Zelensky says 2 Ukrainian security officials have been expelled for being traitors

• The Ukrainian president said two SBU officials had been sacked and stripped of their titles.
• Volodymyr Zelensky called them “traitors” and “heroes”.
• It was a rare moment of internal conflict in the Ukrainian military leadership since the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has fired two top Ukrainian security officials he accused of being “traitors”.

at Late night address On Thursday evening, Zelensky said that the head of the Main Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Andrei Olehovich Naumov, and the head of the Kherson State Security Unit, Serhiy Oleksandrovich Krivoruchko, had been removed from their positions and stripped of their titles. .

He described the officials as “anti-heroes” and said, “Now I don’t have time to deal with all the traitors. But gradually they will all be punished.”

“These soldiers of high-ranking officers who have not decided where their homeland is, who violate the oath of military loyalty of the Ukrainian people in connection with the protection of our state, its freedom and independence, will inevitably be deprived of the highest military ranks,” he said. He said, “Random generals don’t belong here!”

Zelensky did not describe the specific alleged crimes that prompted him to dismiss those responsible.

The CIA is Ukraine’s main domestic security agency, with counterintelligence among its main responsibilities.

It represents a rare moment of discord within Ukraine’s security forces, whose cohesion and effectiveness so far have been in contrast to low morale, faulty intelligence, and the faltering progress of the Russian military.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has placed two of his intelligence chiefs under house arrest and He launched a search for Western animals in his local intelligence agencyFSB.

According to a statement on the SBU website last JanuaryNaumov was the target of an assassination plot by former CIA officers who saw him as an obstacle to their reinstatement.