There was a shootout today on the streets of Kiev between Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR) and its Security Service (SBU). Much confusion remains, but the simple version is: Take a mix of neo-Nazis, massive corruption, and security fiefdoms, and then watch what happens as the Kiev regime nears an end and the arrangement begins to collapse inwards.
In brief, yesterday Denis Kapustin’s neo-Nazi “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RVC) posted on Telegram that its deputy commander for combat operations, Stepan Kaplunov, had been “abducted by unknown individuals in the courtyard of his home.” Kaplunov had apparently been in Kiev for the Aug. 24 Independence Day celebrations and was still there. Though Russia’s FSB is being blamed for kidnapping Kaplunov, apparently it was the SBU itself, run by the ruthless Okeksandr Poklad, that had detained him.
The RVC are white nationalists who want to break up Russia so that each racial group has its own area. They use the symbols of the anti-Bolshevik Russian Liberation Army, largely composed of Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity who collaborated with Nazi Germany. Their 2023 official manifesto called “Homo ethnicus” explained that they are fighting alongside Ukraine against Putin’s Russia. The operation had been launched by the HUR in 2022.
Today, the SBU said that, jointly with the HUR, they had stopped a ‘Russian FSB’ plot against Kaplunov. (The HUR made a similar statement but deleted it shortly afterwards.) A standoff between the two Ukrainian groups occurred on Shumskoho Street. The SBU claimed that they had come under armed attack while conducting investigative actions; however, early reports are that only the HUR personnel were injured. Ukrainska Pravda reported that three HUR service members were injured in the shootout: “One was shot in the leg and had an artery severed, and he was bleeding out. He is in very serious condition in a medical facility. The second is also in serious condition in hospital. The third is more lightly wounded.”
The former head of the HUR, Kyrylo Budanov, now Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, told Ukrainska Pravda: “The State Bureau of Investigation will now deal with the situation. It is important to ensure a thorough and impartial investigation, but no one has the right to abduct servicemen with impunity, open fire in the streets of our cities, or issue or carry out criminal orders.” Budanov was pointing at Poklad’s SBU.
However, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) officers were attacked by “one of the units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine” (assumedly, the HUR) while conducting an investigation into the alleged plot. It posted on Telegram: “During the investigative actions in the proceedings regarding the terrorist act of the FSB of the Russian Federation, an armed attack occurred on SBU officers. During the cessation of armed resistance, law enforcement officers used weapons.”
Should one be surprised if, tomorrow, the Prosecutor General’s Office and Budanov’s Presidential Office open fire on each other?
