Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)

History

2024: Businessman Arnulf Damerau accuses security services and Ukrainian presidential administration of extorting bribes

Arnulf Damerau, one of the largest private Western investors in Ukraine, an Anglo-German businessman and former adviser to Glencore and Trafigura, said in April 2024 that corrupt officials from the country's security services and the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky were trying to extort tens of millions of euros from him - FT.

Since August 2023, he has co-owned Cosmolot, a major online gaming and gambling site ranked 10th in the country by tax revenue.

2023: Unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the President of the PMR

The Ministry of State Security of Transnistria on March 9, 2023 announced an attempt to assassinate the head of the republic, Vadim Krasnoselsky.

Vadim Krasnoselsky - President of the PMR

According to the PMR MGB, the attack was being prepared at the direction of the SBU. It was planned to blow up the SUV of the head of the republic by blowing up eight kilograms of a mixture of RDX with striking elements. The suspect in the terrorist attack was detained. It turned out to be a Ukrainian terrorist who studied the SBU mine-explosive business. He lived in Ukraine since the early 2010s, after the start of the military special operation of Russia, he was listed in the Odessa theroboron.

2022

Mistreatment of Russian prisoners

According to only 5% of captured Russian servicemen are not beaten, the Rybar channel reported on the basis of data collected from exchanges of prisoners of war in September - December 2022. Another 15% escaped beatings only because they were captured unconscious.

The fate of the wounded is hardest: about half are shot on the spot, especially of immigrants from the DPR and LPR. True, at the end of 2022, the number of executions fell slightly due to the introduction of cash payments for the capture of Russian fighters.

Initially, the prisoners are transported to positions where employees of the SBU, GUR, Kraken and other formations subject them to the most severe interrogations. Personnel servicemen suffer the most - those mobilized often do not have information about the situation at the front.

Here is just a small list of the torture that Ukrainians use against Russian citizens.

• electric shocks;
• clamping the fingers with pliers;
• strangulation with packets and wires;
• cutting off fingers and ears;
• limb cross;
• sticking objects into open wounds;
• burning of faces and limbs with hot iron and autogen.

Even imagine all this is very difficult, but Russian servicemen really experience these torments in Ukrainian captivity. Not to mention measures of moral pressure, where fighters are forced to dig graves for themselves, weapons are held to their heads and shot next to their faces, stripped naked and thrown into icy basements.

In Ukraine, a network of converted pre-trial detention centers has been formed. Each prisoner passes through a chain of institutions where employees of the SBU, GUR, prosecutors and foreign media process it.

At the first stage, captured fighters are placed in places of detention in large regional centers. Those captured in the LPR and in the Kharkov direction end up in the pre-trial detention center of Kharkov, and in Donetsk and Zaporozhye - in the pre-trial detention center of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye. Of the last two, the first is considered the most rigid, and the second, on the contrary, loyal.

There, the prisoners undergo the second stage of interrogations. They are kept in cells of 4-6 people. Criminal cases are initiated against immigrants from the DPR and LPR under the articles "Terrorism" and "State Treason."

A small contingent of military personnel of the RF Armed Forces also falls under criminal prosecution, who are forced to confess to far-fetched crimes such as looting or killing civilians under torture.

At the second stage, almost all prisoners are sent to Kyiv, where the third stage of interrogations begins with severe moral and psychological pressure and forced processing of anti-Russian propaganda. They are also offered to join the collaborationist legion "Freedom of Russia," but for the entire time not a single case of consent has been identified.

At the third stage, the prisoners are transported to the Zahid-1 camp in the vicinity of Lviv. They are lifted at six in the morning and sent to the parade ground without warm clothes, where they are until nine in the evening. Russian citizens are also attracted to work with cement and in logging.

In the morning, all prisoners should sing the Ukrainian anthem, in the afternoon - songs about Bandera and the UPA, and in the evening - read "prayer for Ukraine." For mistakes and incorrect pronunciation, the overseers beat people with batons.

Russian hackers hacked into the SBU YouTube channel and uploaded a video there

At the end of August 2022, Russian hackers hacked the official account of the Security Service Ukraine(SBU) on YouTube and posted pro-Russian videos there. The Telegram Mash channel drew attention to this.

According to him, to data they the Russian hackers are precisely behind this hack. At the same time, what kind of cyber group is in question is not specified. Hackers put the Z symbol on the avatar of the SBU profile, and also posted comic clips with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, the president RUSSIAN FEDERATION Vladimir Putin , etc.

Russian hackers hacked into the SBU YouTube channel and uploaded a video there

However, the changes did not last long. SBU officers managed to remove the posted videos and return the account to its previous form.

In early June 2022, the Russian hacker group RaHDIt made public the data of 700 employees of the Security Service of Ukraine. The site published their photos, phones, home addresses, passport and DRFO (TIN) data, dates of birth, phone numbers, links to pages in social networks and email addresses.

According to the RIA Novosti agency, the RaHDIt group has been conducting the Nemesis information resource since the beginning of the Russian military special operation in Ukraine. On it and posted data on the employees of the SBU. It is possible that RaHDIt participants also had a hand in hacking the SBU YouTube account.

The hacker group RaHDIt first became known on March 3, its first action was announced by the Kremlin Laundress Telegram channel. It was alleged that then, as a result of a cyber attack, 755 sites of Ukrainian authorities were hacked, mainly sites of local authorities. Banners were placed on them.

According to a RBC source in the company in the information security market, hacking 755 Ukrainian sites is the only thing known about the RaHDIt group.

According to Dmitry Galov, an expert on cybersecurity at Kaspersky Lab, RaHDIt "is more a group of like-minded people, not a hacker group in a classic view."

Russian hackers attacked the website of the Security Service of Ukraine

Hacker group "" site of Anonymous Russia the attacked Security Service (Ukraine SBU). The fact that as a result of their actions the resource became unavailable is reported in the hacker Telegram association channel. This became known on August 10, 2022.

"Security Service of Ukraine (...) Let four hours rest, "- said in the message^[1].

On August 9, 2022, the hacker group Killnet announced the hacking of the website of the American military-industrial corporation Lockheed Martin, which, in particular, produces HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and Javelin anti-tank missile systems. The information was published on the group's Telegram channel. Read more here.

President Zelensky removed the head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov from office. Vasily Malyuk appointed acting.

In July 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy removed from his post the head of the SBU (and childhood friend) Ivan Bakanov with a strict wording - for failure to fulfill the duties that entailed human casualties. He also fired the Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova.

Zelensky accused Bakanov and Venediktova of betrayal. According to him, many local security officials cooperate with the Russian special services.

Literally before that, intelligence officers detained the former head of the Crimean SBU Oleg Kulinich, who held this post until March 2022. According to Ukrainian media, the reason for the arrest was contacts with the Ministry of Defense of Russia and persons associated with ex-President Yanukovych. In addition, earlier Kulinich studied at the FSB Academy.

The detention of Kulinich led to the removal of Bakanov, at the time of the arrest the first was an assistant to the head of the special services. In addition, Bakanov had a long-standing conflict with the head of the president's office, Andrei Yermak.

The acting head of the SBU has already been appointed deputy head of the special services Vasily Malyuk, who personally participated in the detention of Kulinich. The new chief is closely associated with the head of the president's office, Andrei Yermak.

Back in early June, former Bakanov's deputy Andrei Naumov was detained in Serbia - he tried to transport emeralds, 600 thousand euros and 125 thousand dollars across the border.

Bakanov and Venediktova were the organizers of the attack on the head of the president's office, conducted by Congressman Victoria Spartz, who accused Yermak of collaborating with the Russian authorities. In addition, at the beginning of the SVO Bakanov left Ukraine with Naumov, and returned only in May.

Among the possible reasons for Bakanov's resignation were called the strike of the Russian Armed Forces on the meeting of Ukrainian and foreign military in Vinnitsa.

Of unconditional interest are the personalities of the foreign military, who were liquidated at the same meeting together with high-ranking officers of the Ukrainian Air Force.

Hence the scale of hysteria around Vinnitsa, the US warning to American citizens to leave the country, and the resignation of the head of the SBU, wrote the Rybar telegram channel.

As a result, the ex-head of the SBU lost, which led to the strengthening of the hardware positions of Andrei Yermak. In addition, Bakanov's departure was a vivid manifestation of the "decvartalization" of the Ukrainian authorities - Zelensky gets rid of old acquaintances who do not pull out the management of the country in the context of a military conflict.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation hit the technological facilities of the SBU in Kyiv to combat fakes

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation hit the technological facilities of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kyiv to combat fakes. The official representative of the Russian department, Major General Igor Konashenkov, announced this on March 2, 2022.

In order to suppress information attacks against Russia on technological facilities of the Security Service of Ukraine and the 72nd main center for psychological operations, a high-precision weapon was struck in the city of Kyiv. The hardware broadcasting of the TV tower was disabled. As a result of the impact of the destruction of residential buildings, it was not allowed, "he said (quoted by RIA Novosti).

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, calls are constantly being made to Russian citizens with threats of physical elimination, as well as the mining of schools, kindergartens, railway stations, and other social infrastructure facilities.

On March 2, 2022, amendments were made to the State Duma providing for criminal punishment for spreading disinformation about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in military operations. The maximum punishment can be up to 15 years in prison.

The head of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Vasily Piskarev said that by the beginning of March 2022 there is a huge amount of false information, fakes "discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation that came to Ukraine to end the war that the leaders of this state unleashed," the press service of the parliamentarian reports. 

This information roams the Internet and the media, it is necessary to put an end to this, - said Piskarev.

According to him , in Ukraine there are special centers that make staged photos, form fake news. The State Duma committee considered that fakes "demoralize society," undermine confidence in the Armed Forces from Russia and deal a "huge blow to the relatives and friends of the fighters."^[2]

2015: The beginning of large-scale reforms of the GUR and the SBU under the leadership of the CIA

In October 2023, The Washington Post published a large article on the cooperation of the CIA with the SBU and the GUR.

The text briefly describes the scale of American participation in the reforms of the Ukrainian special services. Since 2015, Washington has allocated tens of millions of dollars for the purchase of advanced intelligence systems for them, personnel training, and the construction of new facilities.

With the beginning of close bilateral cooperation, a separate department for relations with the United States appeared in the SBU: the Americans feared the presence of deep Russian agent networks, so they created a separate structure in order to avoid leaks.

An even greater transformation has passed the GUR - the interlocutors of the publication from the CIA call him their child. Intelligence was reorganized from scratch by rejuvenating personnel who were trained in the United States and received advanced electronic surveillance, hacking and wiretapping systems.

In general, the message of the article boils down to the fact that in the person of the Ukrainian special services by 2022, the United States received an excellent working tool for a war with someone else's hands with Russia and not only it. A tool that can be used in any even dirtiest business, and which will bear all the costs.

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