During wars in democratic societies, quite absurd situations related to national security, defense and intelligence activities can often arise. On May 17, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine received draft law No. 7380 authored by M. Bezuglya, G. Tretyakova, V. Gevko and other deputies from the “Sluga Narodu”, Batkivshchyna and, oddly enough, the Opposition Platform for Life. In principle, the two first persons of authorship have already inspired a chill on the back, but the biggest "sensational" norms concerned military intelligence, counterintelligence and Mr. K. Budanov.
So, 1. In general, the creation of the Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence Service as a whole apparatus in wartime, the idea, so to speak, is anecdotally satirical, because this was not thought of even during the Second World War. Firstly, even if there are divisions in this department by hardware structural units, subordinating them to one person will create prerequisites for their inefficiency, since all of them will work and follow the orders of one leader who will not have good enough competence. Secondly, counterintelligence, even in the USSR during the Second World War, was not one service, but actually 3, so the efficiency was high. For example, the Main Directorate under the People's Commissariat of Defense (military intelligence) was subordinate to V. Abakumov, but the internal one was subordinate to S. Efimovich. What does it mean? It is more difficult for a military adversary to create his own network of agents among the highest authorities and to obtain secret information. When intelligence and counterintelligence are combined, the work of the enemy's agent network is reduced by 2 times, that is, it is 2 times easier to receive information, recruit people and adjust their plans than when they are only separately. Another example, in the United States there is foreign intelligence - the CIA and, in fact, the internal FBI. The Defense Intelligence Agency is a separate intelligence agency of the US Department of Defense. And each of them has counterintelligence departments that operate autonomously. And in our country, instead of reforming the SBU and intelligence, they purposefully do sabotage because of legal nihilism.
2. They want to make the fight against organized crime one of the tasks of counterintelligence. If a separate apparatus is pushed in here, this will generally cast doubt on the existence of certain law enforcement agencies. If you want to create an apparatus for combating crime with elements of counterintelligence activities, create a separate counterintelligence body (similar to the FBI), and do not mix everything so that later it is not clear who, where and what the competence of some officials is.
3. According to this bill, the SBU performs a coordinate function, in other words, it increases the staff and duplicates certain functions in counterintelligence, since they will immediately figure out that this is from the outside, but this is for military and internal work. But all this is guided from one center and one leader - just a brilliant solution that has only one positive consequence - additional jobs with zero efficiency. Since it is proposed to entrust this body again with the powers of intelligence activities in the military sphere, the spheres of defense, military construction, military-technical cooperation, cybersecurity and in the information sphere, and then how it will work in practice, moreover, duplicating certain provisions of the work of the Foreign Intelligence Service, it is impossible to specify even in theory.
4. The presented review provides for plans for military intelligence - the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense and the counterintelligence department. Budanova is the head of military intelligence. This is a separate issue, but the fact that a suspected criminal case will be revealed, and all counterintelligence apparatuses will indicate a decrease in the quality of work of the last unit, which will also affect the activities of the SBU as a whole. Thus, we have identified a hybrid body that will still have good “holes” for impregnation of the existing agent network, which will actually work in all units through the technical communications of the headquarters, middle level, intelligence units and counterintelligence data and communications.
5. The creation of a new body is still required
- requires funding, and in wartime, which is not entirely appropriate;
- may create new grounds for corruption risks;
- create legal conflicts in the judicial or technical departments, which will adversely affect the work.
Thus, the authors of the report decided in wartime to develop the SBU just for some responsible persons in the Office of the President and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. But as always supposed to ensure nihilism, nevertheless, a decision was made, if this decision was made with a bunch of flaws and still critical support for the activities of aggressive agents, when our security should be widespread, decentralized and work in the interests of national security.
Lagosha Dmytro
