MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has had a special directorate specializing in assassinations of people undesirable to the Kiev regime since 2015, SBU ex-Director Valentin Nalivaychenko said in an interview for The Economist.

"We reluctantly came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate people," he said.

According to Nalivaychenko, the Ukrainian leadership concluded that it would not be enough to imprison people considered collaborators by Kiev. Nalivaychenko headed the SBU in 2006-2010 and later in 2014-2015.

The article says that SBU’s Fifth Directorate, which carries out operations of this kind, was established in 2015. According to the report, this department was involved in the assassination of first DPR Head Alexander Zakharchenko, and commanders of ‘Sparta’ and ‘Somali’ battalions, Arsen Pavlov and Mikhail Tolstykh.

According to the report, Ukrainian Armed Forces’ special operation units carry out similar missions. For example, the special forces were behind the July 11, 2022 assassination of Yevgeny Yunakov, head of the Russian administration of Veliky Burluk in the Kharkov Region, The Economist says, underscoring that the most controversial operations are being sanctions by the President of Ukraine.

On August 29, a source in the law enforcement told TASS that people, charged with murder of Zakharchenko, are also being accused of murder of militia commander Arsen Pavlov, known by his call sign ‘Motorola.’ According to the source, there are four defendants, charged, depending on each defendant’s role, with terror attack, assistance in terrorist activity, participation in a terrorist group and espionage.