Several people have been injured in a shootout in central Kyiv between two branches of Ukraine’s security services, in an incident Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as “disgraceful”. The shootout, which took place on Wednesday morning in a downtown area of the capital, was between officers from the domestic security service, the SBU, and the military intelligence directorate, the HUR. The SBU said in a statement on Thursday that the shootout “definitely shouldn’t have happened” and that it was assisting state investigators.
The clash appears to have been sparked by the SBU’s recent arrest of a Russian man fighting for Ukraine under the supervision of the HUR. Local media reported that while the SBU was searching an apartment linked to the investigation, HUR officers arrived and shots were fired; three HUR officers were injured. The SBU said that, together with the HUR, it had foiled a Russian-backed terrorist plot targeting a Russian opposition leader who had recently arrived in Ukraine.
In a separate statement, the SBU said its officers had come under armed attack while conducting an investigation and they had used their weapons in response. On Thursday, the SBU released a video of the Russian national fighting for Ukraine who had been arrested last month. In the video, the man says he was contacted by a person from Russia acting for Moscow’s intelligence agency who wanted to recruit him to assassinate Ukrainian defence personnel and other individuals.
The man’s lawyer told local media that the video had been recorded under pressure and was being released to “whitewash” the shootout. The man has since been released from SBU custody. Hours after the shootout, Zelenskyy fired the SBU’s head of the department for the protection of state secrets, Oleh Khramov.
Our state will never regard any other shootout as acceptable,” Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post. The incident comes at a delicate moment for Zelenskyy. He has recently faced down calls from a sacked defence minister to hold wartime elections.
The demand, from Mykhailo Fedorov – whose dismissal triggered a wave of protests – was the biggest challenge to Zelenskyy’s authority from inside Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy also recently sacked a presidential deputy chief of staff amid reports she was being investigated in connection to an alleged money-laundering scheme. The president said the shooting on Wednesday needed to be investigated by both the SBU and the HUR.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
