An FSB agent group that was hunting for air defence and spying on officials of the regional military administration was neutralised in Kherson.
This was reported by the SBU and the Prosecutor General's Office.
As a result of a special operation, three members of the Russian cell were detained in the city, who acted separately from each other but were connected to a single curator from Russia.
The curator turned out to be Russian Alexander Kostin, the occupying First Deputy Minister of Information Policy in the temporarily occupied left bank of Kherson Region.
In addition to acting as the Kremlin's ‘mouthpiece’, the agents tried to fulfil the FSB's task of creating agent networks in the regional centre. For this purpose, Kostin engaged two of his subordinates from the occupation mini-information policy as residents (heads) of the agent network. They remotely recruited three residents of Kherson. One of them worked for the aggressor during the occupation of the city, and after the liberation of the community, he laid low.
At the direction of the residents of the agent group, the defendants reconnoitered the locations of the Defence Forces' base and movement in the regional centre. The intelligence was needed by the ruscists to prepare missile and drone strikes on the locations of Ukrainian defenders.
Among the Russia's priority targets were the firing positions of mobile air defence fire groups, as well as the bases of the Security Service, National Police and Prosecutor's Office.
Russian agents also spied on officials of the regional military administration. The FSB planned to use the information obtained to intimidate representatives of the UMA through personal threats of physical violence.
The defendants planned to attract the maximum number of "like-minded people" from the right-bank part of the Region.
To do this, they created a Telegram channel that functioned allegedly on behalf of the pro-Russian underground in the regional centre. The administrators of the hostile Internet resource called on potential participants to leak the coordinates of the Defence Forces and personal information about Ukrainian defenders.
During the searches, the SBU seized mobile phones and computer equipment with evidence of criminal actions. SBU investigators have now served them suspicion notices under two articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine:
- p. 2 of Article 111 (high treason committed under martial law);
- p. 2 of Article 114-2 (unauthorised dissemination of information on the movement, relocation or deployment of the Armed Forces committed under martial law).
The offenders are in custody. They face life imprisonment with confiscation of property.
Kostin's criminal actions were classified in absentia under Part 3 of Article 110 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine), and his two FSB accomplices were served in absentia with a notice of suspicion of high treason committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy.