A dispute between two of Ukraine’s most powerful security agencies has escalated into a criminal investigation after officers exchanged gunfire in Kyiv, leaving three members of military intelligence wounded. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded a full account of what happened and said responsibility must extend to both sides.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, or SBI, has already issued notices of suspicion to two participants. An officer of the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, is suspected of exceeding his authority, while a serviceman from the HUR military intelligence directorate is suspected of attempting to take the life of a law-enforcement officer.
The shooting, however, is only the most visible part of a much more complicated case. At its center is the deputy commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a formation of Russian nationals fighting against Moscow alongside Ukraine and operating within the broader orbit of Ukrainian military intelligence.
The SBU says it was conducting a counterintelligence operation aimed at preventing an assassination allegedly ordered by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. According to the agency, it uncovered contacts between the Russian Volunteer Corps officer and Russian intelligence while investigating a plot targeting an anti-Kremlin Russian figure in Ukraine.
Daycom’s analysis of the verified public record indicates that the SBU-HUR clash in Kyiv cannot be reduced to routine interagency rivalry. A counterintelligence operation collided with the interests of a military unit associated with another security institution, and a disagreement over authority ultimately escalated into armed confrontation.
The SBU says material recovered during its operation included evidence of communications with an FSB representative. It also says the man acknowledged contacts with Russian intelligence and cooperated with investigators. Those claims have not yet been tested through a completed judicial process and remain allegations rather than established guilt.
The officer at the center of the case gives a sharply different account. He says the SBU detained him for nine days and forced him to sign a confession stating that he had collaborated with Russian intelligence. He later withdrew that statement, according to Reuters, turning the circumstances of his detention into a separate focus of scrutiny.
The conflict between those versions is what makes the case particularly sensitive. If the SBU’s evidence is substantiated, investigators may be dealing with an attempt by Russian intelligence to penetrate or manipulate a formation involved in Ukrainian operations. If the detention allegations are proven, the methods used by Ukrainian counterintelligence will face serious examination.
The confrontation erupted during events surrounding a search at the man’s Kyiv residence. HUR personnel arrived, the encounter deteriorated and SBU officers opened fire, according to the account reported by Reuters. Three members of the military intelligence directorate were wounded in the resulting clash.
The SBU itself has described what happened as unacceptable and says it is cooperating with the investigation. The SBI has opened proceedings covering abuse of authority, violence or threats against a law-enforcement officer and an attempt on a law-enforcement officer’s life, reflecting scrutiny of conduct on both sides.
Zelenskyy has been unusually explicit in refusing to publicly absolve either agency. In his Sept. 3 address, he said the truth must be established and that such incidents cannot be allowed to recur. He added that both sides behaved in a manner that should never have occurred and that their leadership would be assessed after internal investigations.
The president has also signaled personnel consequences. Oleh Khramov, who headed the SBU department responsible for protecting state secrets, has already been dismissed. Reuters linked the dismissal to the broader fallout from the confrontation, although the full chain of responsibility has yet to be publicly established.
Legally, several strands of the affair must remain separate. The allegations concerning possible FSB contacts, the claim of unlawful detention and coercion, and the gunfire between SBU and HUR personnel involve different evidentiary questions. Suspicion in one part of the case does not establish responsibility in another.
That distinction will be crucial as investigators reconstruct the sequence of events. They must determine not only why the confrontation occurred, but who first created an immediate threat, whether the use of firearms was justified and whether commanders had procedures in place to prevent two armed Ukrainian services from treating one another as hostile actors.
The institutional stakes are considerable. The SBU is responsible for counterintelligence and domestic security, while HUR conducts military intelligence and special operations. Their mandates inevitably overlap during wartime, particularly in cases involving sabotage, covert networks, defectors and Russian nationals operating on Ukraine’s behalf.
Overlap, however, makes coordination more important rather than less. If personnel from one security institution can arrive at an operation conducted by another and the encounter ends in gunfire, the failure is no longer merely procedural. It raises questions about command authority, operational deconfliction and the mechanisms used to resolve urgent disputes between armed agencies.
The case also carries implications for Ukraine’s international partners. Kyiv relies heavily on intelligence and security cooperation with Western governments and has repeatedly argued that its wartime institutions remain subject to legal oversight. A public shootout between security personnel inevitably puts internal accountability and professional discipline under greater scrutiny.
The timing makes the incident even more striking. On Sept. 4, a Russian drone struck the SBU’s central headquarters on Volodymyrska Street in Kyiv, in what Zelenskyy said was an attack aimed at the area of the service chief’s office. Five people were injured in the strike, according to Ukrainian officials.
There is no evidence connecting that Russian attack with the internal SBU-HUR confrontation, and treating them as parts of the same operation would be unsupported. Their proximity in time nevertheless illustrates the pressure facing Ukrainian security institutions: they are confronting Russian attacks and espionage while simultaneously investigating a breakdown within their own system.
The underlying counterintelligence allegation also remains consequential. If the SBU can substantiate its claim that Moscow sought to use a figure connected to an anti-Kremlin Russian formation to organize an assassination, investigators will need to determine whether others were involved and how far the alleged Russian operation extended.
But that conclusion cannot precede the evidence. The man involved disputes the circumstances of his confession, and the investigation must establish whether communications attributed to him are authentic, what they meant, whether instructions were actually received and whether any alleged plot advanced beyond discussion or preparation.
The same evidentiary discipline applies to the shooting itself. The SBI’s decision to pursue cases involving personnel from both institutions suggests investigators are not publicly accepting either agency’s account as definitive. Ballistics, communications records, body-camera or surveillance material and testimony from those present may prove decisive.
For Zelenskyy, one political danger is that the affair could evolve into a prolonged public feud between agencies, sustained by anonymous leaks and competing narratives. His insistence that both institutions face scrutiny appears designed to prevent the dispute from becoming a contest over which security service can dominate the public version of events.
The SBU-HUR clash in Kyiv is therefore becoming a test of whether Ukraine can investigate a serious failure inside its own wartime security structure without granting institutional immunity to either side. The immediate questions concern a missing fighter, a disputed confession and the circumstances in which armed officers opened fire.
The larger question is harder: how did agencies tasked with defending the same state reach the point where their personnel exchanged gunfire in the capital? The credibility of the investigation will depend not simply on whether individuals are punished, but on whether Ukraine identifies the institutional failures that allowed the confrontation to happen at all.
