The SSU Military Counterintelligence and the National Police, with the support of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, have exposed another agent of russian military intelligence (‘the GRU’) in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He turned out to be a 30-year-old soldier of a Ukrainian brigade fighting on Kharkiv direction, who had been recruited by the enemy.

According to the investigation, the perpetrator provided to the russians the locations of his unit and adjacent Defence Forces units, on which the occupiers were preparing a series of strikes.

The Security Service identified and documented the agent at an early stage of his intelligence gathering, and detained him. Action was taken to protect the locations of Ukrainian defenders that the mole had betrayed.

The man came to the GRU’s attention when he published pro-kremlin comments on Telegram. After recruitment, he travelled about the region in a service vehicle, marking the geolocations of the Defence Forces on Google Maps.

The enemy was most interested in the coordinates of reserve command posts, logistics depots, and Ukrainian artillery. The GRU also tried to find out the locations of air defence positions covering Ukrainian ground forces.

Returning to the military unit after conducting reconnaissance, the agent summarised the collected data for transmission to his handler, a serviceman of russia’s 316th reconnaissance centre.

After one such communication session, the mole went AWOL to lay low at his friend’s home in Zhytomyr region.

A smartphone with evidence of the crime was seized from the suspect during the search. Two combat grenades and almost 300 g of explosives, which he had taken when fleeing the military unit, were also found.

SSU investigators have notified the detainee of suspicion under two Articles of the CCU:

• 111.2 (high treason, committed under martial law);
• 263.1 (illegal handling of weapons and ammunition).

The suspect faces life imprisonment with confiscation of property.

The operation was carried out jointly with the SSU Office in Zhytomyr region under the procedural supervision of Zhytomyr Specialised Defence Prosecutor’s Office of the Central Region.