EXCLUSIVE: CIA Worked With SBU to Root Out Russian Spies
The former Director of Ukraine’s intelligence service opened up with Kyiv Post about how Ukraine’s intelligence services were reborn thanks to America’s assistance.
by Jason Jay Smart | February 26, 2024, 6:18 pm | Comments (2)
What other ways did America play a role in helping Ukrainian intelligence to get back on its feet?
Quickly we began training with our American partners to build up a new counterintelligence force in Ukraine – something that we accomplished within a few months.
Quickly, new counterintelligence was deployed, by my order, to Kherson and to areas being targeted by Russia, where we successfully captured enemies of high intelligence value, including Russian GRU and FSB officers.
Was it effective? [NOTE: Russia began its invasion of Ukrainian Crimea and Donbas shortly after the Revolution of Dignity.]
Our new counterintelligence officers began detecting and regularly capturing even more Russian intelligence assets. No time was lost – it was immediately effective.
We sent information daily,to the United Nations headquarters in New York about Russia’s crimes and their officers, whom we had detained, and were documenting what they said. Additionally, we provided the documents, in English, to the US government, CIA, US State Department, from the very first days.
So what is the first step when building strong relations between intelligence services?
The first step is to build a bridge of trust. To do this, we had to first root out any of the traitors, moles, or other pro-Russian actors at the SBU. It meant that within a week, we fired over 90 percent of top SBU leadership. This also meant that we had to quickly find new people to replace them.
It was difficult, of course. However, without first cleaning up the Russian agentura at SBU, it would have been impossible to build up trust with CIA, MI6, BND, or others.
Some say that the Barack Obama White House was not interested in getting involved in Ukraine – what was your experience?
The White House under Obama was very supportive of our efforts to reform Ukraine’s Security Service.
In the beginning of March 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry, Victoria Nuland and others came to Kyiv. I personally spoke to them all. I told them what I had in mind, what we were designing with our American partners, what goals we wished to reach, and how important it was for Ukraine’s domestic security to have cooperation with the CIA and FBI.
The American leaders were very attentive and willing to support our plans.