An important area for the SSU today is cleansing the Service from ‘moles’ and traitors. In an interview to Interfax-Ukraine, the SSU Acting Head Vasyl Maliuk says that he is currently giving special focus to this issue.

‘The Service is self-cleansing. It is extremely important, especially during a war. That’s why, we are doing everything we can for this. Today, we find all the shameful phenomena in the Service itself and localize them. All personnel feel it, the state leadership knows about it, and, I hope, the people of Ukraine feel it too,’ Vasyl Maliuk emphasized.

As an example, the SSU Acting Head said that he had personally investigated and detained the former chief of the SSU’s Crimea Office Kulinich. The SSU carried out an agent and technical infiltration into the russian fsb to obtain evidence of his treason.

‘Kulinich is an ex-chief of the SSU’s Crimean Directorate and a former officer for special assignments. The SSU conducted an unprecedented filigree operation, including agent and technical infiltration of the fsb. We have obtained all the files where he reported information to Moscow, including classified data, on the situation in our country, in the SSU, how they tried to influence various processes,’ Vasyl Maliuk informed.

The SSU Acting Head also told about the detention of another traitor - the chief of Kharkiv Institute for SSU’s Juridical Personnel Training, who was not just an agent, but a resident of russian intelligence. That is, he had other persons in contact with him. There are also other detained suspects, including an employee of the analytical unit of the SSU’s Kharkiv Office, who passed information to the enemy.

‘If we don’t find these rats, all our further operations against the enemy are doomed to failure. Therefore, we place great emphasis on this. Today, the internal security unit is completely reformatted and is executing exactly such counterintelligence tasks,’ the SSU Acting Head summed up.