Ukraine's SBU responds to former army chief Zaluzhnyi's claims it tried to search his office in 2022
Dozens of Security Service of Ukraine officers tried to search Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s Kyiv office in mid-September 2022, an attempt he stopped, the former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander said in an interview with the Associated Press. The SBU later described the episode as a misunderstanding linked to a separate organized crime investigation.
Zaluzhnyi said he returned to his office after a tense meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when the officers arrived hours later without stating what they were seeking.
He prevented them from handling documents or computers. At the time, more than a dozen British officers were present in his headquarters.
In their presence, Zaluzhnyi called then-presidential office head Andriy Yermak and warned sharply: “I will repel this attack because I know how to fight.”
He then contacted then-SBU head Vasyl Maliuk, who said he knew nothing about any raid and promised to look into it.
Zaluzhnyi later learned the SBU had sought a search warrant from a Kyiv district court two days earlier for the same address, citing a strip club allegedly run by a criminal organization.
The club had closed at that location before the full-scale invasion. Zaluzhnyi called the warrant a pretext, saying the SBU could not have mistakenly identified Ukraine’s main military command center.
The SBU later responded that investigative actions were underway in a separate organized crime case involving multiple addresses.
"At that time, the SBU was conducting investigative activities as part of another criminal proceeding aimed at combating organized crime at a large number of addresses. One of the addresses that appeared in the criminal proceeding was the location of one of Valerii Zaluzhnyi's secret backup command posts. In fact, no searches or investigative actions were carried out by the SBU at this address. In addition, [then-head of the SBU] Vasyl Maliuk and Valerii Zaluzhnyi communicated this immediately and personally, and the situation was clarified," the SBU stated.