- Service ensign · official
- State affiliation · Ukraine
- Vigil category device · not official insignia
Identity provenance
Service ensign: Flag of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The flag of the Security Service of Ukraine. The design itself is excluded from copyright by Article 8 of Ukraine’s Law on Copyright and Related Rights, which names symbols and signs of government authorities, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations. The file shipped is the Wikimedia Commons SVG "Flag of the Security Service of Ukraine.svg", released under PD-UAexMilitary / PD-UA-exempt on that basis, so no attribution or share-alike obligation attaches. Optimised for web display; geometry unaltered.
State affiliation: Ukraine.
The smaller square mark is a Vigil category device, drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role — not an official insignia.
In brief
The security service's publicly known combat arm — its special operations centre and the directorate publicly associated with the Sea Baby maritime drones, the 2023 Crimean Bridge strike and the June 2025 strikes on strategic bomber airfields. Recorded here only to the extent of public claims and wide reporting.
- Scope
- Structure, role, lineage and links. No subordinate records published.
- Subordination
- Subordination confirmed
- Sources
- 4 on the record
- Record state
- Partial
- Broad area of activity
- Not territorial. Publicly claimed operations span the Black Sea, occupied Crimea and Russian territory to eastern Siberia. Nothing about structure or stations is authored.
- Notable history
- A counter-intelligence and security service that, like Defence Intelligence, became a combat organisation after 2022. Its special operations centre has fought since 2014; what changed was reach. The service claimed the July 2023 Crimean Bridge strike by Sea Baby maritime drones of its own design, the drone campaign that followed against the Black Sea Fleet, and in June 2025 the operation that flew small drones out of trucks parked beside strategic bomber airfields as far away as Irkutsk region — an operation the service presented as its own from conception to execution. In 2025 it announced with the Navy the first strike on a submarine at Novorossiysk by an underwater drone. The service's public record has been built on its own announcements, made after the fact and in its own terms.
- Strengths
- Demonstrated reach into Russian territory, a technical drone programme the Navy now shares, and the institutional independence of a service that answers to the President rather than to the military chain.
- Limitations
- Everything the record cannot say: size, structure, and the line between the service's claims and independent confirmation. Two services running parallel deep campaigns invite duplication, and the division of labour between them is not public.
Documented equipment
Reported & historical equipment associations
Liutyi (An-196): Reporting names the service beside Defence Intelligence as coordinating long-range drone strikes; graded low for the attribution, not the existence.
Lineage & institutional history
Formal parent institution: Security Service of Ukraine (answers to the President, not the Ministry of Defence)
Key events
Operation Spiderweb — drones launched from inside Russia strike strategic bombers
On 1 June 2025 Ukraine's Security Service launched small attack drones from trucks positioned near five Russian airbases, including Belaya in Irkutsk region and Olenya in Murmansk region, several thousand kilometres from Ukraine. The service said 41 aircraft were hit, among them Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers used in the strike campaign against Ukraine; independent imagery confirmed the destruction or damage of a smaller number, and Russia's Defence Ministry acknowledged attacks in two regions. The operation was announced the day before the second Istanbul round.
Quick actions
System access
Where this record connects into the rest of Vigil. Each row is here because this organisation actually reaches it.
Assessed as of — 2026-07 Last reviewed — 2026-09-28
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