Call sign Batyi. Volodymyr Lyapkin, former Security Service of Ukraine general, killed fighting for Russia

Major General Volodymyr Lyapkin headed the SBU’s operational documentation department. According to Oleg Tsarev, his responsibilities included “the invisible side of the SBU’s work: wiretapping, surveillance and information gathering.”

He was promoted to major general in 2013. At the time, Tsarev claims, he took a personal role in the dispersal of the Maidan protests in Kyiv, leading from the front rather than “hiding behind subordinates” during “direct physical confrontations” with demonstrators.

In February 2014, immediately after the protesters’ victory, Lyapkin was dismissed from the SBU along with other senior officers. He fled to Russia and settled in annexed Crimea, where in 2021 he founded and chaired an organisation called the “I Guarantee Quality” Association.

After the start of the full-scale invasion and the occupation of Kherson, Lyapkin was appointed deputy head of the so-called State Security Service of the Kherson region, a Russian-backed body based in the building of the Kherson Regional Commercial Court. The service was founded by Lyapkin’s former boss at the SBU, Oleksandr Yakimenko, who had headed the Ukrainian agency from January 2013 to February 2014 before also fleeing to Russia.

In 2025, the SBU formally notified Lyapkin of collaboration charges. According to investigators, as deputy head and acting head of the Kherson “State Security Service”, he had carried out “filtration activities” and repression against the civilian population. The SBU believes that after the body was formally dissolved, the FSB directorate for the occupied Kherson region became its legal successor. Tsarev claims Lyapkin’s general rank “de facto remained”, saying he was regarded as “a major general in the Russian special services by everyone.” Mediazona found no public decrees confirming any promotion to major general in the FSB or any other Russian security agency.

Lyapkin died on March 17, 2026. Tsarev’s post states that he served in the “Bars-33” unit under the call sign “Batyi” (Batu Khan’s name in Russian spelling) The unit, also known as the Vasily Margelov Volunteer Battalion, was established in 2023 on the orders of Volodymyr Saldo, the Russian-installed occupation governor of the Kherson region.

On April 4, 2026, a funeral was held in Nakhabino, in the Moscow region, for 59-year-old Colonel Malov. The ribbons on his coffin read “From the commander and personnel of Bars-33.” Like Lyapkin, Malov died on March 17.

An obituary posted on VK social network noted that both men were graduates of the Tashkent Higher Combined Arms Command School, class of 1989. In Tsarev’s post, a shell bearing Lyapkin’s call sign “Batyi” lies next to one inscribed “Zarya”, likely Malov's call sign.