Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired a senior official of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Wednesday, hours after a shootout between SBU officers and Ukrainian military intelligence personnel in Kyiv.
The official dismissed is Oleh Khramov, head of the SBU’s Department for State Secrets Protection and Licensing.
The clash appears to have grown out of the detention of Stepan Kaplunov, deputy commander for combat operations of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a formation of Russian anti-Kremlin fighters operating under GUR. The RVC said Kaplunov had been seized outside his home on 23 August and that his whereabouts and legal status remained unclear for days. His lawyer, Taras Borovskyi, described the detention as an ‘abduction’.
The SBU presented a remarkably different version of events. It said it had been investigating a terrorist plot organized by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) against a Russian opposition figure visiting Ukraine and that, during an investigative operation, a group attacked and obstructed its officers. The SBU’s Alpha special unit was called in and firearms were used. The agency later said those detained belonged to a Ukrainian Defence Forces unit.
According to GUR, its units arrived because Kaplunov, one of its servicemen, had effectively disappeared into SBU custody. Kaplunov was later released.
The incident is particularly damaging for Kyiv from several perspectives. The first and main problem is that it goes beyond a simple bureaucratic rivalry: two elite secret services reached the point of confronting one another, with actual shots being fired in the capital while Ukraine remains at war.
International reporting had already described a deepening rivalry between the agencies, and the current incident also points to a serious breakdown in command discipline and trust between security services expected to cooperate against Russia.
The confrontation also comes amid growing domestic demands for an election in Ukraine. Former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov broke a long-standing wartime taboo on 18 August by calling for a ‘legal, safe and realistic mechanism’ to restore elections even before the war ends, including arrangements for soldiers, Ukrainians abroad, and residents of frontline regions.
Zelenskyy rejected the proposal five days later, warning that a wartime vote would be a ‘tsunami’ that could split or even ‘destroy’ the country. Ukrainian law prohibits national elections under martial law, which has been extended until 31 October, and the presidential election originally due in 2024 was therefore not held.
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