A gunfight broke out in Kyiv on Tuesday between special forces units run by Ukraine’s intelligence and security agencies, with at least three officers reported wounded.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called the confrontation — involving the country’s military intelligence directorate, GUR, and the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU — an “absolutely shameful situation.”
“Here, in Ukraine, it is only possible to shoot at Russian occupiers to protect Ukraine. No other shootout will ever be perceived by our state as something that is permitted for anyone,” he said.
The violent clash in central Kyiv is one of the most dramatic and high-profile confrontations between friendly Ukrainian forces.
The SBU said in a statement on Wednesday that the gunfight occurred while it was investigating a possible operation by the Kremlin against a Russian dissident. SBU agents had been collecting and recording evidence as part of “urgent investigative actions,” it said.
“During a search at one of the addresses, a group of individuals carried out an armed attack on the SBU operational-investigative group,” the statement said.
According to the SBU, these individuals blocked its officers and their cars from proceeding, after which the security service called in its “Alpha” special forces unit to intervene.
“During the cessation of armed resistance, law enforcement officers used weapons,” the SBU wrote, adding in the statement that the people blocking its investigation were from a Ukrainian unit.
Several members of the opposing group were wounded in the process, it added.
Apartment raid central to shootout
Local media reported that the raid centered on Stepan Kaplunov, the deputy commander of a unit of Russian volunteers who fight for Ukraine under GUR’s Timur special forces paramilitary.
Kaplunov’s unit, the Russian Volunteer Corps, said on Tuesday that he had been “abducted by unknown individuals” and was appealing for information on his whereabouts.
He later emerged after the confrontation, telling Ukrainian media outlet Radio NV that he had been held for days by the SBU under accusation of contacting Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Kaplunov said he was brought to one of his apartments, where the SBU tried to conduct a search. The Russian volunteer said he heard sounds of a gunfight at the apartment, but did not see what happened as he was inside.
Video on social media appears to show moments of the confrontation between two groups of Ukrainian troops, who can be seen approaching each other aggressively. Gunshots can be heard as one group began raising their firearms and detaining members of the other.
GUR and the SBU did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s prosecutor general would investigate the incident “step by step.”
“There must be responsibility, including personnel decisions of the heads of the special services regarding the participants in what happened, and there must be internal investigations in both services,” he said.
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