Zelensky Furious After Shootout Between Ukraine's Own Spy Agencies
A gunfight broke out in central Kyiv between the SBU security service and GUR military intelligence — reportedly leaving three GUR officers injured — after the SBU arrested a leader of an anti-Kremlin Russian unit fighting for Ukraine. President Zelensky called it “absolutely shameful”: “Here in Ukraine, shooting is only permissible at Russian occupiers.” Meanwhile Russian drones hit the capital for a seventh straight night, wounding eleven, and left 350,000 homes in Odesa region without power.
Wars are lost in rear areas as often as at the front, and armed services turning weapons on each other in the capital’s streets — over custody of a Russian defector unit, no less — is the kind of institutional fracture Moscow’s planners count on. Mr Zelensky’s fury was performative in the useful sense: prosecutors called in, a senior SBU official dismissed within a day, the message delivered that wartime unity outranks agency turf. The timing is unkind — the SBU is the instrument of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign and can least afford a credibility wound now. Beneath it, the grind continues: a seventh night of drones, Odesa’s grid failing, and Rubio conceding Patriot interceptors are “the number one defence need on the planet”. Watch whether the inquiry stays disciplinary or turns political.