FSB claims Ukrainian SBU agent ran US-targeted neo-Nazi Telegram network

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on 27 June 2026, 18:41 UTC, that it had identified a serving officer of Ukraine's SBU security service as the curator of a network of neo-Nazi Telegram channels that allegedly called for terrorist attacks on United States territory. The claim, carried by the Russian-aligned Telegram channel Two Majors, names the alleged officer as Kirill Makarenko and frames him as an active SBU agent coordinating a US-facing propaganda-and-incitation pipeline.

The allegation is unverified. No independent confirmation has been published, and the underlying FSB materials have not been made publicly available. Moscow's intelligence services have a documented record of releasing politically charged claims about Ukrainian operations that later fail to hold up, including previous assertions about Western involvement in strikes on Russian territory and about cross-border sabotage. Read against that record, the FSB statement is best understood as a strategic information move rather than a confirmed operational fact.

What the FSB actually claims

According to the Two Majors summary, the FSB alleges that Kirill Makarenko — described as an SBU officer and the "Ukrainian curator" of a network of neo-Nazi Telegram channels — used those channels to call for terrorist attacks inside the United States. The framing positions Kyiv not only as a combatant in a regional war but as a state actor allegedly sponsoring incitement against a third country. The channels themselves, the FSB says, were part of a coordinated structure rather than loose ideological fora.

The Russian-language messaging ecosystem has spent four years normalising the equation of Ukrainian state institutions with far-right networks. Kyiv's Azov movement, originally a volunteer battalion and later folded into the National Guard, has been repeatedly cited by Moscow — and by some Western observers — as evidence of a broader neo-Nazi current inside the Ukrainian security forces. Independent reporting has shown the picture is more complicated: Azov's ideological roots are real, but the bulk of the SBU and Ukraine's regular armed forces are not shaped by that movement, and the Ukrainian state has actively moved against extreme-right paramilitary formations since 2014.

Why the claim lands where it does

The US targeting is the operational payload of the allegation. The FSB has spent much of the war attempting to drive a wedge between Kyiv and Washington, emphasising that American and European support for Ukraine is not just geopolitical alignment but alleged sponsorship of extremist violence in Western cities. A claim that an SBU officer runs a US-facing incitement network is engineered to make that wedge easier to open, particularly with US audiences already primed by domestic polarisation and fatigue with foreign aid.

The Telegram layer matters. Two Majors, the channel relaying the FSB line, is a Russian milblogger feed with a track record of publishing close-to-the-FSB framing on operations, casualties and Ukrainian internal politics. Telegram remains the most permissive information environment on either side of the war, and channels operating in the Russian information orbit have become the first stop for claims that would struggle to clear editorial gatekeepers at Russian state wire services. The platform is also where the alleged network itself reportedly lived, which gives Moscow a built-in plausible-deniability envelope: the channels can be presented as evidence of an extremist ecosystem even if their provenance is contested.

What the pattern looks like

Russia has used intelligence allegations as a strategic tool throughout the invasion. The Skripal poisoning in 2018 was followed by attempts to seed alternative explanations through state-adjacent media. The 2022 Bucha killings produced a parallel Russian information track presenting the evidence as staged. The Crocus City Hall attack in March 2024 produced claims of Ukrainian involvement that US and Western intelligence services explicitly rejected, with the Islamic State branch operating in Afghanistan emerging as the more substantiated line. In each case, the structure is the same: a serious allegation, sourced to Russian intelligence, amplified through a permissive media layer, with the burden of disproof pushed onto Western and Ukrainian audiences.

That pattern does not, on its own, prove this particular claim false. Intelligence agencies do, sometimes, catch the other side in operations that look embarrassing. It does mean that the claim has to clear a higher bar than a press release from a government with no record of impartiality on the underlying conflict would normally require.

What we do not yet know

The FSB has not, as of the time of writing, published the alleged Telegram channels, channel metadata, the alleged communications linking Makarenko to the SBU, or any corroborating intercept. There is no public SBU response recorded in the materials available to this publication, no US Department of Justice or FBI statement, and no independent verification from a third-state intelligence service. The Two Majors post is the only external outlet we have identified carrying the allegation.

What this publication can confirm is narrow: a Russian-aligned Telegram channel reported an FSB allegation, on 27 June 2026 at 18:41 UTC, that an officer of Ukraine's SBU named Kirill Makarenko ran a network of neo-Nazi Telegram channels calling for attacks on US soil. What it cannot confirm is the underlying allegation itself. The channel's framing, the structure of the claim, and the absence of corroborating material all suggest this is the opening move of an information operation rather than a verified intelligence disclosure. Readers should treat it as such until — and unless — primary documents or independent reporting emerge.

The strategic logic is legible even when the facts are not. Moscow is attempting to reframe the war from a story about a victim state defending itself against invasion into a story about a sponsor of extremism in the West. Whether that frame gains traction will depend less on the underlying facts than on whether it lands inside an American conversation already looking for reasons to disengage.

Desk note: Monexus treats Russian intelligence allegations about the SBU as claim material, not as confirmed reporting. Where Russian-aligned Telegram channels are the sole conduit for a claim — as is the case here — we name the channel, note its alignment, and decline to repeat the allegation as established fact. The Ukraine–Russia conflict compass holds: Ukraine is the invaded party, and Russian state-adjacent sources do not become the frame.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/two_majors/