Sept. 5—When they arrive in Kiev tomorrow as planned, U.S. emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will step into a city that is not only on edge after ten days of unprecedentedly heavy Russian bombing of weapons depots and military-related infrastructure, but is in the grip of political clashes, some of them violent. The country is also bankrupt. Acting president Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded Aug. 23 for speedier release of 27 billion euros from the EU to pay military salaries and other war expenses, and additional billions to plug other budget holes.
On Friday afternoon, September 3, a single drone made a precision strike on the office of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Oleksandr Poklad in the SBU building in downtown Kiev. Zelensky promptly blamed Russia and ordered the SBU to retaliate in “mirror” fashion.
There was no evidence offered for the “Russian strike” story: no Russian claim, and no Russian Geran drones observed over Kiev at that time. Ukrainian émigré observers and some Ukrainian military bloggers assess that the drone was launched from within Ukraine, while the question of who did it remains open. Two days earlier, a street shootout in Kiev between officers of Poklad’s SBU and operatives of Ukrainian military intelligence, the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), had left one HUR man dead and two wounded. Did the HUR take revenge? Did the sinister Poklad, nicknamed “The Strangler,” drone his own office to “boost his rating” ahead of a parliamentary vote to confirm him in the SBU job? The answer is unknown. Poklad is a long-standing foe of former HUR head Kyrylo Budanov, whose appointment as head of the Office of the President early this year served to curtail Budanov’s power; and Poklad is also an ally of former head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak, ousted in November 2025 amidst a corruption probe.
