Former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Maj-Genl Valeriy Shaytanov has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for treason and attempted terrorist act in the interests of Russia, the Office of the Prosecutor-General has said on Telegram.
According to the report, the court found Shaytanov, the former first deputy head of the SBU's Special Operations Centre A, guilty of treason, completed attempted terrorist act, and illegal handling of firearms, ammunition or explosives (Article 111(1), Article 15(2), Article 15(5), Article 27(2), Article 258(2), Article 263(1) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
Shaytanov was sentenced to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property. It was proved in court that he had collected information that constituted a state secret and passed it on to representatives of Russia. Also, on the instructions of Russia's special services, the convict searched for persons among former SBU servicemen to commit a terrorist attack.
Shaytanov's goal was to kill a major of the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, who had been heading the Dzhokhar Dudayev International Peacekeeping Battalion since February 2015 during the war in eastern Ukraine. Law-enforcement officers managed to prevent the murder planned by Russia's special services.
The pre-trial investigation was conducted by the SBU. The criminal proceedings against an officer of the FSB's Counterintelligence Operations Department, who recruited the convict, are currently being considered in absentia in court.
In April 2014, Shaytanov, acting as part of the Alpha unit, held talks with the head of the Vostok terrorist group, Alexander Khodakovsky. In August 2015, he was awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, III class. Later that year, he led a group that detained the deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration and head of the UKROP party, Hennadiy Korban, in Dnipro.