Two of Ukraine's Own Spy Agencies Got Into a Gunfight in Kyiv
On the morning of 3 September 2026, officers from two of Ukraine's own intelligence agencies shot at each other in central Kyiv. The agencies are the SBU, which handles domestic security, and the HUR, which handles military intelligence. Several people were injured. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the incident "disgraceful" (The Guardian).
The fight seemed to start because the SBU had recently arrested a Russian citizen named Kaplunov. Kaplunov had been fighting for Ukraine, but under the supervision of the HUR (The Guardian; The Independent). The SBU said that someone working for Russia's FSB intelligence service had contacted Kaplunov and tried to recruit him to assassinate Ukrainian military and defence figures. The SBU released a video of Kaplunov making these claims (The Guardian).
Kaplunov's lawyer said the video was recorded under pressure and was being used to "whitewash," or cover up, the shootout. Kaplunov has since been released from SBU custody. HUR personnel and Kaplunov's lawyers accused SBU officers of holding him illegally (The Guardian; The Independent).
Local media reported that the shots were fired while the SBU was searching an apartment connected to its investigation. Three HUR officers were injured, two of them seriously (The Guardian; Kyiv Independent). Separately, the Kyiv Post reported that HUR servicemen fired at SBU officers while the SBU was trying to foil an FSB operation (Kyiv Post).
The SBU said it had, together with the HUR, stopped a Russian-backed plot targeting a Russian opposition leader who had recently arrived in Ukraine (The Guardian). Exactly how a joint operation turned into an armed confrontation between two Ukrainian agencies remains contested.
Hours after the shootout, Zelenskyy dismissed Oleh Khramov, a senior SBU official in charge of protecting state secrets (The Guardian). The president said the shooting needed to be investigated by both the SBU and the HUR, and Ukraine's main investigative agency has opened an investigation. Zelenskyy said that shooting in Ukraine is permitted only at Russian occupiers and that the state would never regard any other shootout as acceptable (The Guardian).
The shootout happened while Kyiv was already under pressure from Russia. Russian drone strikes had hit Kyiv for a seventh consecutive day, injuring at least 13 people, according to reporting from 2 September (Kyiv Independent). In a separate incident on Thursday morning, a 71-year-old man was shot outside a medical clinic in Kyiv and remained in serious condition, with the Kyiv city prosecutor's office launching an attempted murder investigation (The Guardian).
The broader context here is tension between two agencies that are supposed to be on the same side. The SBU and HUR both work on counterintelligence and special operations, and their responsibilities overlap. Imagine two firefighters from different stations both showing up at the same house, each convinced they should be in charge. When a Russian national serving under one agency becomes the target of an investigation by the other, that overlap can turn dangerous. The competing accounts, with the SBU calling the arrest a disruption of an FSB recruitment effort and HUR plus Kaplunov's defence team calling it an illegal detention, point to a breakdown in coordination that escalated to gunfire on the streets of the capital.
The duelling accounts from the SBU and HUR also raise questions about the evidence being shared with the public. The SBU put out a video of Kaplunov confessing, but his lawyer said it was recorded under coercion and was meant to justify the shootout. That leaves a disputed record that the formal investigation will need to sort out. The fact that Kaplunov was released from SBU custody suggests the legal basis for holding him was, at minimum, fragile.
Zelenskyy's immediate dismissal of Khramov shows a desire for accountability at the senior level, though his department, which handles protecting state secrets, is not an obvious place where the operational failure occurred. The dismissal may reflect broader frustration with the SBU's internal controls, or it may target a specific lapse that has not yet been made public.
