The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained two participants of the regional branch of the People’s Power movement in Chernivtsi region. These individuals were spying on the Ukrainian Defense Forces and attempting to disrupt mobilization efforts in the western part of the country.
This is according the SBU’s press center, Ukrinform reports.
According to case materials, these men covertly tracked the movement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces military trains and publicly urged conscripts to evade the draft.
The SBU operatives identified a 41-year-old local resident, a former member of the banned Communist Party of Ukraine, who initially caught the attention of the FSB in 2015. Following the full-scale invasion, he was formally recruited and instructed to establish his own intelligence network in Bukovyna.
The agent propagated Kremlin narratives, denied the legitimacy of Ukraine’s state authorities, and attempted to create alternative “local government bodies.” As directed by his Russian handlers, he encouraged local draft-age men to hide from military enlistment offices and spied on the movements of the Ukrainian Armed Forces convoys.
To execute these tasks, he enlisted the help of a 35-year-old unemployed local, who he claimed could be “protected” from conscription. The Security Service documented the criminal actions of both suspects in stages and detained them.
During searches, law enforcement found mobile phones containing evidence of their subversive activities.
Based on collected evidence, the SBU investigators charged the FSB agent with state treason committed under martial law (Part 2, Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and his accomplice with unauthorized distribution of information about the movement and location of Ukrainian Armed Forces (Part 3, Article 114-2). Both suspects remain in custody.
As previously reported by Ukrinform, the SBU counterintelligence dismantled an FSB spy network that had been gathering intelligence on the Ukrainian Defense Forces’ locations and strategically important facilities of Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways).
