In July 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced in a video message the successful self-cleansing of the SBU from Russian spies and moles. On this day, he also fired the head of the Security Service, Ivan Bakanov, who was called Zelensky’s childhood friend. Old friendly relations did not save Bakanov’s career, since “a lot of questions” arose for the head of the SBU regarding the recorded connections between employees of the security forces of Ukraine and the Russian intelligence services. However, Bakanov lives a normal life today.
From various sources, hromadske journalists received full access to secret correspondence of the SBU and closed correspondence groups of the leadership of the service in the southern regions.
The first “traitors” - Andrei Naumov and Sergei Krivoruchko
The first “traitors” were publicly declared to be Brigadier Generals Andrei Naumov, Bakanov’s former first deputy, and Sergei Krivoruchko, the former head of the SBU Directorate in the Kherson region.
Vladimir Zelensky announced this in his video message in April 2022, and decrees were simultaneously published on the head of state’s website depriving both men of their general ranks. “Random generals are not on the same path with us,” the president said then about Sergei Krivoruchko. His fate came as a surprise to us.
“I am not a defendant in any criminal proceedings. There is nothing against me, because I know there are no grounds,” Krivoruchko told the hromadske journalist and added: “What is my position today? I am at the disposal of the Chairman of the Security Service. “I am assigned to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and report to him.”
The Service itself looks at it differently. “He is not an active employee, despite the fact that he is actually still listed in the SBU. He is not a person attached to Maluk. This is some kind of incorrect interpretation of it. It is “at the disposal” of the Central Directorate,” explained Alena Semikina, adviser to the head of the SBU.
On February 23, a meeting was held in Kherson with the participation of regional leaders. His video recordings were not published, but the commander of the 124th Kherson TrO brigade, Dmitry Ishchenko, who was present, later recalled in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda: “The head of the Anti-Terrorism Center at the SBU and the head of the SBU reported there that there would be no invasion.”
So, Sergei Krivoruchko told his superiors that an attack was unlikely. However, he was not charged with high treason or anything like that - he was simply stripped of his rank and left in the service.
Andrei Naumov fled Ukraine on February 23, 2022, and is now in custody in Serbia. The local court recently refused to extradite the former deputy chairman of the SBU to Ukraine, but it also has its own problems with Serbian justice. In Serbia, Naumov is accused of money laundering.
Another “traitor” - Roman Dudin
The former head of the SBU Department in the Kharkov region, who was in Kharkov at the time of the full-scale invasion, is suspected of high treason, disobedience and unauthorized leaving the place of duty. Dudin is now being held in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center.
“On the 24th, the war began for me at 04:25, when the commander of the Eastern Regional Directorate of the State Border Service, General Bobrinyuk, called and reported that shelling of the state border had begun. On command, I raised the entire personnel of the Kharkov garrison, reported to Kyiv that this was our situation, and accordingly scheduled a gathering. We gathered at my place somewhere from 6 to 7 o'clock. The entire leadership, by the way (Mr. Terekhov, Mr. Sinegubov) was also at this meeting,” Roman Dudin told us from the detention center over the phone.
Two days later, on February 26, he received instructions from Bakanov to go to Kyiv.
The SBI thinks differently and bases the charge of treason on the following: “On the eve of February 24, 2022, the ex-official knew about the high probability of a full-scale attack on the territory of Ukraine by the Russian armed forces, but instead of organizing work to counter the enemy, he actually engaged in sabotage.”
That is, he knew about the Russian attack, but did nothing to prepare. However, there is a video recording of a meeting with the Chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration Oleg Sinegubov, which took place on the eve of the invasion, on February 23. In the video, Roman Dudin talks about the increase in the number of Russian troops on the borders with Ukraine, in the Kharkov region, and also that Russian officers are discussing Ukraine on the radio, and “the trends are very negative.”
Further, Dudin reports on the measures taken to prepare for a possible invasion in the Kharkov region, on strengthening air defense, increasing the number of military personnel and creating defense lines.
Has Dudin done enough to prepare the Kharkov region for defense? Hard to tell.
A more important charge against the SBI is Roman Dudin’s attempt to seize power in the Kharkov region and temporarily remove Oleg Sinegubov from office on February 24. Because of this, according to the state bureau, Sinegubov was unable to take part in a conference call with Zelensky’s Office at noon on February 24. What was that? We asked one of the former SBU employees who knows the situation from the words of the participants in the so-called removal.
“Contact with Terekhov disappeared on the morning of February 24. He was still in touch at 06:00, or at five something, and then disappeared. And Sinegubov disappeared. According to Dudin, they were at the dacha of Feldman, a member of the OPZZH faction. The task was to find them - Sinegubova, Terekhova. Because they weren’t there and they didn’t get in touch. Bakanov gave him the order to find them. He found it - perhaps in a harsh form, but he did it. It wasn’t like they were taken out by hand or anything like that. They came out calmly and left. I don’t think that Dudin, without an order from Kyiv, would simply go there to “pull” the head of the Regional State Administration,” said Oleg (name changed), a former SBU employee.
The video of the “suspension” was also preserved. On it we see the office of the chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration, Roman Dudin is sitting at the table. At the beginning of the video, someone says: “We need you to leave the office.” Oleg Sinegubov and Igor Terekhov leave silently. All.
“High treason, according to the prosecution, was that he allegedly removed the head of the Kharkov Regional State Administration from his duties from 11:00 to 13:00, then gave the command to evacuate his unit and damaged the State Special Communications Service. To check, I made a request to the Office of the President to establish whether this suspension took place at all. And the Office responded that they did not have any information that the chairman of the Kharkov Regional State Administration was removed from office. If I were the chairman of the Regional State Administration, and such a removal occurred, I would call senior management and report it. But there were no such calls,” says Roman Dudin’s lawyer Alexander Kozhevnikov.
In the end, even Sinegubov himself, in conversations to which hromadske gained access, assured Dudin that he had no complaints against him. But at that time, Kirill Timoshenko, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, had complaints. His name was often mentioned in correspondence between Dudin and Bakanov, but his real role in this story was initially unclear. Kirill Timoshenko refused to meet with us. We accidentally found documents confirming that he testified in the Dudin case and told investigators about the alleged removal of Sinegubov in the first days of the full-scale invasion.
The Office of the President does not have such information. And it turns out that Kirill Timoshenko, who was fired from the OP, has? Why did Kirill Vladlenovich feel the need to tell investigators about this? Here is the version of Roman Dudin himself.
“Specifically behind this case [against me] are Mr. Tatarov, Mr. Ermak, Mr. Malyuk, Mr. Kirill Timoshenko. Why did this happen? Because we recorded facts of theft of humanitarian aid. It entered the city of Ternopil, from there it went to the city of Dnepr, there it was repackaged and sent to other regions, in particular to the city of Kharkov. That is why the residents of Kharkov actually did not receive humanitarian aid, but it was sold under the guise of goods without excise stamps in supermarkets, markets, and the like. Kirill Tymoshenko is very disinterested in the facts of theft that we documented in the Kharkov region.”
At the same time, Kirill Tymoshenko himself, in a telephone conversation, could not remember whether he testified in the Dudin case: “In general, to be honest, I don’t want to comment on anything regarding his personality in this case, because he is trying, thanks to PR moves, to then pull it out for yourself. That's why I'm not interested at all. If I gave any testimony, it was a very long time ago. And even if I gave them, I cannot tell you about it.”
Tymoshenko denies involvement in the theft of humanitarian aid, although she admitted that there were such criminal proceedings. “All the cases allegedly involving the theft of humanitarian aid, [which involved] me, someone else from the Office or regional governors... I have not heard a single fact or progress in these cases in any of the areas.”
Roman Dudin is undoubtedly not without his official sins. But it is precisely these accusations by the SBI that seem very uncertain.
The Shevchenkovsky Court of the city of Kyiv has already begun to consider Dudin’s case. We asked prosecutors, who have been collecting evidence and testimony for more than a year, about the role of the president’s friend in this story. Prosecutors forwarded our questions to the press service of their department.
In response to a request from hromadske, the Office of the Prosecutor General first explained at length why the disclosure of personal data of participants in criminal proceedings is absolutely impossible, and then said: “During the pre-trial investigation in the said criminal proceedings, B. was not questioned as a witness. During the judicial review of the said criminal proceedings, the prosecutors supporting the public prosecution in it, if necessary, will decide the issue of calling and questioning B. as a witness in the court hearing.” The letter “B” designated Bakanov.
The next “traitor” is Oleg Kulinich
Oleg Kulinich, head of the SBU of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, was detained in July last year - he was also charged with high treason. At one time, he studied at the Soviet KGB school, and later at the Russian FSB Academy. Until 2009 he worked in the SBU. Subsequently - in the state company Energoatom under the leadership of Andrei Derkach, suspected of treason. In October 2020, President Zelensky appointed Kulinich head of the SBU department in Crimea.
At the beginning of the great war he was in Kherson. But he received instructions from his superiors and moved to Kyiv.
Through his lawyer, he sent a letter to the editorial office of hromadske, where he explains how he left Kherson: “At approximately 08:00 on February 24, 2022, on the initiative of Ivan Bakanov, an operational meeting was held in a closed video conference under his chairmanship. Based on the results of the report on the development of the situation in the Crimean direction, the head of the SBU gave instructions to ensure the evacuation (of women, children) from the city of Kherson, as well as the withdrawal of personnel to a reserve control point. Already with the approach of Russian troops to Kherson, I was the last to leave the SBU building and went in the eastern direction of the Kherson region.”
The order to go to the capital Kulinichi from Bakanov was conveyed by his deputy Vladimir Gorbenko. Gorbenko himself confirmed to us the authenticity of this correspondence.
— Can you explain why he had to go to Kyiv?
- Defend the capital, which was almost surrounded.
— Do we understand correctly that this command was agreed upon by management?
- You understand correctly. But, in my opinion, you should ask these questions to Ivan Gennadievich. He, all the deputies and some heads of departments were in the same office. That is, these were general, informed decisions. Then it was broadcast to everyone.
“Everything he did before February 24 and after was agreed upon,” says lawyer Dmitry Palamarchuk about his client. According to him, Kulinich’s actions were not just coordinated - he actually carried out the orders of his direct leader, Ivan Bakanov, given personally, and sometimes transmitted through one of his deputies.
“Kulinich received an order to move forward to defend the city of Kyiv, since there were reports that in the event of the fall of the capital, there could be no talk of defending the country. In this regard, there was an order to move to the defense of the capital, which he carried out. That is, this is both an order and an instruction - call it what you want, it doesn’t change the essence,” says Palamarchuk.
But even if there were no instructions, the SBI’s wording about “leaving the place of deployment” is still questionable. After all, the main office of the Crimean department of the SBU is located in Kyiv. That is, Kulinich did not even formally leave his place of duty, but simply moved from one office to another.
On April 5, 2023, the SBU and the State Bureau of Investigation published audio recordings of several conversations between Oleg Kulinich and allegedly his curator from Moscow, former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Vladimir Sivkovich. According to investigators, Kulinich was supposed to introduce a Moscow agent, “Okhotnik,” into power structures. According to one version, the “Hunter” was the fugitive Andrei Naumov, but this has not been proven. The published conversations were allegedly recorded back in 2019 and early 2020. It is interesting that Kulinich was not yet working in the SBU. He was appointed only in the fall of 2020.
“The version of the pre-trial investigation body that he committed high treason, namely the transfer of data in a conversation with Sivkovic, which is now published on the Internet, appeared after he was detained. The origin of the electronic media itself on which these recordings are stored is very interesting,” says Oleg Kulinich’s lawyer Dmitry Palamarchuk.
When the SBI and SBU published the records, one would have thought that they had been purposefully developing and “training” Kulinich for many years, keeping his communications under control. In fact, a flash drive with incriminating evidence against Kulinich was “accidentally” found much later after his arrest in an empty Kiev house. A search in an abandoned building was carried out on a completely different matter, but the only thing they found was the same flash drive with conversations. Who kept the recording and for what purpose is unknown. Therefore, it may undermine the evidence in court.
When Kulinich was detained on July 16, 2022, Bakanov found out about it after the fact.
"A little more chaos than the situation called for"
Of all the intelligence services before the war, the SBU was almost the only one inclined to believe that there would not be a full-scale invasion, says Ukrainian MP Sergei Rakhmanin, a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, defense and intelligence. “They did not deny [the possibility of an invasion], but they cast great doubt on it, unlike other structures. On the other hand, they said that they were ready for anything, they were determined and they had everything under control. The first days, the first weeks, the first months showed that everything was a little wrong. There was much more chaos and disorganization in this structure than the situation required.”
One of the employees of the Kyiv department of the SBU, in a conversation with journalists, confirmed that on February 24, 2022, chaos reigned in the “office”. By the evening of February 25, almost the entire Central Office of the SBU was evacuated to Lviv and the Vinnytsia region. That is, there are few people left in Kyiv.
“You’re sitting in your office, there’s nothing there anymore, the computer is disassembled. All papers were taken away and destroyed. And then “bang”, we hear the arrival... And this, it turns out, was an arrival by power steering, around 11. "Dagger" has arrived. And the command arrived about 10 minutes later. I think it’s a missile alert, we must leave the premises immediately. And then everyone starts grabbing their things and running out with them. Of course, there was still that spectacle.
And so we gradually find out, towards evening, that, for example, the information and analytical department was evacuated to Lviv. Then the regime-secret services also go there, because they have business there. Then it turns out that DGZ has already fled somewhere. And all, let’s say, auxiliary units knew already somewhere after lunch that they had to go to Lvov... Approximately 10% of the service was still at work. “Alpha,” I think, was all there, all counterintelligence remained, and other departments were evacuated until March 25.”
“If we don’t protect Kyiv, Ukraine will end, that’s why we need you here,” Ivan Bakanov roughly explained to his subordinates from the front-line regions why they should leave everything and go to the capital.
Ivan Bakanov himself and his deputies were at their workplaces.
“On March 26, on Vladimirskaya Street, 18 (Kiev SBU Department - ed.) there was a barn lock. But the top leadership of the SBU was there: Bakanov, Andryushchenko, Berezenko, all of Bakanov’s deputies, department heads and Alpha employees... Probably everyone. My group of about 30 people and I occupied the second floor on Vladimirskaya. My special forces and I also went to work on addresses on Kostelnaya, on Khreshchatyk Street - the central part of the city near the government quarter. The situation in Kyiv was very difficult. Why were we released back to Kharkov on the 28th? Because that’s when two brigades deployed,” said accused Roman Dudin.
“In the case of Kulinich and Dudin, it would be logical, in my opinion, to interrogate Ivan Gennadievich and simply ask him whether he gave such orders or not,” Sergei Rakhmanin told hromadske. “I could be wrong, perhaps something has changed, but in my opinion information, in none of these cases he was questioned as a witness, which seems strange to me, to say the least. If we are now arguing whether this order was there or not, whether it was given to everyone or selectively, in a messenger or properly duplicated in the form of a document... Isn’t it easier to call Ivan Gennadyevich Bakanov, who is on the territory of Ukraine, and ask him these questions? Then we wouldn’t be playing conventional games now, but operating with facts.”
Where is Ivan Bakanov?
Bakanov also learned about his dismissal after the fact. And after “they left him” from the SBU, he seemed to dissolve.
According to hromadske journalists, he still lives in his house in the suburbs of Kyiv, goes to the supermarket and plays football.
In April of this year, Ivan Bakanov registered as an individual entrepreneur, allegedly planning to rent out some real estate. In June, he received a lawyer's certificate in Poltava. We wanted to hear his version of events in the Security Service at the beginning of the big war. After all, two of his direct subordinates are accused of treason. We called him many times, wrote to him on messengers, but the ex-head of the SBU is silent.
“Ermak exhibits his rigid vertical”
Six months ago, Vasily Malyuk received the position of chairman of the SBU. Now it's official. Since Bakanov's dismissal, he has been only acting.
Malyuk is 40 years old. He is a major general, served in state security agencies, and participated in the ATO.
In the spring of 2020, Vasily Malyuk became deputy chairman of the SBU for the first time. A year later, Zelensky fired him. The President's Office explained his resignation by saying that he failed to cope with the task of combating smuggling. In September 2021, Malyuk was noticed at the birthday party of one of the deputy heads of the Presidential Office, Oleg Tatarov. On February 16, 2022, Malyuk was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. And with the start of a full-scale invasion, he was returned to the post of deputy chairman of the SBU.
Former colleagues of Ivan Bakanov, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that even before the full-scale invasion, no one took him seriously. The service was directed from the OP, and Ivan Gennadyevich’s deputies ran there as if to confession, ignoring the chain of command.
We received this information from several sources at once, one of them was in the Office of the President itself. It was Vasily Malyuk who had been leading Kulinich’s case since 2021. The SBU calls the latter a person close to Bakanov - and this is what explains the current head’s frequent visits to the OP during Bakanov’s time. Yes, they do not deny the fact of such visits.
This is how our informant Oleg (name changed), a former SBU employee, talks about these campaigns: “The deputies went around Bakanov to report to Tatarov and the second deputy... There is Ermak, who puts forward his rigid vertical, his people who are loyal to him and report to him . Therefore, everything that happened in the SBU was known to the President’s Office. It cannot be that Bakanov simply appointed Kulinich for himself, he is to blame for everything, he is a super traitor. After all, this appointment was coordinated with the Office of the President.”
People's Deputy Sergei Rakhmanin said that he had never received information about the reports of the deputy heads of the SBU in the Office of the President: “If this happened, then it violates not only the principles of subordination, but also the regulatory framework... I think this procedure is prescribed, and the head of the SBU must report to the president... The president has the right to create advisory bodies, which include the OP. There are curators responsible for certain areas. As far as I understand, the SBU belongs to the cluster of law enforcement agencies for which Tatarov is responsible. Should they report to Tatarov? I don't know. I think not. Should they have contacts with Tatarov if he is the curator and is responsible for this area? I think yes, but only with the direct sanction of the leader, that is, the head of the SBU. How effective was Bakanov as head of the SBU? In my opinion, he was not an effective head of the SBU. And even before his removal, I had a deep suspicion that he does not lead the SBU, but to a certain extent is the nominal head of the SBU.”
hromadske spent several weeks negotiating with the information department of the Security Service to obtain answers to the questions raised in this investigation. However, from the SBU, journalists received only a link to a complimentary interview of the head of the service with Natalya Moseychuk in a telethon. They even prescribed time codes. This is what the head of the office said about Dudin.
“On the second day after February 24, he [Dudin] kicked his heels into the city of Kyiv. And he stayed here until March 2. And when they brought Kulinich into custody—on my initiative, they implemented the Presidential Decree—Dudin realized that he was next and quickly returned to Kharkov.”
Malyuk’s statement, prescribed to us by the employees themselves, does not correspond to reality. President Zelensky dismissed Kulinich from his post on March 2, 2022. The day before, Dudin had already arrived in Kharkov and even shared a photo of his management with Bakanov.
Obviously, Malyuk doesn’t really want to answer our questions directly, just like Bakanov. Meanwhile, the official version, which was voiced by Malyuk in a telethon and forms the basis of the criminal case, is crumbling before our eyes. We sent requests to the Office of the President, the Prosecutor General and the State Bureau of Investigation. Only the Office of the Prosecutor General responded. The SBI limited itself to unsubscribing, and the OP decided to ignore us.
