Ex-police officer passed information about the Armed Forces to the enemy and waited for the occupation of Mykolaiv

A former police officer from Mykolaiv was sentenced to 10 years in prison for passing on information about the location of Ukrainian military to the Russians. The court found that the information he shared via Telegram could have caused damage to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

This is stated in the verdict of the Korabelnyi District Court of Mykolaiv.

The court found a former police captain guilty of disseminating information about the location of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during martial law. According to the investigation, he had pro-Russian views and used the Telegram messenger to transmit data to the enemy that could have contributed to the defeat of the Ukrainian military.

According to the case file, the accused was at his place of residence in Mykolaiv, where he used his iPhone11 mobile phone and Telegram account under a pseudonym to start a correspondence with a representative of the Russian Federation.

In these messages, he described in detail the locations of Ukrainian marines, the movement of military equipment, sent photos with coordinates and mentioned warehouses, training sites, logistics routes and other facilities used by the Armed Forces and other defense formations. He also reported on trucks allegedly for the military, their routes, and identified the owners and drivers involved in the supply.

In particular, he wrote: "Here are Odessites, marines", "Opposite the marker... there are two Mitsubishi L200s", "Today a truck came in, I don't know what it was loaded with", and also sent screenshots of GoogleMaps with the marked coordinates. In particular, he asked: "Will Mykolaiv be under Russian control by summer?"

The court found that this information was not publicly available and posed a real threat to Ukrainian troops. The defendant pleaded not guilty, claiming that the case was allegedly falsified by the SBU, and tried to challenge the admissibility of the evidence, but the court did not accept his arguments.

As a result, the man was found guilty under Part 3 of Article 114-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - unauthorized dissemination of information about the location of the Armed Forces under martial law and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The court confiscated the mobile phone used to transmit the information and ordered the convict to pay UAH 2650 for the examination. The verdict can be appealed to the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal within 30 days.

Also, residents of Mykolaiv region were sentenced to 15 years in prison for passing coordinates of Ukrainian military facilities to the Russians. They were recruited through pro-Russian Telegram channels, after which they sent information to the enemy via messengers.

Анна Бальчінос