“You should be respected by compatriots and feared by enemies”

The celebrations on that occasion were not very festive. “We are not holding this event in some celebration hall,” President Petro Poroshenko said with deep concern when addressing those gathered at the SBU’s Main Directorate in Kyiv. Let us recall that Captain Viktor Mandzik was killed in the line of duty in Volnovakha on March 21. His widow joined the president in unveiling a memorial plaque with the names of three fallen SBU agents whose relatives received awards from the head of state on that day.

“Transformation of the SBU should take place in accordance with the standards and criteria of NATO and the EU. While marking the 23rd anniversary of the service, we now celebrate its recent rebirth as well, the beginning of service’s restoration after it was ruined by ‘fifth columnists’ and the Russian security agencies. At the moment, when we have to fight to preserve the territorial integrity of our country, I firmly believe in your patriotism and high professionalism and see each of you as a loyal son of Ukraine. Let the law-abiding compatriots respect you, and enemies fear you,” the president stressed.

“We work to bring calm to Ukraine and allow every citizen to feel themselves safe,” Chairman of the SBU Valentyn Nalyvaichenko remarked during the celebrations.

Let us recall that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the resolution “On Creation of the National Security Service of Ukraine” on September 20, 1991. This resolution dissolved the State Security Committee (KGB) of the Ukrainian SSR as well. The Verkhovna Rada went on to adopt the Law “On the Security Service of Ukraine” on March 25, 1992, which was prepared and developed by the then chairman of the SBU Yevhen Marchuk.

It so happened that the SBU, as well as a number of other agencies designed to protect the security of the country and its citizens, had it hard for decades. Ukraine found itself in danger of external aggression a few times. Russia tried to seize Crimea back in 1994, a fact which some groups prefer to keep forgotten. It was the SBU’s swift and decisive actions which prevented the seizure of the agency’s Sevastopol office then. A decade later, Russia whipped up the situation around Tuzla. The two nations were just one step away from conflict then.

Unfortunately, the gradual attrition of patriotic and professional personnel due to actions of politicians who quite often had not the good of the country in mind created the fertile ground for the service, as well as other state agencies, becoming unable to effectively protect the national interests. At the moment, we need to be honest: the destruction of the security agencies did not happen overnight. Thus, it would be unwise to dwell only on Viktor Yanukovych’s time in power, which ended, to quote President Poroshenko, with the SBU headquarters standing empty and classified papers smoldering in its vaults. The collapse of the security service began when Leonid Derkach came to head it, when politicians started to serve not their country, but rather their own interests, which in many respects overlapped with those of the neighboring country that turned out to be definitely not friendly. Strengthening the role of individual oligarchs and emergence of a totally corrupt, flawed governance system combined to turn the SBU into a pocket mechanism for furthering some people’s personal interests.

Starting in the days of Leonid Kuchma, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and SBU held joint meetings of their boards, happening annually for several years. Such meetings focused, for example, on strengthening joint activities to ensure the security of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In fact, it was then that the SBU began to turn into “a branch of the FSB,” as Poroshenko aptly described the situation in his speech, which, however, stressed the Yanukovych era issues. Indeed, it was during the Yanukovych administration that the SBU was subjected to outright destruction which became, so to speak, the finishing blow for it. It was under the Yanukovych presidency that Russian nationals, who clearly harbored no Ukrainian patriotic intentions, were given the SBU portfolio. The high point of the destruction of this vital state agency was the seizure of its offices in the Donbas. I have to admit, as a witness to those seizures which occurred in April 2014 (a month after Yanukovych’s escape), that they went quite smoothly. Such coordination could not be achieved without a total betrayal.

“The president spoke about the events of February and March 2014, when the service began to take shape anew,” advisor to the chairman of the SBU Markiian Lubkivsky commented for The Day. “He said that when Nalyvaichenko came here, the headquarters stood empty, and remains of classified papers were smoldering in its vaults. Had we had a functioning service then, and had loyal sons of Ukraine been consolidated and not poisoned by toxins of the Yanukovych regime, we would be able to work. Unfortunately, Nalyvaichenko has had to essentially rebuild it from scratch. Regarding arrests, we have former head of counterintelligence Volodymyr Bik arrested; he was number three on the list. We have launched criminal cases against almost all former SBU leaders. Some have ran away, some have been arrested. Some arrested officers are already talking.”

The SBU is facing a number of tasks and issues at the moment. One of them is the need to attract the “old guard” of experts who were actually fired as early as during the Kuchma presidency. We should use their experience in order to not have our security services repeating the “school course.” The second issue is the need to use freshly hired young officers who have already proved their patriotism and professionalism when acting under really dangerous conditions. The SBU has been undergoing a rebirth from the ruins for the year. Its agents find themselves surrounded with blood and tears sometimes, serving as the country is fighting a war, one of the most treacherous and brutal conflicts of our time. The revival of the SBU cannot occur without a thorough renovation of the entire state apparatus, without the assertion of a patriotic outlook for the nation’s development.