Two Russian FSB officers were detained by Ukrainian border guards in Kherson Oblast overnight on June 30, the Ukraine’s State Border Service Chief Viktor Nazarenko has reported on his Facebook page.
The incident happened on the shore of Perekopsk Bay, just north of Ukraine’s boundary with the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea. At 2.30 a.m. guards serving with the Kherson Border Detachment, together with Ukrainian army servicemen, arrested two individuals who were not carrying any documents. The detainees had landed on the Ukrainian coast from a boat that was also found with them, Nazarenko said.
“During the preliminary interrogation, the arrested persons were identified as military servicemen of the Russian Federation’s FSB Border Service,” Nazarenko said. “According to them, they were allegedly playing the role of border violators during exercises, and had taken the wrong route, lost their bearings, and thus found themselves on the Ukrainian mainland.”
The case is being investigated, he added.
Russia later made an official request for information from Ukraine about the detained men, the Ukraine’s state border service spokesperson Oleg Slobodan said at a briefing at noon on June 30.
“On the controlled boundary area in the country’s east, in Kherson Oblast, we received a request from the Russian side informing us that two of its border guards had gone missing during drills,” the official said. “They asked us if we knew anything about it.”
This is the second case of Russians being detained in Ukraine in the last week. On June 24 Ukrainian combat units belonging to the 93rd Mechanized Brigade intercepted a sabotage group of six soldiers near the occupied village of Zhelobok on the Luhansk Oblast.
Two of the soldiers were killed in combat, while one of surviving fighters was later identified as Viktor Ageev, 22, a serving first class private in the Russian army, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
Ageyev’s mother Svetlana, who later approached Russian media and the military looking for her lost son, has confirmed to the BBC’s Russian Service that he is a serving Russian soldier.
Ukraine’s Security Service is investigating Ageyev on suspicion that he may have committed acts of terrorism in Ukraine.
