Zelenskyy wants to replace Ukraine’s top spy after security failures

Ivan Bakanov was tapped to revamp the controversial Security Service of Ukraine. But after a string of failures and the loss of Kherson, he’s fallen out of favour with the Ukrainian president.

Zelenskyy is looking to replace Bakanov, who now runs Ukraine’s spy agency, with someone more suitable to serve as the wartime chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), according to four officials close to the president and a Western diplomat who has advised Kyiv on reforms needed to revamp the SBU.

Some said the old friends rarely speak these days, save for government business. Ensuring a smooth transition may be tricky with the war still raging, with one official telling POLITICO that Zelenskyy is worried about the optics of sacking someone from his inner circle. For now, much of the SBU’s daily operations are being run from the presidential office and people are still in the good graces of Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

Bakanov is a lanky 47-year-old who’s been at Zelenskyy’s side since the latter rose from a scrawny comedian in the industrial, south-central city of Kryvyi Rih to a muscular war-hardened leader famous well beyond Ukraine’s borders. Bakanov’s appointment in 2019 was criticized by opposition parties who said someone with his background was unfit to lead the top intelligence-gathering agency. But as one of the president’s most trusted confidants and business partners, there were little opponents could do to stop the move.

The officials and the Western diplomat all said the concern is greater than just Bakanov — it’s also about the decisions of several senior agency personnel in the first hours and days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that may have cost the country precious territory, including the strategic city of Kherson.