State Bureau of Investigation (Державне бюро розслідувань or ДБР; Derzhavne biuro rozsliduvan or DBR) The law enforcement agency established to investigate special types of serious crimes, including those other than corruption committed by high-level officials. Its mandate is distinct from the National Police of Ukraine, the Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG), and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). The DBR is empowered to investigate crimes committed by organized crime groups, cases of torture and inhumane treatment by law enforcement bodies, crimes committed by high government officials, misdemeanors perpetrated by NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) officials, military crimes, and matters related to the confiscation of property. For such subjects it thus took over the OPG’s investigative function, limiting the latter to prosecution and supervision. The agency came into being in 2015 under pressure from the European Union and the United States of America as a remedy for perceived inadequacies in investigations within the Ukrainian judicial system at that time.
The DBR was slow in gestation. Created under a law passed in November 2015, it began to function only in 2018. The delay was the result of backroom political maneuvers. Insofar as this agency was coming under the purview of the President of Ukraine, it was understood as potentially capable of being used to persecute his political opponents while protecting allies in addition to improving criminal investigations. Introduced into an already crowded arena of law enforcement bodies where conflict and competition prevailed, its politicization was inevitable while effectiveness became questionable.
President Petro Poroshenko appointed Roman Truba as the DBR’s inaugural director on 22 November 2015. Under his leadership the agency produced meager results. In 2018, it initiated 229 cases of political corruption none of which went to court. In 2019 only 276 of 3,056 such cases, or 9 percent, proceeded to court. The agency’s head acknowledged its failure to cope with the challenges and tasks of the day.
When Volodymyr Zelensky took over the presidency in 2019, he began to take charge of the agency first by initiating the process of installing his own person as director. A case against the current incumbent, Truba, was opened by the Office of the Prosecutor General accusing him of failing to comply with a court order, misuse of office, and negligence. Truba’s undoing was a set of recorded conversations including with the president’s chief of staff about closing a criminal case against the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and investigating ex-president Petro Poroshenko.
Zelensky then introduced a bill, passed by the Supreme Council of Ukraine in December 2019, reorganizing the DBR. Signed by Zelensky, this amendment placed the agency under the president of Ukraine, dismissed the current director, and gave Zelensky the right to appoint the director despite a Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruling that this was unconstitutional. A search for Truba’s replacement took two years; on 31 December 2021, following a controversial selection process, the administration’s candidate, Oleksii Sukhanov, was appointed by President Zelensky as director of the DBR for a five-year term.
As soon as Volodymyr Zelensky assumed office the DBR began calling in for questioning, opening investigations into the affairs of, leveling charges against, and otherwise intimidating members of the previous administration or those not favorably disposed to the new one. These politically-motivated punitive measures were thus applied to ex-President Petro Poroshenko, his ex-prosecutor-general Yurii Lutsenko, ex-speaker of the Supreme Council of Ukrainer Andrii Parubii, Zelensky’s ex-chief of staff Andrii Bohdan, NABU chief Artem Sytnyk, the head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, and former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov. Others included judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, several journalists, and heads of political parties other than Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party. It was all part of a pattern in which Zelensky, like his predecessor, freely used law enforcement bodies for vindictive political purposes contrary to the doctrine of separation of powers.
Following the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the DBR was mainly engaged in the investigation of cases typical of wartime—treachery and profiteering. These included crimes endangering national security such as treason; profiteering and fraud from government contracts; negligent performance of duty by military leaders in defending specific objectives and regions or in denying them to the enemy; schemes to facilitate avoidance of military service by providing false documentation; and inadequate action to prevent harm to service personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time the agency was as of 2025 still pursuing the case of national treason against Petro Poroshenko in connection with his government’s purchase of coal from the rebel-controlled Donetsk People’s Republic during his term of office as president of Ukraine. It was also pursuing charges against anti-corruption activist Vitalii Shabunin apparently for daring to criticize government actions. Apparently, prospects for the DBR, commonly referred to as Ukraine’s FBI, to become a truly independent law enforcement body, as would be typical of a rule-of-law country, were no more certain on its tenth anniversary than they had been at the agency’s founding.
Bohdan Harasymiw
[This article was written in 2025.]