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Security Service of Ukraine
The Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Sluzhba Bezpeky
Ukrayiny, or SBU as it's sometimes referred to in English) is Ukraine's
main government security agency.
The SBU is responsible for:
state security (including secret police tasks)
counterintelligence (including inside the Armed forces)
fighting terrorism, smuggling, illegal trading of restricted substances
(WMD material), etc.
personal security of the President, Verkhovna Rada, other high persons
and institutions (see Politics of Ukraine).
The SBU is a successor of the Ukrainian SSR Branch of the KGB, keeping
the majority of its 1990s personnel.
Since 1992, the agency has been competing in intelligence
functions with HUR (Ukrainian: Holovne Upravlinnya Rozvidky, English:
Central Intelligence Department), the military intelligence unit within
Ukraine's Defence Ministry. Despite that, current SBU Chief Ihor Smeshko
is a former HUR Chief and a career GRU technology espionage expert.
In 2004, the SBU's Intelligence Department was reorganized
into an independent agency called Sluzhba Zovnishnioyi Rozvidky or SZR
(English: External Intelligence Service). It will be responsible for all
kinds of intelligence as well as for external security. For now, the exact
functions of SZR, and respective responsibilities of HUR, are not regulated
yet.
Several years ago, the SBU subsumed the UDO (Ukrainian:
Upravlinnya Derzhavnoyi Okhorony, English: State Guard Department), the
personal protection agency for the highest level of statesmen, former
Ninth Directorate of Ukrainian KGB.
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