] A large number of arrests and searches occurred in 2011.[33]
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 PresidentViktor Yanukovych.[34]
Late February 2014 opposition MPHennadiy Moskal released papers that showed the SBU had allegedly infiltrated the late 2013 – February 2014 anti-governmentEuromaidan protest.[35] According toBBC Ukraine analystOlexiy Solohubenko, many tactics discussed in the paper had indeed been performed.[35]
After the overthrow of Yanukovich in theRevolution of Dignity the new SBU headValentyn Nalyvaichenko claimed to have found his new office building empty, saying "the agency's former leadership had all fled to Russia orCrimea. There were no operative files, no weapons. Institutionally, the place was totally destroyed".[6] Nalyvaichenko also claimed that at that time the agency was heavily infiltrated by Russian spies.[6] Indeed, Nalyvaichenko predecessorOleksandr Yakymenko with about 15 former SBU top officials surfaced in Russia a few days later.[34] Allegedly in the months following the Revolution of Dignity thousands of Ukrainian spies switched sides and began reporting to Russia during the2014 Crimean crisis and thepro-Russian unrest ineast andsouth Ukraine.[34] At the end of 2014 235 SBU agents, including the former counterintelligence chief and his cousin, and hundreds of other operatives had been arrested and 25high treason probes against Yanukovych-era SBU officials had been launched; also all regional directors had been changed, as well as half of their deputies.[34] In July 2015 Nalyvaichenko claimed "There's no longer a total infiltration of Russian agents. The danger is no longer widespread".[6] The arrested agents were replaced by new recruits fromwestern Ukraine, many of them in their early twenties.[34] To test loyalty, all SBU agents are subjected to recurrent interrogations andlie detector tests.[34]
In June 2015, theKyiv Post reported that a deputy chief of the SBU, Vitaly Malikov, had supported events leading to theannexation of Crimea.[36] According to February 2016 official figures of theUkrainian parliamentary Committee on National Security, after Russia's annexation 10% of SBU personnel left Crimea.[37] According to the SBU itself (in November 2017) 13% did so.[38]
In 2016,Amnesty International andHuman Rights Watch reported that the SBU operatessecret detention facilities where civilians are held incommunicado being subjected to improper treatment and torture.[39]
In 2017, theUnited 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.[40] 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.[41][42]
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 andArsen Pavlov.[43]
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]
In late 2018, the SBU carried out raids across the country targeting theUkrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) churches and priests.[44][45][46]
On July 8, 2019, the SBU announced that they conducted a raid into areas held by theDonetsk People's Republic to apprehend Vladimir Borysovich Tsemakh, who was head of the air defense inSnizhne and a 'person of interest' when aBuk missile launcher was used toshoot down MH17.[47] The SBU mentioned that he's a witness to the incident.[48]
On April 14, 2020, the SBU announced the arrest of Lt. GeneralValeriy Shaytanov [uk], who was recruited in 2014 by the FSB during a Russian-Ukrainian anti-terrorist working group under the command of ColonelIgor Anatolievich Egorov [uk].[49][50] 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.[49] He had planned the future assassination ofAdam Osmayev, a Chechen in theInternational Peacekeeping Battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev which is defending Ukraine against Russia aggression.[51][52]
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With the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the SBU started to conduct extensivecounter-espionage against Russian intelligence services. The SBU capturedfifth-columnists, Russian sympathizers, collaborators, spies and infiltrators.[53] The SBU, with help of the AmericanNSA andCIA, also broke through the Russian encrypted cellphone services, intercepting phone calls to find valuable targets or other useful intelligence.Several Russian generals died due to the intercepted calls.[54] They also published many supposed intercepted phone calls on their website, showing morale issues or admissions ofwar crimes by Russian troops.[55][56]
On March 5, 2022, SBU agents shot and killedDenys Kireyev, a member of Ukraine's negotiating delegation during the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, while he was being arrested.[57] According to the SBU, Kireyev was suspected of treason and was claimed to have clear evidence of him working for the enemy.[58][59] However in August 18, later theChief 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.[60]
On April 12, 2022, the SBU announced they had arrestedViktor Medvedchuk, an ally ofVladimir 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.[61]
On July 17, 2022, Head of the SBUIvan Bakanov was dismissed by PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyy.[62] 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.[63][64]Vasyl Malyuk, the first Deputy Head of the SBU, was appointed as acting Head of the SBU.[64] It has been reported that the SBU was in a bad state at the time. The Kherson region SBU head had withdrawn agents before Russia's occupation, against orders. There was nepotism. The SBU was considered to be penetrated by Russian agents; Malyuk prioritised removing them. Malyuk's effectiveness in this was a factor in the success of the 2025Operation Spiderweb attack on Russian airbases, highly dependent on secrecy, which did not leak.[9]
According toUkrainska Pravda and theUNIAN, theOctober 2022 Crimean Bridge explosion was carried out by the SBU.[65][66]
On August 7, 2023, Ukrainian Security Service has arrested a woman in relation to an attempt to assassinate PresidentZelenskyy. The unnamed woman was accused of supplying information for a Russian air strike.[67]
On August 12, 2024, SBU alleged that Russia was attempting to falsely accuse Kyiv's military of committing war crimes, as Ukraine advanced with a ground incursion into Russia's Kursk region. Meanwhile, Russian state media reported thatAlexei Smirnov, accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons. Smirnov also stated that Ukraine had seized control of 28 settlements in the region.[68]
On June 1, 2025, the SBU carried out amassive attack on multiple Russian air bases. The air bases struck were the Belaya air base, the Dyagilevo air base, the Olenya airbase, the Ivanovo airbase, and the Voznesensk airbase. The SBU smuggled in drones in cargo containers into Russia, which were then driven near airbases. The drivers of the trucks carrying the cargo containers were not SBU operatives, but unknowing Russian truckers, with the SBU already having all of their people withdrawn to Ukraine before the attack. When activated, the thin covers of the containers would slid off and the drones would take off and attack the bombers. Video footage shows rows of bombers being destroyed by the drones, causing significant damage to the parked bombers. The attack resulted in the destruction and damage of 41 aircraft, including Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, as well as at least one A-50 AWACS aircraft. The damage was valued at an approximate $2 billion, with many of the aircraft destroyed not in production.[69][70][71] On June 3, the SBU carried out anattack on theCrimean Bridge, detonating underwater explosives damaging the bridge support structure.[72]
SBU was connected to a number of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures. Ukraine said it was behind the killing of a senior Russian naval officer in a car in Crimea. SBU said it was also responsible for the killing of a high-ranking officer in the GRU military intelligence service, who was assassinated outside his house in a village in the Moscow region.
SBU said it assassinated Mikhail Shatsky, a leading Russian missile scientist who worked on upgrading cruise missiles used on the battlefield in Ukraine. His body was discovered in Kuzminsky forest park, atKotelniki.[73]
In December 2024 the head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons divisionIgor Kirillov was killed by an explosive device attached to a scooter outside an apartment building in Moscow. It was the most targeted assassination of a senior military official since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Guardian.[74][73]
Apart from military figures, Ukraine assassinatedDarya Dugina, daughter of Russian ideologue and ultranationalistAleksandr Dugin, who was killed in August 2022 when a car bomb exploded herToyota Land Cruiser. The assassination attempt was originally targeted at her father.[75]
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The Constitution of Ukraine defines the status of the SSU as a military institution.
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