SBU THE TERRIBLE UKRAINIAN POLITICAL POLICE, ASSASSINATIONS AND TORTURE/ By Laurent Brayard

The security services of Ukraine… almost no French person has ever heard of them and our journalists in France are not ready to tell you what the SBU is. And yet! It is undoubtedly one of the worst, if not the worst criminal organisation in Europe and one of the most terrifying political police forces we have known for half a century. Its exploits could be on a par with the notorious STASI (GDR) or even the Securitate (Romania), which made so much noise. However, one day Europe and France will have to accept to see the face of death and blood that is the SBU. So much silence on the part of newspapers as famous as Le Monde, Libération or Le Figaro is in itself suspicious and even worse guilty, and I dare say: criminal.

There is no war in Donbass… only an anti-terrorist operation. Yes you read that right, it’s a law of the Rada of Ukraine that was passed back in 2014, there is no war in Eastern Ukraine… but terrorists who were seeking to destroy the country. According to this rhetoric, the SBU, which deals with counter-espionage, was deployed and very quickly committed numerous abuses, assassinations and various crimes. According to various sources, the SBU had nearly 30,000 agents and employees, and very quickly attacked anything Russian, anti-Maidan and which could hinder the march of the Coloured Revolution financed and organised by the USA, in the winter of 2013-2014. The young blogger Marina Russkaya (pseudonym to protect her family in Ukraine), a student of political science in the capital (2012-2015) told us at the time about her journey. Having started writing against the Maidan, she was soon in contact with other activists and soon followed by tens of thousands of people. It was during a morning in 2015 that she was called by an activist friend in Kiev: “you have to flee Marina, they are breaking down my door, they are coming to get you! Taking only her handbag, the young woman, then aged 24, fled Ukraine. Luckily, she was able to take a train to Russia and from there to the Donbass. That day, the SBU raid caught several dozen activists in its net. When asked about this, Marina said she had no news: “they were murdered, imprisoned, they will certainly be killed if they have survived in the Ukrainian prisons where they are languishing, the SBU will not let them live before fleeing”. This is one of the many testimonies we have collected from “these Donbass terrorists”. Worse still, there is even an official list published on the Internet containing thousands of names of people to be imprisoned or murdered, the Mirotvorets list (Christelle Néant and myself and other French people are on this list). Because far from finally dealing with counter-espionage, the SBU agents have become a political police force, and this police force has been torturing and murdering for 8 years.

Secret prisons and torture sites of the SBU… under American control? In 2016, I had the chance to interview in two sessions, 11 political prisoners exchanged by Ukraine (via the Red Cross), for Ukrainian soldiers. What they told me still haunts my memory and sometimes my nights. This is how I discovered the extent of political repression in Ukraine. The SBU can arrest without an arrest warrant anyone on the territory of Ukraine. These people are illegally interrogated and imprisoned. To make them talk and “destroy terrorism in Ukraine”, all means are good. These 11 people have all told me about sometimes horrific torture. One was imprisoned and tortured for 14 months in Zaporozhie. The trauma he suffered made it very difficult to interview him, as he was reliving the torture and shaking like a leaf, literally broken by the endless abuse he had suffered. Another had heart problems, following the use of “gégène” on him during long sessions. One woman was among the lot, she had had her nails pulled out, her teeth broken…. From her appearance I didn’t dare to believe that at the time she was my age (43), and she had to get out her identity papers to prove to me that she was not 65. The poor woman had been injected with drugs and substances for 20 days and it was difficult for me to hear all that she had seen and suffered. Two of the imprisoned men had been arrested and tortured by masked SBU agents, many of whom spoke only English… Yet everyone remembers the experience of Americans of torture in prisons like Guantanamo. I was so surprised by this fact at the time that we dwelt on this detail for a long time. In the end my investigation ended with enough information to point to at least four secret prisons in Ukraine, in Zaporozhie, Kharkov, Kiev and finally Kramatorsk. It is certain that in these prisons hundreds of people were murdered, one of the resistance fighters gave me a list of about fifteen names of people who were killed during his detention, as for the woman she told me about executions committed in her prison during the 20 days she spent there.

A long list of missing and murdered people will one day emerge from the post-war period in Ukraine. This is clearly my feeling and it is reinforced by the two interviews of Frenchmen, whose names I have to hide for their safety in France, who were also arrested by the SBU in Ukraine. These two men were denounced… one by his ex-wife in Dnepropetrovsk, the other by unknown people in Kiev (2016). Illegally arrested in the early hours of the morning in their flats, they were molested, locked up, one of them was beaten and had the fear of his life until his hasty departure from Ukraine. Both of them were “invited” to leave the country and never to return and if they did, to pay the price…

The French Embassy in Kiev, alerted at the time, did nothing to help them and hushed up the matter. It is because we were already supporting the Ukraine of murders and massacres. Among the other facts that have come to our attention, we must also mention the very large number of people who fled from Ukraine precisely to escape death and these repressions. I met a woman from Kharkov in Moscow in 2019 who had seen the door of her flat broken down by the SBU. The Ukrainian political police murdered her husband that day, in her flat and in front of her eyes, without any further trial. Why she was spared, she does not know, but after many adventures she managed to flee the country, taking her elderly mother with her. These are the stories that came to me and there are many others… the list of crimes committed by the SBU is, in my opinion, hallucinating. One day, our French journalists who kept silent will have to be held accountable. One day, our French politicians who supported this regime will also have to answer for it!

A Nuremberg of Ukraine? The question will necessarily arise and France will have to take its responsibilities to stop covering up this carnage and this police force that dishonors the Ukrainian people. If some of you have doubts, know that on 5 March 2022, the SBU assassinated Denis Kireev in the street. He was a diplomat and a member of the Ukrainian delegation that met their Russian counterparts in Gomel, Belarus. He was for peace, but according to Ukraine he was a traitor. Far from the normal actions of civilized countries in Europe, the SBU murdered him in the street, shot him like a rabbit, in the manner of the mafia… Is this what France supports? Is this what France stands for? Is this what the republican ideals of our country stand for? When will the French open their eyes? How many more deaths and massacres will it take, because as I write, in the rout of the Ukraine, the SBU is murdering. This Gestapo has indeed reached the wall and before paying the bill or taking refuge in a nice family in France, it kills endlessly and without any remorse.

Article by Laurent Brayard for Donbass Insider

READ MORE: Ukraine’s Kill List and What Western Media Ignores About Donetsk Civilians w/Eva Bartlett