Yesterday, on March 26, 2025 at 07:00, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) raided the house of Mykhailo Makaruk, the spokesman of InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community.

The search was presented as an “urgent investigative action,” and was performed without a court order. In doing so, the SBI violated Ukrainian law, because an emergency search is only permitted when it is necessary to save people’s lives and property or during a chase of a suspect, whereas Mykhailo is not a suspect and no charges have been brought against him. Thus, the actions of the SBI employees are criminally lawless and look like pressure ordered by third parties. Moreover, no charges were brought either before or during the search, and the entire search boiled down to Mykhailo’s personal computer equipment being taken away. It looks like the purpose of these actions was to steal the laptop from Mykhailo without a court order and without any legal grounds.

Over the past 24 hours, the community volunteers, a number of officials and the lawyer have been trying to make sense of the situation and get specific grounds and reasons from the SBI employees for their actions. As of 10:00 on March 27, 2025, we have not received any adequate explanation, therefore we are compelled to issue a public statement.

We have solid grounds to believe that the illegal actions of the SBI are directed by third parties to put pressure on the well-known activist and volunteer, who on March 21, 2025, on his personal Facebook page vocally criticized the SBI, whose employees have already tried to put pressure on him.

Considering the illegal nature of the actions of the SBI employees, failure to explain the reasons to seize the laptop, as well periodic reports of other instances of illegal pressure on activists, and periodic news about the uncovering of Russian assets in high positions in the security structures of Ukraine, we also have grounds to believe that this could be not only politically motivated persecution, but an act of sabotage on the orders from the Russian intelligence services. The Russians may be trying to impair the activities of InformNapalm through their agents of influence in Ukraine, especially given very successful recent operations to disrupt the supply of sanctioned military equipment to Russia carried out in cooperation with Ukrainian hacktivists.

Moreover, a similar situation with an attempt to block the activities of Ukrainian hacktivists has already occurred before. Thus, in 2020, security forces from Odesa sent a search group to Kyiv, which raided homes and seized computer equipment from several activists of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA). The UCA is known internationally for its very successful operations against Russia (e.g. the high-profile hack of the office of the Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov exclusively published on the InformNapalm website under the SurkovLeaks tag). Then the confiscation of computers from hacktivists led to years of legal proceedings on trumped-up charges against them. The case fell apart in court, and all the charges were dropped. However, time was lost in several years of pointless legal battles, which severely impaired the activities of the UCA. This became a priceless gift to the Russians from Odesa security forces.

InformNapalm has conducted hundreds of successful OSINT investigations and joint CYBINT operations in cooperation with various Ukrainian activist groups over the past 11 years. This lawless raid of the SBI looks like another attempt to impair our activities. For example, 4 days ago, InformNapalm volunteers published in 14 languages a new CYBINT investigation on the disruption of a scheme to supply sanctioned military equipment worth millions of euros to Russia via India. This was another slap in the face to the Russians. The illegal actions against Mykhailo Makaruk could be an element of revenge for our effective work. We suspect that the computer seized by the SBI may be compromised, and the information from it may be copied and transferred to the Russian intelligence services.

Therefore, we call on our professional readership, on Ukrainian and international media, politicians, officials, journalists, and volunteers who follow us to join in stopping the illegal activities of the SBI against Mykhailo Makaruk and the InformNapalm community. At the same time, we call on the state security authorities of Ukraine to pay special attention to this situation in order to prevent the fabrication of false evidence by the SBI, as well as the leakage of data from the seized computer.

We will promptly inform our readers about the situation through the InfromNapalm community website and on social media. Please note that for now Mykhailo Makaruk does not have access to his Facebook account or other social media, therefore we will conduct all public communication regarding the situation through feedback channels on official pages of the InformNapalm community.

The post Public statement by InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community on signs of illegal persecution and pressure on Mykhailo Makaruk by the employees of the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine appeared first on InformNapalm.org (English).