SBU arrests suspected Russian 'mole', accuses him of revealing sensitive information on Belarusian border

Ukraine's State Security Service (SBU) said on June 24 that it had arrested a “mole” spying for Russia who was transmitting information about Ukrainian troop positions and defenses on the border with Belarus .

“On the instructions of the occupiers (the Russian army), the 'mole' established the location of the fortified areas and the approximate number of Ukrainian troops defending the border with Belarus,” the SBU said in a message published on Telegram.

“He also tried to transmit the coordinates of the weapons and ammunition warehouses of the Ukrainian armed forces in the region.”

The SBU said the man was promised to be “evacuated” to Russian-occupied territory in exchange for completing his mission.

The agency also said he was recruited online by Oleksiy Dobrytskyi of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), stationed in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast.

The suspected Russian agent is currently in custody for treason committed under martial law and faces life in prison if convicted.

The SBU arrested a number of Ukrainians accused of collaborating with Russian forces.

More recently, on June 19, a Russian collaborator who had spied on Ukrainian positions near Bakhmut in the spring of 2023 was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

According to the SBU, the unnamed man provided geolocations of Ukrainian positions to Russian agents, who then used the intelligence to plan operations involving aerial bombs, artillery and assault attacks.

The Ukrainian, a resident of Kostyantynivka in Donetsk Oblast, was arrested in May 2023 while actively conducting reconnaissance near a military installation.

The man had initially been recruited by a member of Russian intelligence and had promised to be paid.

He regularly communicated with Russian agents using an anonymous account via a messaging app. Text conversations were regularly deleted by the man to avoid detection, according to the SBU.