SBU exposes intelligence network of Russia's General Staff in Mykolaiv

A representative of the SBU's counterintelligence department, Volodymyr Nastiuk, said this at a briefing on Thursday, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"Another result of the work was the exposure and termination of the illegal activity of an agent network of Russian military intelligence in Mykolaiv region. The operation was conducted under the procedural control of the main military prosecutor's office. In particular, the head of the network, a Ukrainian citizen born in 1961, captain 1st rank of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the reserve, who also has Russian citizenship, was arrested on December 20, 2018," Nastiuk said.

According to him, it was established that the former Ukrainian serviceman had been recruited by a staff member of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in Sevastopol and he had repeatedly traveled to Russian-occupied Crimea to hold meetings with agents. According to the task of the Russian intelligence service, a former senior naval officer and his accomplices carried out the collection and transmission of restricted information on the functioning of military units at the Ochakiv garrison in Mykolaiv region, as well as their involvement in conducting the Joint Forces Operation in eastern Ukraine.

"The last task of the Russian curators was to create and further manage on the territory of the Ochakiv district an underground organization to conduct various types of measures to destabilize the situation in the region," Nastiuk said.

He added that documentary evidence of the agent's crime had been collected at the place of his residence. The issue concerns means of communication with Russian intelligence officers, computer equipment, electronic information storage devices, on which the collected information was processed, as well as documentary materials, including those with restricted access.