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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
While the news feed tallies who won the shootout between security services, a different deadline is running out for the defense forces. 20 September ends the simplified return period for those who left their unit without authorization, and from then on the report joins the same pool of 373 thousand proceedings as the case about that shootout. Both are handled by the same agency, whose work was just assessed by the institutional audit of the Accounting Chamber.
2 September in Kyiv armed personnel from the Defense Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense and the SBU found themselves facing each other. There was a shootout in a residential neighborhood, with injuries. Weapons were unloaded to begin investigative actions, and only the State Bureau of Investigation could carry them out. The feed read this as a war between special services. A third, civilian agency—because it has the authority and the credibility to do so—came to investigate the dispute between the two armed structures. Read more in the exclusive column for 24 Channel.
Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the bureau’s jurisdiction covers everyone who received weapons from the state—from a private to an agency head. Exceptions: the article on disclosure of information of a military nature and cases of the NABU.
Everything that constitutes law and order in the defense forces ends up in the same hands: unauthorized abandonment of a unit, loss and theft of weapons, torture, crimes by law enforcement officers of any agency.
Two hundred cases per person
Compared with 2024 year, in 2025 and 2026 the number of the bureau’s criminal proceedings, including those related to war crimes, rose from 155 thousand to 373 thousand. The maximum authorized number of staff over the same period increased from 1600 to 1900. That’s about two hundred proceedings per employee, including those who never handle cases. The caseload is higher for actual investigators. Such a gap is not closed by diligence.
Law and order in the military are not just convictions. The bureau compiled data on unauthorized departures into a separate system and opened a path back through it.
According to State Bureau of Investigation Director Oleksiy Sukhachov, over 2025 year nearly 10 thousand servicemembers contacted the bureau wanting to return to the ranks, and this year such inquiries have already reached 7,5 thousand.
Whether a company gets reinforced depends on the speed of the investigator’s procedural actions. How many investigators, experts, and funds the bureau has is not just an internal comfort issue, but also affects frontline staffing.
Bottleneck — expertise
The bureau lacks its own expert institution, although one is provided for in its organizational structure. All examinations go to other institutions—Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the SBU—into a general queue. From the beginning of 2024 year to the end of April 2026 year, such examinations totaled more than 18 thousand, and 4325 exceeded the statutory limit of 90 days.
This is where years sometimes appear between an event in the trench and a verdict in the courtroom. Witnesses remain on positions, the scene’s circumstances disappear within days, and an investigation that drags on for years neither punishes nor absolves anyone.
Cases about weapons move the same way: an assault rifle missing from a depot or a round sold from a trunk are proven by ballistics—that same general expertise. This year the bureau charged three servicemembers who were preparing an arsenal and more than a ton of explosives for sale. While the examination is ongoing, the weapons remain in circulation.
The fund for covert investigative actions was financed during the audit period on average at 59%, with a drop to 38% in 2025 year. The bureau has no direct access to the police subsystem Custody Records, without which the mechanism to prevent torture in custody is incomplete. And in none of the seven territorial directorates have heads of internal control units been appointed, and the reason is not a personnel shortage: by law they are appointed by the same selection commission that chooses the director, and that commission ceased activity after the competition in 2021 year.
For the fifth year the internal control vertical in the agency that investigates crimes by security forces remains incomplete.
There is nowhere to redistribute cases
The bureau really has become the investigator of everything, and military cases have displaced specialized ones. Some specialists say this should be fixed by redistributing jurisdiction, not by adding resources, and they are right.
No one designed the agency created to investigate high-ranking officials and law enforcement officers for hundreds of thousands of military proceedings.
The problem is there is nowhere to redistribute them yet. A separate agency for military investigations, the Military Law Enforcement Service, was foreseen by the reform concept from the start. The law was adopted in principle in June 2024 year, and it still has not reached a second reading.
The same goes for other changes: bill No. 5 305 with most of the bureau’s necessary amendments was registered in March 2021 year, and it also has not been adopted.
Not a blank sheet
The second stage of the SBI reform is recorded in the Roadmap on the Rule of Law, adopted by the government in May 2025 year as part of the first negotiation cluster. The commitments require relying on the best practices of EU countries, not on another idea of a politicized restart.
This stage began 10 September, and it did not start with a bill but with an audit conclusion. The report was presented inside the bureau to the justice minister, the head of the relevant Verkhovna Rada committee with several committee members, representatives of the Cabinet, diplomats from European countries, the Council of Europe and the EU Advisory Mission. The discussion about the content of the future law began there, not after its registration.
The Accounting Chamber carried out similar organizational audits regarding the BEB and ARMA, and in both cases the recommendations formed the basis for reform decisions for those agencies. A comprehensive bill that will harmonize procedures and remove legal contradictions should grow out of this report.
The conclusion itself is positive: the bureau’s institutional support is generally formed and makes it possible to perform the tasks defined by law, and the discrepancies identified by auditors are directly linked to the fact that the reform launched six years ago has still not been completed. The document has limits: it assesses the conditions in which the agency operates and does not evaluate the quality of specific investigations.
Political discussion around the reform sometimes narrows to one question: who will head the agency. The first stage already implemented a competition with international experts, KPIs for employees and an annual polygraph prescribed by law for everyone without exception. Trust in the bureau over five years has grown from 17 to 52%.
A scenario in which an agency with 373 thousands of proceedings is stopped for a year for the sake of a restart will not strengthen law and order in the military; it will switch it off.
Only one side has deadlines
By 20 September, reports under the simplified program are submitted by those whose SZZ was recorded no later than 12 June inclusive. After that day the right to choose a unit yourself disappears, and return goes through reserve battalions and court procedures. In other words, into the same pool of 373 thousand, to an investigator without an expert institution and to an examination that in one in four cases exceeds 90 days.
The servicemember was given a date. No one gave the state a date: neither for the bureau’s own expert institution, nor for access to Custody Records, nor for heads of internal control in seven directorates, nor for funding the law already provided for, nor for the bill that has been awaiting a second reading for five years.
The return mechanism works as long as there is an investigator on the other end who manages to process the report, and a bureau that manages to get to where shots are already being fired. The state set a date for the person with a weapon. It did not set a date for itself.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Тисячі злочинів силовиків та військових нікому розслідувати: чому ДБР не працює, як треба". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Channel 24.
