"Even having a tough army, due to weak intelligence, we will remain only "junior partners" for powerful states,” says Vitalii Hersak, Lieutenant Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and former intelligence officer

As Vitalii Hersak, Lieutenant Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, former Advisor to the Head and former First Deputy Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, states in his blog on the Korrespondent website, today, there is a lot of talk about modernising the military and industrial sector, reforming the army according to NATO standards and Ukraine's new place in the future international security system, but not enough attention is paid to strengthening the national intelligence agencies.

According to V. Hersak, even having the toughest army on the continent, due to weak intelligence, we will not be able to adequately use our strategic potential and will always remain only "junior partners" for powerful states. With the end of the hot phase of the war with the Russian Federation, the need for a powerful Ukrainian intelligence service will not disappear, but will only grow. This may be our main competitive advantage and security specialisation in the coming decades. Instead, we still face a whole range of issues in this area.

Due to the lack of its own subjectivity and clear guidelines for geopolitical choices, for almost the entire period of Ukraine's modern history, there was no political demand for high-quality intelligence work and understanding of its role in the system of public administration. The Ukrainian authorities still lack a culture of cooperation between the government and the security and intelligence agencies. It should also be said frankly that "poisoners of presidential candidates", "fugitive traitors", "stealers of state secrets", "oligarchs' proteges", "career generals of enemy security and intelligence agencies", "citizens of the aggressor state", "destroyers of archives and equipment" – all of these are about former heads of our security agencies. Although the lustration of 2014-2015 allowed us to get rid of old dubious personnel, it did not prevent the arrival of new crooks and did not contribute to a real qualitative renewal. Due to unrealistic expectations and the inability to make a meaningful career, the professional level of managers has dropped significantly, the initiative has ceased, and professional abilities and skills have fallen by the wayside. As noted by the author, since the separation of the intelligence sector from the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) system, it has never been headed by a specialist from within.

For a long period of time, Ukrainian authorities could not understand the true functionality of the Foreign Intelligence Agency, its capabilities and importance for the state. That is why, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine has become synonymous with the word "intelligence" itself, which has increasingly taken over the functions of army special forces. The existing systemic problems are invisible while our security and intelligence agencies bravely perform military tasks (sabotage, drone attacks, precision-guided strikes, elimination of mid-level collaborators, cyber-attacks, etc.), but this is not the work they can and should be doing.

If we had a government demand for truly powerful intelligence, it would have long ago been at the level of the CIA, MI6 and MOSAD, would have become a real "nightmare" for the Russian military and political elite, and all those Yanukovychs and their associates would have already been doing their first 10 years of imprisonment at homeland or turned into granite gravestones in Moscow cemeteries.

The former intelligence officer believes that the big backstage battle around Russia is just beginning, so it is now imperative to change the attitude of the political class to the national intelligence institution and to master it as an effective tool for planning and implementing Ukraine's state policy.

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