Mission: Impossible? Ukraine's New President Ventures To Reform Powerful State Spy Agency
KYIV -- When Ukraine's domestic security service revealed last year that it had faked the death of a dissident Russian journalist to expose a team of hit men allegedly hired by Moscow to destabilize the country by assassinating high-profile figures in Kyiv, it expected to take victory lap.
Instead, the stunt sparked widespread criticism and turned into a public-relations nightmare --- one of many in the past 28 years that have tarnished the reputation of the Security Service of Ukraine.
A year later, fresh off huge election victories that brought him and his fledgling Servant of the People party to power, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy -- a former comedian who has vowed to end endemic corruption and implement sweeping reforms – may have a chance to do what none of his predecessors was able to do: revamp the agency and restore its credibility.
How successful the 41-year-old Zelenskiy and his young team of reformers are in cleaning up the agency -- arguably the country's most powerful institution -- will be a litmus test of his administration's resolve to bring Ukraine more into line with Western democracies.
On the other hand, failure to reform the security service, critics say, could hobble wider efforts to curb corruption and economic crime, as the agency's activities have much to do with Ukraine's efforts to bolster the rule of law, and its checkered reputation deters foreign investors from bringing business to a country where the security service has enabled economic crime.
"Now there is a real opportunity to reform [the security service]," William Taylor, the current charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and a former ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009, told RFE/RL in a recent interview.