In a series of sackings this week, Ukraine’s president fired his intelligence chief, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) chief Ivan Bakanov, and his Prosecutor General Irina Venedikotva over concerns that they represented pro-Russian security elements. Ukrainian. services, even as the rest of the country works to fend off Russian forces at war. A majority of MPs approved Zelensky’s vote of no confidence in Bakanov and Venedikotva on Tuesday, according to the BBC. More recently, Zelensky fired Volodymyr Horbenko, deputy head of the SBU, according to the BBC. District governors in many cities have also been dismissed. As Russian and Ukrainian forces take to the battlefield as the war drags into its fifth month, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky know that slow efforts to undermine both sides—and spies working for the enemy— they can hide in plain sight. Zelensky said he fired Bakanov and Venedikotva because many members of their services were working with Russia. More than 60 of their colleagues are working against Ukraine now, he claimed. And during the war the effort continued. SBU investigators met with one such alleged spy this May, according to a CNN report. When asked what information he shared with Russia, the accused spy said he shared locations of high-value Ukrainian targets. “Coordinates, movements and so on,” said the suspicious associate. “The locations of successes. Something like that. The situation in general and so on.” Ukraine has long worked to root out pro-Russian collaborators in the country, but the task has become, by some accounts, more pressing during the war. More than 800 people suspected of sabotage or intelligence gathering in the war have been arrested so far, Yevhenii Yenin, Ukraine’s first deputy interior minister, said last month. The apparent turmoil in Ukraine’s security services is not going to stop anytime soon. David Arahamia, the leader of the Servant of the People Party, announced that as more information emerged, the shooting spree would continue. “There will be a lot of ‘cleansing’, because over the years many residents of the Russian special services have secretly entrenched themselves within the walls of the SBU, unfortunately,” he said, according to the BBC. The move to purge the SBU of alleged collaborators comes as Russia also works to track down pro-Ukrainian elements in territory seized by Russian forces in recent days. For weeks, the Russians have been hunting spies at the Zaproizhzhia nuclear plant in an attempt to crack down on pro-Ukrainian sentiment.
