The work of Ukrainian special services during the war is attracting increasing attention from both national and international analysts. The elimination of a high-ranking Russian military leader, Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Security Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, is evidence of the coherence and effectiveness of the operations of the Security Service of Ukraine.
This is reported by the Financial Times .
Today, the SBU is in constant competition with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. The SBU was once largely focused on domestic affairs, but after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it began to actively operate in occupied territory and inside Russia. In 2022, this trend intensified.
Among the SBU's main achievements in the war against Russia, the FT mentions the blowing up of the Crimean bridge in 2022 and the neutralization of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by the service's naval drones. But the SBU also carries out operations to eliminate Ukraine's enemies.
In a comment to the FT, a Ukrainian intelligence officer noted that it was the SBU that eliminated several separatist leaders in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions between 2014 and 2021. But Ukrainian agents also operate in Russia, organizing sabotage and even murders.
“The FSB is very good at investigating what has already happened, but not very good at gathering intelligence about what will happen. It’s a different skill set. For that, the agency has to be a very good intelligence-gathering agency, meaning there has to be trust, good information sharing — which you don’t see among Russian agencies,” said Andrey Soldatov, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Part of the SBU’s effectiveness is due to its sheer size, ironically a result of its Soviet legacy. With over 30,000 employees and even more freelance operatives, the SBU is almost as large as the FBI, with its 35,000 agents. That’s more than seven times larger than Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, and more than four times larger than Israel’s Mossad.
“[The SBU] has enormous power — some would say too much,” one Western diplomat told the FT.
The diplomat said the agency had been criticized for years for failing to implement serious reforms called for by Ukraine's partners, the United States, the European Union and other G7 members. But during the war with Russia, those Western countries put aside their complaints and strengthened ties and intelligence-sharing. The SBU has developed particularly close ties with the CIA, which has invested millions of dollars in training programs for Ukrainian agents.
Almost every month, high-profile assassinations of high-ranking Russian military personnel or collaborators by SBU or GUR agents make headlines. Yuriy Kotenok, a Russian military reporter, wrote that Ukrainian intelligence services “feel completely impunity vis-à-vis Russia.”.
“The fact that the enemy is almost openly bragging about this is quite symptomatic,” he added.
Elimination of Russian war criminals
On the morning of December 17, Igor Kirillov, the head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Security Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed in Moscow. The SBU had previously called him responsible for Russian war crimes related to the use of chemical weapons on the front. Kirillov died as he was leaving the entrance of his own house, next to which an explosive device had been planted.
A few days earlier, Mikhail Shatsky, head of the software department of the Mars design bureau, was killed in the Moscow region town of Kotelniki. He was involved in the modernization of Russian X-59 cruise missiles to the X-69 level. His killing is attributed to GUR agents.
