Ukrainian counterintelligence reported threats from Russia at all times, said Minister for Veterans Affairs Yulia Laputina.

"There was an attempt to secede Crimea. But then, when the blitzkrieg again failed, Russia began to use different, as they say now, hybrid methods. This is the destruction of the financial resources of Crimea, operations were carried out to withdraw, including, through fake advice notes, of all assets of Crimean enterprises in Russia. In addition, there was a general process in the post-Soviet space of criminalization of business, criminal connections with local authorities. Russia used this to penetrate there controlled, including criminals and fighters, to destabilize internal Crimean processes," Laputina said in an interview with Radio Liberty on Saturday, commenting on the situation in the 90s.

According to her, the Security Service then realized that this was a systemic operation of the Russian special services against Ukraine.

In this connection, an operational-investigative group was created in the SBU, which for a long time carried out measures to end actions against the sovereignty of Ukraine.

"During the times of all leaders, Ukrainian counterintelligence wrote analytical documents that were based on certain operational data and analytical information about threats. And one of them, and this is approximately 2008-2009, about what was happening in Crimea. And the first conclusion of our operational and analytical work was that there is a real threat of secession of Crimea. Unfortunately, it happened the way that there was a change of power to a pro-Russian course, and no one paid attention to it. And we even developed proposals on how to neutralize these actions of the Russian special services. A lot of things concerned not only physical influence, but influence on mentality," she added.

At the same time, Laputina complained that then her group was disbanded.

Laputina began her service in the ranks of the SBU in 1992. She worked in the anti-terrorist center of the SBU "Alpha." In 2010-2012, she worked as Deputy Head of the Special Operations Center "A" of SBU.

On December 18, 2020, she was appointed Minister of Veterans Affairs.