Such dismissals during an all-out war both look sensational and invite the question “Why?” Presidential decrees No. 499 and 500 suspending the two top officials were published on the presidential office’s website on Sunday evening. Venediktova was removed from her office under Article 11, Part 2, of the law On the Legal Framework of Martial Law. This article had never been invoked before, since the Rada adopted the legislation only in May. It empowers the president, while martial law is in effect, ‘to remove from office an official whose appointment and dismissal fall within the presidential powers and assign another person to perform these duties during the relevant period.”

The authoritative Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda pointed out immediately: by law, prosecutor general and Security Service (SBU) chief are appointed by the Verkhovna Rada, even though the president is entitled to nominate candidates for these positions. The Constitution does not empower the president to suspend or discharge prosecutor general or SBU chief. And yet Zelensky’s decree No. 501 tasked Venediktova’s deputy, Oleksiy Symonenko, with performing duties as prosecutor general.

Ivan Bakanov left his office in line with the following formula cited in the presidential decree: “According to Article 47 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Disciplinary Regulation, endorsed by Ukrainian law No. 551-XIV of March 24, 1999, Ivan Hennadiyovych Bakanov shall be discharged from performing his duties as Chief of the Ukrainian Security Service.”

Article 47 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Disciplinary Regulation stipulates that a service member may be discharged from performing their official duties for “failure to perform (inappropriate performance of) official duties that resulted in the loss of life or other grave consequences or created a threat of such consequences.” Pundits assumed that Vasyl Malyuk, Bakanov’s first deputy, would be appointed acting SBU chief.

Volodymyr Zelensky opted not to wait too long for commentators and rumors to quench the public’s thirst for knowledge and commented on the dismissals himself in his regular televised address late on Sunday. 

He stressed that as many as 651 criminal proceedings on counts of treason and collaborationism have been launched, and “more than 60 prosecution and SBU officials stayed in the occupied territories and are working against Ukraine.”

As a matter of fact, there are also quite a lot of people who broke their oath and started collaborating with the invaders among the Ukrainian National Police and Interior Ministry officers, which is easy to conclude even if you only have access to open sources. For instance, this is evident from some events in Svatove in the Luhansk region, of which Novaya Gazeta. Europe reported recently. However, no one has leveled similar charges against Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky.

Easier made than kept

“Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will believe you.” Ukrainian Facebook users have lately started quoting Lee Kuan Yew’s well-known saying with reference to the relationship between Zelensky and Bakanov.

To be fair, it was President Petro Poroshenko who made the harsh Singaporean reformer’s quote particularly popular in Ukrainian politics back in the summer of 2014, when he wished good luck to the newly appointed prosecutor general. The fifth president, not to mention the questionable appointee, were later chided regularly for being reluctant to jail their friends for corruption. Zelensky, on the contrary, is remembered for something different, namely his scandalous remark “I don’t owe you anything!” That was how he, then a presidential candidate, responded to a reporter’s question regarding the future of his business in Russia. And now it appears that Volodymyr Zelensky has finally gotten on the path proposed by Lee Kuan Yew, even though he testily dismissed suspicions about his plans to fire Bakanov as recently as in late June: “If I wished to fire him, I would do that!”

Ivan Hennadiyovych Bakanov is not just a friend of Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky, but he is his childhood friend. They lived in the same apartment block, went to the same school, and later graduated from the same college, the Kryvyi Rih Vadym Hetman Institute of Economics, Zelensky majoring in law and Bakanov in auditing. They both worked not by profession in Kvartal 95 Studio, a TV entertainment project. Bakanov later became the first head of the newly-established Servant of the People party, led his friend’s presidential campaign in 2019, and after Zelensky won the election, Senior Lieutenant Bakanov was given one of the key national security jobs. This appointment was branded as nonsense by professional special service officers and many others, and yet Zelensky’s confidence in his friend prevailed.

Anyway, with the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its political leadership began questioning the SBU’s performance increasingly more often, even though not publicly. In late June, Politico cited several well-informed Ukrainian and Western officials as saying that Zelensky’s team members were “highly unsatisfied” with Bakanov’s job and were looking for a replacement. “We are not satisfied with his managerial, you know, [skills] because now you need … anti-crisis management skills like we don’t think that he has,” Politico quoted a senior Ukrainian official as saying on the condition of anonymity. This could have been dismissed as yet another fake story — after all, war implies fighting in all fronts, including the informational one — if not for some established facts.

In Kherson, Gen. Serhiy Kryvoruchko, chief of the local SBU office, had ordered that his subordinates evacuate from the city before it was taken by Russia, thus violating the president’s order. Ihor Sadokhin, chief of the local Antiterrorism Center, defected to the enemy — or to be more precise, he had always been there as an agent. In particular, he informed the Russian forces of the locations of Ukrainian mines and coordinated the flight path for Russian warplanes, of which head of the Kherson regional council Oleksandr Samoilenko had notified Kyiv before. Gen. Andriy Naumov, head of the SBU Internal Security Directorate, had fled Ukraine right before the war and was detained in Serbia only a few months later. Zelensky stripped Kryvoruchko and Naumov of their military ranks, but the problem persisted.

And besides, it was also rumored that nobody was able to find Bakanov anywhere in Ukraine during the first weeks of the war…

The SBU dispelled the rumors only in late June, when things got really hot. SBU official spokesman Artem Dekhtiarenko discouraged the public from believing fake news and falling for Russian informational psychological operations. “Bakanov has been at his workplace since day one of the full-scale invasion. He has also met with international partners who sought to provide help to Ukraine at the hardest moments. That is, he has performed his direct duties,” Dekhtiarenko said.

Among the SBU’s publicly known roaring successes was the capture in April of Viktor Medvedchuk, a fugitive parliamentarian from the Opposition Platform — For Life party, often referred to as Putin’s right-hand man in Ukraine. (Considering that the SBU was supposed to keep a sharp eye on him day and night, it is still hard to understand who had helped him escape house arrest in the first place). As for Oleh Kulinich, former chief of the SBU office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the State Bureau of Investigations detained him last Sunday, on July 16. The investigation and experts determined that Kulinich shared valuable intelligence concerning Ukraine, including military and state secrets, with Russian special services, and now he is being treated as a criminal suspect.

What is important is that Oleh Kulinich was removed from his office back in March, and the president appointed Oleksandr Vlasenko chief of the SBU office for Crimea. However, even having been dismissed, Kulinich still remained a member of the security services — and moreover, acted as an aide to SBU chief Ivan Bakanov.

Zelensky signed his decree right away. However, Bakanov’s removal from his office might be not the most serious thing that has happened in his life.

‘A party to proceedings’

Iryna Venediktova, now former prosecutor general, a doctor of law and a professor, is considered a top professional in the legal community. She specialized in constitutionalism, development of civil society, private and international law. Venediktova joined Zelensky’s team as an expert and advisor back in 2018 and later became one of the first public figures in his campaign staff. She was elected to the Rada as a member of the Servant of the People party. Several months later, she moved to the State Bureau of Investigations as its director. And then the parliament appointed her prosecutor general in the spring of 2020.

While introducing Venediktova, Zelensky stressed that it was the first time in Ukraine’s history that a woman was taking the post. Venediktova responded by saying, “I promise not to sell out cases. I promise not to put the brakes on them. I promise not to reinstate prosecutorial double dealers. I promise the prosecutors to restore a powerful governmental institution, so that they could feel independent, protected, and essential for the state.”

Some politicians viewed that appointment as “Anti-Maidan’s revanche,” arguing that, as prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova somehow managed to turn a key governmental body into “a tool for political reprisals and persecutions,” meaning mainly the criminal case opened against the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.

However, the opposition now accused President Zelensky of legal nihilism and insisted on Iryna Venediktova’s right not to leave office. Mykola Kniazhytsky, a journalist and a Verkhovna Rada deputy from the opposition European Solidarity party, said on the website of the Espresso TV channel: “Is Zelensky really referring to the legislation passed in May to amend the law On the Legal Framework of Martial Law? Wonderful. But no amendments have been made to the Constitution and other laws. And the Constitution stipulates that the president shall appoint prosecutor general with the parliament’s consent.”

“There is another problem. Prosecutor general is a party to proceedings. The law which the president has invoked is in conflict with the Law on the Prosecution System,” says parliamentarian Kniazhytsky. Hence, he concluded, the presidential decree on removing the prosecutor general from her office cannot engender any legal consequences per se. Until the parliament passes a relevant resolution, Venediktova shall remain in office, and her mandate remains valid, he said.

Some sources in the ruling elite interviewed by Ukrainska Pravda reporters cited Iryna Venediktova’s tense relations with the presidential office and its chief, Andriy Yermak, as the reason for her falling into disfavor. In particular, it has been rumored that the prosecutor general’s media activity has been frowned upon, as her appearances during the National TV Marathon have been virtually as frequent as the president’s. Another sin on her part is her decision to speed up the transfer of cases against Russian prisoners of war to courts, which, according to people involved in negotiations with the Russians, was fraught with Russia’s starting trials of Ukrainian captives and halting any prisoner swaps.

Deputies ready to roll

Whom has the president appointed to perform duties as prosecutor general and SBU chief in the meantime? Formally, it is no wonder that these are Venediktova’s and Bakanov’s first deputies. However, the media and civil society have some questions precisely for them now.

Several sources have independently identified Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko as a protégé of deputy presidential office chief Oleh Tatarov, an official who has been viewed (not unreasonably) as a Trojan horse in Zelensky’s inner circle. During Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, Oleh Tatarov, then deputy chief of the Interior Ministry’s Main Investigative Department, distinguished himself by persecuting activists and prominent public figures. He also assured the media and foreign ambassadors that the protesters at Maidan were shooting themselves. Following the Revolution of Dignity, Tatarov was sacked and had to slave away as a trial lawyer, defending chiefly his former Party of Regions fellows. He joined Zelensky’s office as a presumably efficient manager in August 2020. Since then, virtually all democratic forces inside Ukraine have kept demanding that Tatarov be removed from the presidential entourage, and Ukraine’s foreign partners have been speaking regularly about him, as well. And yet Tatarov is still there, due in no small part to Oleksiy Symonenko’s efforts...

It was precisely Symonenko who referred the scandalous case against Tatarov from the National Anticorruption Bureau to the SBU. And it was precisely Symonenko whom Ukrainska Pravda investigative reporters spotted at Oleh Tatarov’s birthday party last year — along with “a group of friends” also related to said investigation.

Now the top SBU seat has been taken over by Vasyl Malyuk, first deputy to Ivan Bakanov. Curiously enough, Malyuk was also among Tatarov’s friends attending his birthday party.

Ukrainska Pravda’s sources have also identified Malyuk as a person close to Andriy Yermak, chief of the presidential office, who is reputed to be if not the first then more than the second most powerful man in the country. In an investigative report titled “Military Neighborhood. Who is The Boss in Zelensky’s Entourage Now” published in early June, our colleagues, in particular, mentioned longstanding rivalry between Yermak and Bakanov for influencing the president.

By all appearances, friendship has failed to emerge victorious.

Late on Monday, July 18, the parliamentary opposition was happy to learn that, just as the Constitution requires, the president submitted his proposals to the Rada on dismissing Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and SBU chief Ivan Bakanov. As early as on Tuesday, the parliament granted both of the president’s proposals by a majority of votes.

The procedure appeared to be a pure formality fixed beforehand. Venediktova attended the parliamentary hearing, but no harsh criticism was leveled at her. Bakanov did not show up at all. At the same time, the SBU posted his address to compatriots and fellow service members on its official website, which strangely resembled an end-of-assignment report in a quiz format (i.e. “Who chaired the SBU when Putin’s crony was detained and declared a suspect?”) mixed with a string of hints addressed to the only reader (“The SBU is not a political institution, and its head is not a politician. We did real work rather than advertised ourselves”).

And yet “the only reader” followed through with his plans. President Zelensky signed decrees firing Bakanov’s deputy Volodymyr Horbenko and chiefs of the SBU offices in the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia (Trans-Carpathia), and Poltava regions.

Kyiv