Ukrainian secret services have admitted to assassinating Kremlin collaborators responsible for war crimes

In the interview, Maluk explained the operations carried out by secret agents, which are aimed at eliminating Ukrainian citizens cooperating with the Kremlin. “We won’t officially admit it. But I can provide some details,” said Maluk. Once specific intelligence is confirmed, the SBU will receive approval from civilian authorities to carry out the attack, he added.

Among the most famous cases is the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian pro-Kremlin war blogger originally from Ukraine. He died last year in an explosion in a St. Petersburg cafe. According to Maluk, he became the target of the attack because of his direct participation in the fighting in Ukraine and calls for the liquidation of Ukrainians.

The head of the Ukrainian secret service specified that the agents tricked the intermediary Daria Trepanova into handing the statuette with the explosive to Tatarsky. According to Maluk, the SBU is not proud of the killing of Tatarsky, but he deserved his death for torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Ilya Kyva, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, who spoke out against the independence of Ukraine and was on the run from the Kyiv authorities, also became a victim of the assassination. He was convicted of treason and cooperated with Russia’s FSB until an assailant shot him at close range.

The target of the failed attack was Ukrainian citizen Zakhar Prelepin, a high-ranking police official in the separatist Luhansk region of Ukraine. According to Maluk, he publicly called for the murder of Ukrainians. He was seriously injured in an explosion in his country house in Luhansk in 2022. However, several other police officers were killed in the blast.

Igor Kornet, a police officer in the Luhansk region cooperating with Russia, also survived the explosion.

Maluk added that the Ukrainian secret services attempted to assassinate Russian pro-Kremlin political philosopher Alexander Dugin. However, he unexpectedly switched cars with his daughter and the explosion killed her.