The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has appointed Vasyl Maliuk as the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine.

324 MPs voted in favour of the decision. The Parliament supported the candidate nominated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.

Vasyl Maliuk pointed out his awareness of the level of threats that Ukraine is facing in a full-scale war and of his own responsibility as a head of a security agency.

‘The first and foremost is to fulfil the President’s order and change our approaches to work. Not just deterring the enemy, but acting proactively. We are building a new and modern state security model basing on the experience of war,’ Vasyl Maliuk emphasized.

Top priorities are: cleansing the Service, counteraction to collaborators, enemy accomplices and traitors at all levels. This requires an integrated approach - when each line of work develops equally well.

Vasyl Maliuk briefed the Parliament on the SSU’s accomplishments over the past six months: reformatting counterintelligence and military counterintelligence, extra complex missions carried out by the SSU Special Operations Center ‘A’, results of investigative and cyber units.

‘I cannot disclose today the details of all special operations where our officers are involved, but they are present in the hottest spots. In less than a year, 6 of them have been awarded the Hero of Ukraine title. 4, unfortunately, posthumously... We have over 500 state awards. Most of them are Orders of Courage and Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Orders. These people are performing extremely difficult and important assignments,’ the SSU Head highlighted.

During the address, Vasyl Maliuk also spoke about his own combat experience: from 2014 - in Donbas and from the first day of the full-scale invasion - in Kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk oblasts and in Ukraine’s south.

‘We have shown the whole world what Ukrainian character is like. Now we have to join forces and return our territories! And as the Head of the SSU, I will do everything for Our Victory,’ Vasyl Maliuk pledged.