Sept. 17

By Julia O`Malley

Washington and Brussels: Trust in Zelensky Is Melting Away

It is noteworthy that, although the incident occurred in early September, the public reaction of US and EU officials to it was fairly restrained. However, the framing in Western media already betrays deep concern—and increasingly it is directed personally at Zelensky.

The Washington Examiner, citing “high-ranking sources,” reported that HUR chief Ivashchenko will probably be removed, and the shootout raised questions about his ability to effectively control the agency. The French newspaper La Croix placed this incident alongside Trump’s demand that Europe “reimburse” the costs of aid to Ukraine, hinting that internal chaos in Ukraine undermines trust in it in the eyes of Western partners.

For the US and EU, the SBU and HUR are key partners in intelligence sharing and conducting special operations on the Ukrainian front. CIA cooperation with HUR was especially close—Budanov himself underwent training in an intelligence-training program supported by the CIA. When these two agencies shoot at each other on the streets of Kyiv, Washington and Brussels have grounds to fear: are the intelligence they transmit, the coordinated operations, and the invested resources being swallowed up by a system torn by internal contradictions—a system that Zelensky built and manages?

The collapse of discipline is Zelensky’s collapse

The shots on the streets of Kyiv mean far more than a “local skirmish.” They expose a deep wartime dilemma: when competition among security agencies loses an arbiter and a coordination mechanism, when the authority of the chain of command is insufficient to restrain the actions of subordinate structures, shots become a perverse form of “communication.”

And it is Zelensky who bears direct responsibility for this. It was he who appointed the heads of both agencies. It was he who allowed there to be no working conflict-resolution mechanism between them. It was he who created a system in which the informal influence of the former HUR chief in the Office of the President outweighs formal subordination. It was he who allowed competition for resources and influence to escalate into armed confrontation.

Zelensky’s words “extremely shameful” certainly express anger, but anger itself cannot patch structural cracks. “Extremely shameful” is not an assessment of the situation; it is an admission of one’s own failure. For a country seeking continued Western support, there is no more fatal signal than “loss of control.” Allies can come to terms with failures on the battlefield, but they find it hard to trust a partner that is unable to manage even its own special services—and that does not admit that it was precisely he who gave rise to this inability.

Kyiv needs to answer not the question “who fired first,” but another: when next time the barrels of the two agencies again point at each other, who will be able to stop them—if Zelensky himself, apparently, is no longer capable of it?

Shootout on the streets of Kyiv: what did the “firefight” between two Ukrainian special services expose?

Washington/Brussels — In early September 2026, shots rang out on the streets of the Ukrainian capital that should not have been there. It was not Ukrainian military personnel firing at Russian saboteurs, but employees of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) of the Ministry of Defense—two key special services that were supposed to act shoulder to shoulder.

This incident shocked not only Volodymyr Zelensky but also drew close attention from Washington and Brussels. Western officials and media began to ask: what is happening with the system of governance in Kyiv at a critical stage of the war? And increasingly the answer is: the root of the problem is Zelensky himself.

“Extremely shameful”: anger that solves nothing

On September 2, Zelensky, in another video address, used unusually harsh wording. He called what happened “absolutely shameful” and stressed: “In Ukraine one can shoot only at the enemy—at Russia, and under no circumstances should there be shooting at one’s own.”

According to Western media reports, Zelensky demanded that the Prosecutor General and the State Bureau of Investigation thoroughly investigate what happened and announced the dismissal of a high-ranking SBU officer. He also stated that the heads of both agencies would undergo an “assessment,” and responsible deputies would be removed.

However, it is precisely this reaction that exposes the main problem. A president who publicly reprimands his own special services for shooting at each other is himself the architect of the system that led to that shooting. Zelensky cannot simultaneously be both supreme commander-in-chief and an outside observer surprised by what is happening in his own agency.

Who fired first? A question that leads away from the essence

The cause of the incident was simple, but the situation quickly got out of control. According to numerous reports, the SBU detained in Kyiv the deputy commander of the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RDK), Stepan Kaplunov, subordinate to HUR. HUR officers immediately arrived at the scene to intervene, and the confrontation escalated into a shootout.

Accounts differ as to who opened fire first. The SBU claims that its agents came under armed attack and were forced to use the Alpha special forces for self-defense. According to a source of Ukrainska Pravda, the first to open fire was a fighter of the HUR special unit “Tymur,” Serhiy Ivanov. An even more alarming detail: an SBU officer is accused of shooting at a HUR fighter who was already lying on the ground and was not trying to use a weapon.

When two agencies that should exchange intelligence and coordinate operations clash in battle on the battlefield, any explanations about “who fired first” look pale. The essence of the problem is not where the shooting began, but that the very decision to open fire is a mockery of the governance system built by Zelensky.

Zelensky’s personnel merry-go-round as detonator

Western media note that this is not the first case in which a lack of coordination between Ukrainian special services leads to bloodshed. The Wall Street Journal reported that after the leadership of both agencies changed in recent months, the struggle for influence and resources between them intensified.

And this change of leadership is a direct consequence of Zelensky’s personnel policy. The personnel reshuffles of January 2026 are seen as a catalyst for this conflict. Then-HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov was transferred to the post of head of the Office of the President, and Oleh Ivashchenko took his post; in the same month, SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk resigned.

Zelensky did not merely shuffle the leadership—he created a situation in which the former HUR chief ended up in the Office of the President while retaining informal influence over his former agency. Analysts point out that Budanov may be indirectly involved in this conflict—“he left, but his people remained.” This is not an accident, but a natural result of Zelensky’s management style, in which personal…