A Ukrainian officer has been arrested, accusing of passing on to Moscow critical intelligence used to target Kyiv’s personnel in the occupied part of southern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said in a statement it had detained an unnamed lieutenant colonel who had commanded a special operations forces unit and acted as a “mole” for Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU. Newsweek has emailed the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
There have been a growing number of espionage cases in the war. The mole had been recruited before the start of the war before being “activated” in spring 2024, according to the statement, next to a still image of a man being held in handcuffs with two Ukrainian officers.
“The suspect was recruited by Russian military intelligence through his acquaintances in Russia, with whom he kept in touch,” the statement said, according to a translation.
The man was focused on getting intelligence about Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance raids behind the front line in the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimean directions.
The mole used his position to get information about planned Ukrainian movements, their weapons and targets, which Russian forces could use to eliminate Ukrainian special forces on the front line, the statement said.
The agent also gave information to Moscow about other Ukrainian units before being caught in a counterintelligence investigation of the SBU and the assistance of the Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
The alleged mole’s communication equipment, computer equipment, cellphone and data storage devices were seized. He has been charged with high treason and faces life imprisonment if convicted.
Last month, Ukraine’s security service said it had arrested a man for allegedly spying for Russia while impersonating a United Nations volunteer on the front lines.
The SBU said that the 34-year-old was working for Russia’s main intelligence agency, the FSB, where he pretended to be a volunteer for the U.N. World Food Program in Russian-occupied Donetsk. There, he had spied on Ukrainian locations toward the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in the region.
On Thursday, Russian man Nikita Zhuravel went on trial in the southwestern city of Volgograd on charges of high treason for a video he filmed of military equipment and aircraft that he allegedly sent to Ukrainian security services. He could also face a life sentence if convicted.
Rights activists say Zhuravel is a political prisoner who was beaten while in custody, The Associated Press reported.
