The 2014 takeover of the SBU headquarters in Lugansk as an example of the operation of the Russian special services

Abstract

The author analyzes the seizure of the SBU headquarters in Lugansk in 2014 by pro-Russian demonstrators. The author presents welldocumented evidence that the Luhansk SBU was selected by the Russian secret services as a “trigger” of the uprising in the Donbas, due to the accumulation of a huge amount of ammunition, weapons and explosives, thanks to which the separatists could immediately start creating military structures after the attack. In the author’s opinion, the infiltration of the Ukrainian SBU and the Ministry of the Interior was facilitated by the existence of branched clientelist networks within them, enabling politicians hostile to the new prowestern government to steer state institutions in the name of the strategic interests of the Russian Federation.