Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) has thwarted an attempt by Belarusian intelligence to collect sensitive information about the country’s northern border defenses. The SBU’s counterintelligence unit uncovered the operation before any sensitive strategic data could be passed on.
According to the SBU, a 24-year-old unemployed man was detained in Ukraine’s northwest Volyn region while spying on Ukrainian military positions. Recruited by Belarus’s KGB, the individual had agreed to cooperate after seeking “easy money” through anonymous Telegram channels.
The KGB was the primary security and intelligence agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991, that was responsible for foreign espionage, domestic surveillance, and national security.
He was tasked to monitor checkpoints and fortified areas, as well as recording the movement of military trains on local tracks and transit stations of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s national railways.
According to the SBU, the agent covertly surveyed areas near the border, recorded fortifications, and marked their coordinates on Google Maps.
The SBU documented his actions, conducted a special operation, detaining the suspect at his residence. During the search, investigators seized a mobile phone containing an anonymous chatbot used to communicate with his Belarusian handler.
The agent has been notified of potential charges of high treason and is being held in custody where he faces possible life imprisonment with confiscation of property.
The operation was carried out by SBU officers in Volyn supervised by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Last week the SBU prevented a terrorist attack in central Kyiv on Wednesday evening, July 23, as reported by Kyiv Post. Law enforcement officers detained a woman who was attempting to plant two improvised explosive devices in one of the city’s coffee shops.
The explosive device, equivalent to 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) in TNT, which the SBU believed Russian intelligence services were planning to remotely detonate during rush hour to cause as many casualties as possible.
“SBU operatives uncovered the enemy’s plan and caught the suspect red-handed as she entered the café with IEDs hidden in her bag,” the SBU press service reported, adding, “According to the investigation, the attack was commissioned by Russia and carried out by a Kyiv resident who had been recruited by the occupiers to commit a terrorist act under a ‘false flag.’ The woman was convinced she was supposedly fulfilling an assignment from the SBU.”