President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree dismissing Illia Vitiuk from the post of head of the Department of Counterintelligence Protection of State Interests in Information Security of the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Decree No. 257/2024 was published on the website of the head of the Ukrainian state.

In April, Slidstvo.info journalists published material about the property of the family of the head of the SBU cybersecurity department Vitiuk. Two days after the publication, the journalists made another publication, in which they reported that, in their opinion, territorial recruitment centre employees tried to serve a subpoena on the author of this material.

The SBU press service said they were checking information from Slidstvo.info about the incident together with the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Subsequently, the SBU informed the agency that Head of the Service Vasyl Maliuk, suspended the head of the Department of Counterintelligence Protection of State Interests in Information Security, Illia Vitiuk, from performing his official duties while checking the circumstances made public by Slidstvo.info journalists.

The Prosecutor's General Office announced the commencement of criminal proceedings regarding the incident with the journalist of the publication Slidstvo.info with the delivery of a summons to him – on the fact of possible abuse of official powers and obstruction of the professional activities of journalists by employees of the SBU and territorial recruitment centre with preliminary legal qualification of Part 1 of Article 364, part 3 Article 171 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The command of the Ground Forces said an official investigation into this fact is being carried out to establish all the circumstances of the incident. Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrsky also ordered the official inspection.

According to media reports, checks against Vitiuk began after an investigation by Slidstvo.info journalists, who learned that Vitiuk was filming from the Berkut special forces how protesters were shot on the Maidan in 2014.