The acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ivan Bakanov, has announced that his wife has Russian citizenship and that she is in line to get Ukrainian citizenship.
The statement has been published on the SBU’s Facebook page on June 12.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appointed Bakanov, a friend since childhood, as SBU’s first deputy chief on May 22. Although the SBU’s head Vasyl Grytsak resigned, the Ukrainian parliament didn’t have enough votes to dismiss him. Grytsak reportedly went on vacation on June 3, which is why Bakanov temporarily took over his duties.
According to Bakanov, he released a statement about his wife Oksana’s citizenship to counter those who might want to blackmail him.
Bakanov said that his wife is Ukrainian who grew up in Kryvyi Rih, a city of 614,000 people some 420 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. He says that she studied at a higher educational institution in Russia, where during the collapse of the Soviet Union she received Russian citizenship.
However, she has been living in Ukraine since 1998, hasn’t visited Russia since 2013 and has a pro-Ukrainian attitude, he says.
Many Ukrainians have stopped visiting Russia after the Kremlin invaded and annexed Crimea and unleashed a war in the eastern Donbas in 2014. The war has killed 13,000 people.
Bakanov said that Oksana has a permanent residence permit and that she is in the process of receiving Ukrainian citizenship.
“Obtaining citizenship for many years has been a corrupt feeder for some officials,” Bakanov’s statement reads.
Bakanov also said that despite his family’s ties to Russia, the special examination at the SBU did not reveal any restrictions on his appointment, as well as it did not reveal obstacles to granting him access to classified information.
This is yet another Ukrainian official that appears to have connections with Russia.
In 2018, journalists discovered that relatives of the first deputy head of Foreign Intelligence Service, Serhiy Semochko, have Russian passports and regularly visit Russian-occupied Crimea. The investigative journalists from the Bihus.info also revealed that Semochko’s family grew vastly rich during his time in office. Semochko denies any wrongdoing.
Former President Petro Poroshenko fired Semochko in April ahead of the presidential election runoff.
Bakanov was the head of Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign. Earlier he was the head lawyer of Zelenskiy’s production company Kvartal 95. Bakanov and Zelenskiy are childhood friends.
