‘He’s a bulldog’: the man behind the success of Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb

Vasyl Malyuk, who hailed giving Russia a ‘slap in the face’, has scored a series high-profile successes as head of SBU

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t was unsurprising to those who know Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), that his statement announcing the success of Operation Spiderweb had a certain physicality to it.

The audacious drone attacks on distant bases hosting Russia’s strategic bombers was “a serious slap in the face to Russia’s power”, said Malyuk, 42, a sometime boxer and weightlifter. “Our strikes will continue as long as Russia terrorises Ukrainians with missiles and Shahed drones.”

Shaven-headed and with the physique and bearing of a stereotypical nightclub bouncer, Malyuk has led the SBU since the former holder of the office Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was fired in 2022 for apparent incompetence. Malyuk had been his deputy.