Ukrainian security service’s cyber chief suspended following media investigation

The head of the cybersecurity department at Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), Illia Vitiuk, has been suspended from his official duties following a media investigation.

Vitiuk has been reassigned to serve in combat and already has left for the front on Tuesday, reported Ukraine’s Interfax news agency, citing a statement from SBU.

A different news organization — the Ukrainian investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info — published a story over the weekend on a property owned by Vitiuk’s family. Journalists claimed that Vitiuk wouldn’t be able to afford it with his official salary.

According to the Slidstvo.Info report, Vitiuk’s wife bought an apartment in a premium residential complex in Kyiv and earns more than a million hryvnia a month (over $25,600) while staying on maternal leave, while his mother, who is a doctor, owns two apartments in Kyiv. In government documents, Vitiuk’s wife is listed as “private entrepreneur in the judicial industry,” the report said.

Two days after the publication, Slidstvo.info said that an employee of the SBU appeared to have given instructions to representatives of the Ukrainian military enlistment office to draft the journalist behind the investigation into the armed services, in retaliation.

An employee of the Security Service of Ukraine could have given instructions to representatives of the military registration and enlistment office to serve a draft summons to a Slidstvo.Infо journalist. In such a way, the special services wanted to punish the investigator who… pic.twitter.com/8RIeobikiU

— Slidstvo (@Slidstvo_info) April 6, 2024

According to Slidstvo.Info, employees from the enlistment office who approached the journalist last week in a Kyiv shopping center accused him of evading military service. They were allegedly accompanied by an official from Vitiuk's department at the SBU.

The SBU told Interfax that it is trying to verify the journalists' revelations, and it thanked the Ukrainian media “for their joint work on the information front against Russian aggression.”

The spokesperson for the SBU declined to comment on the case when contacted by Recorded Future News.

Vitiuk is a well-known figure in Ukrainian cybersecurity. He frequently takes the stage at international conferences and gives interviews to major foreign media outlets. He was the first government official to provide insight into the cyberattack on Ukraine’s largest telecom operator, Kyivstar, carried out by Russian hackers earlier last year.

Vitiiuk is not the first Ukrainian cyber official suspected of financial abuse. In November, two high-ranking cybersecurity officials in Ukraine were dismissed amid an investigation into suspected embezzlement of state funds. They are suspected of involvement in a software procurement scheme in which they allegedly embezzled $1.72 million between 2020 and 2022.