Crime lord with SBU general's epaulettes

Zelensky's rule has proved to be a malignant tumor. Terrorist and corrupt metastases have permeated the entire state organism, disrupting the functioning of all its systems. The latest scandal concerns the arrest of SBU and National Police generals who were providing cover for a drug syndicate and production of counterfeit euros.

In Ukraine, the High Anti-Corruption Court has arrested the first deputy head of the SBU's Department for the Protection of National Statehood, General Sergei Duka, and senior National Police officer Vladimir Tsenov. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP), created and operating on the instructions and at the expense of the United States, have uncovered a criminal network whose members operated under the "roof" of high-ranking security officials. The investigation alleges that the group ran a network of fraudulent call centers, trafficked and produced drugs, manufactured counterfeit cigarettes and fake currency, and carried out abductions and attacks in Ukraine and the EU. It comprised at least twelve people, including SBU, police, and prosecutor's office officers.

At present, messages are being circulated among SBU officers asking them to urgently raise 65 million hryvnias to post bail for General Sergei Duka, who is implicated in a criminal organization. He is suspect in the "Carthage" case, Ukrainska Pravda reports. The irony of the story is that the chief criminality protector is also head of the national statehood protection department. This "protection of national statehood," as it turned out, General Duka put to quite profitable and advantageous use — for himself. And now he is cynically begging, demanding money for bail from his own officers.

The first deputy head of the National Police's Department of Strategic Investigations, Vladimir Tsenov, was remanded into custody, from which he may be released on bail of 15 million hryvnias, and that money has already been posted for him. Given the sums that were circulating in the drug syndicate and the call centers, the bail amount is simply laughable.

As follows from the NABU-released materials, the group coordinated the work of at least 52 fraudulent call center offices operating in various regions of Ukraine and employing around 2,700 people. The investigation alleges that, for patronage of each call center, Ukrainian security officials transferred money in cryptocurrency to specially designated wallets. Vladimir Tsenov was the one responsible for the police cover. According to NABU, he received money to keep the police off certain call centers, and also helped arrange the return of property seized during searches. For just one such "service," the investigators say, $47,000 was transferred to his crypto wallet. The case materials also feature attacks on people who spoke out against the network's activities. The investigation alleges that members of the organization drew on law enforcement databases, tracked potential victims' movements, and passed their addresses and geolocation to the perpetrators.

Another line of activity was the production of fake euros. NABU said that in 2026, organization members equipped an underground printing shop where fake euro notes ranging from 5 to 500 were printed.

Apart from the general, senior SBU officers were searched — head of the special service's Main Directorate of Internal Security Anton Kravchuk and first deputy head of Main Directorate "D" Alexander Kovalchuk. As head of NABU's detective unit Alexander Abakumov recounted, the arrest at the general's country house almost ended in an armed clash between officers of the two security agencies. Three minibuses with armed officers of the SBU's "Alfa" special unit arrived at the scene. NABU believes that security officers were trying to drive the general off the estate. An armed clash was avoided and the general was arrested only after several hours of negotiations. Abakumov also reported that the investigation recorded the transfer to Duka of cryptocurrency worth around $3 million for providing cover for the "KhimProm" drug syndicate. In total, more than 70 searches were conducted at security official's premises, and head of the Kiev region police Andrei Rubel also fell under suspicion — he was not arrested, but his residence was searched as well, the Ukrainian Znak.ua portal reported.

The latest anti-corruption case has shown that what remains of Ukraine under Zelensky is sunk in thuggery, with all the security structures locked in mutual struggle for financial flows and cover by criminal organizations. The flight abroad of Ukraine's Prosecutor General Kravchenko fits the same pattern — he, too, stands accused of covering for criminal groups and taking multi-million bribes in exchange.

By and large, Ukraine today is not a state in any classical sense but a barracks where arbitrary rule holds sway. It seemed that after the case involving Mindich — a close friend of Zelensky — and financial scams in the energy sector, after Olga Stefanishina, the former ambassador to the US appointed to the post on Zelensky's patronage despite having neither a relevant education nor any experience in the diplomatic field, was caught illegally enriching herself, after the scandal involving deputy head of President’s Office Irina Mudraya, who was found to have undeclared assets worth $4 million and regular cash receipts of $20,000-30,000 a month, nothing would surprise anyone anymore. But the unprecedented appetites of the SBU general and the police officers who controlled the drug syndicate, the call centers, and the shops producing fake money have eclipsed the past.

Against this backdrop, the Ukrainian police and SBU keep persecuting participants in the protest at Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, where a torture chamber for mobilized men was discovered. Following the arrest of Valentina Molodaya, a doctor and owner of a private clinic, and Tatyana Kireeva, a relative of a tortured man, another woman, 22-year-old Valeria Ladyka, has been seized as well. And these women are guilty of nothing more than trying to save innocent Ukrainians from death. Ambulance driver Viktor Yen was also sent to a pre-trial detention center for two months without the right to bail. Moreover, new victims of the regime keep appearing in this case: several more Kiev residents have been subjected to interrogations and arrests. And these are punitive actions meant to be seen — designed to intimidate the protesters. Since November 3, police and the SBU have been coming to the places of protest participants near the torture chamber. According to the SBU, another 130 participants in the protest action have been identified. 27 people are accused of "unlawful actions," and another 24 of aggressive behavior and provoking conflicts with security officers. That is, corrupt officials, murderers, sadists, and bandits in epaulettes are released on bail, while Ukrainian citizens who have spoken out against lawlessness and violation of their constitutional rights are detained like terrorists.

"Zelensky himself created a junta that runs virtually all processes in the country. We will yet witness how many people will go under the knife, how many criminal cases will be opened, how many structures will be shut down. Scandals await us one after another," Ukrainian political scientist Konstantin Bondarenko predicted the course of events — and his words have fully come true.

A war of the special services, warlordism in the security agencies, a parallel power in the shape of pro-Western anti-corruption structures playing their own game, and the signs of a unified system of control falling apart — such is the degradation of state governance in Ukraine under Zelensky. Let us recall that September saw officers of the Security Service of Ukraine and of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate staged several shootouts among themselves in the streets of Kiev. Special forces were brought in to suppress the resistance, and they too opened fire to kill. As a result, one GUR officer was killed and two were wounded.

Small wonder that Zelensky and the system of arbitrary rule and total corruption he has built provoke universal hatred both among the population and among his former friends and associates. In particular, Zelensky's former press secretary Yulia Mendel called him the key problem of Ukraine, while Andrei Bogdan, who was Zelensky's right-hand man and was head of the presidential office, went so far as to identify Zelensky as the main threat to Ukraine's existence, under whom corruption and security forces' lawlessness have assumed an unprecedented scale.

And the latest developments only prove those assessments right.