SBU

Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny (SBU, English: Security Service of Ukraine) is Ukraine's main government security agency.

SBU is responsible for:

• state security (actually incl. secret police tasks)
• external security and non-military intelligence
• counterintelligence (incl. one inside Armed Forces)
• fighting terrorism and "crimes against state and people" (smuggling, illegal weapons/WMD materials trade etc.)
• personal security of the President, Verkhovna Rada, other highest persons/institutions (see Politics of Ukraine).

SBU is a successor of Ukrainian SSR Brunch KGB, keeping almost all of its 1990s personnel and competes in intelligence functions with HUR (Ukrainian: Holovne Upravlinnya Rozvidky, English: Central Intelligence Department)- military intelligence unit within Ukraine's Defence Ministry (Ukrainian: Ministerstvo Oborony). Despite that, current SBU Chief Ihor Smeshko is a former HUR Chief and a career GRU technology espionage expert.

Several years ago, the SBU subsumed the UDO (Ukrainian: Upravlinnya Derzhavnoyi Ohorony, English: State Guard Department) - the personal security agency for the highest level statesmen, former Ninth Directorate of Ukrainian KGB. UDO is known for the desertion of Major Mykola Mel`nychenko, the communications protection officer in President Leonid Kuchma's bodyguard team. In 2000 Mel`nychenko escaped to the West, publishing numerous records of the supposedly President's secret conversations and calls, causing the so-called "Cassette Scandal". Those records intended to prove the allegations of Kuchma's involvement in the kidnap and beheading of Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze, as well as other crimes. The supposed voice of former SBU Chief Leonid Derkach is often present in Mel`nychenko`s records, i.e. discussing clandestine relations with Russian mafia leader Semyon Mogilevich.

Later Gen. Valery Kravchenko, SBU's intelligence resident in Germany, publicly accused his agency of political involvement, incl. overseas spying on Ukrainian opposition politicians and German TV journalists. Kravchenko was fired without returning home and now in Germany.