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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has removed senior officials from two of his own security agencies after their officers shot at each other in central Kyiv this week, wounding three in what he called a disgraceful situation.

Getting into it: This all started after the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic security and counterterrorism service, detained Stepan Kaplunov in late August. Kaplunov is deputy commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a unit of Russian nationals fighting for Ukraine that answers to the HUR, the military’s intelligence directorate. The SBU says he was working with Russia’s FSB on a plot to assassinate a Russian opposition figure who came to Ukraine for the Aug. 24 Independence Day holiday, and to kill Ukrainian military personnel for money. HUR and Kaplunov’s lawyers say he was taken without a warrant and held illegally for nine days.

The shooting came when SBU officers brought Kaplunov back to his apartment to search it. Soldiers from HUR’s Tymur special forces unit, who had been watching the residence since he disappeared, showed up. Words were exchanged, the two sides squared off, and then someone started shooting. Three HUR officers were wounded. According to the SBU, its officers came under armed attack and returned fire; the agency later said the clash “definitely shouldn’t have happened.”

Kaplunov has since been released without charges, and his account looks nothing like the SBU’s. He told New Voice of Ukraine that men who said they were police pulled him out of his house on Aug. 23. He was blindfolded, loaded into a black BMW, and moved between holding sites for the next nine days. He said he worked out who they were from the way they talked about themselves, and said they were trying to discredit the Tymur unit and Kyrylo Budanov, who ran HUR before taking over the Presidential Office. He also said the video confession the SBU released was made under duress.

Zelensky fired Oleh Khramov, head of the SBU’s department for the protection of state secrets, and announced the dismissal of two deputy chiefs across both services who he said bore responsibility. Two servicemen have been issued notices of suspicion. The State Bureau of Investigation and the Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal probe, the SBU and HUR are each running internal investigations, and Zelensky said an assessment of both agency heads would follow.

In a brief statement, Zelensky said, “Here in Ukraine, shooting is only permissible at Russian occupiers in defense of Ukraine. Our state will not perceive any other shootout as something that anyone is allowed to do.”