For three years, enemy agents set fire to power substations in Odesa and planned terrorist attacks

For more than three years, they gathered information on Ukrainian military personnel, set fire to energy facilities in the Odesa region, and set up hideouts containing explosives. The court has brought the case against the Russian intelligence agents to a close.

This was reported by Intent, citing the verdict of the Primorsky District Court of Odesa

According to the investigation, after the start of the full-scale invasion, one of the defendants made contact with a Russian intelligence representative via Telegram. He subsequently recruited another man to collaborate. According to the case file, they agreed to gather information for Russian intelligence agencies on the locations of Ukrainian military units, weaponry, and fortifications, as well as to carry out sabotage operations in the Odesa region.

In July 2022, both moved from Kyiv to Odesa, where they rented an apartment. Over the next few years, they photographed military facilities, determined their coordinates using Google Maps, and transmitted this data to a Russian intelligence representative.

In addition to espionage, one of the convicted men carried out sabotage missions. He set fire to the “Peresypka” transformer substation, owned by JSC “DTEK Odesa Power Grids,” then filmed the fire and sent the video to his handler as proof that the mission had been completed. For this, as stated in the verdict, he received money. As a result of the arson, the power company suffered damages amounting to over 126 thousand hryvnias.

In addition, the man set fire to two more transformer substations—“ZRS” in Odesa and “Khadzhibey” near the village of Usatove. The total damages from these incidents amounted to over 106,000 hryvnias.

In late 2024, acting on instructions from a Russian handler, both men retrieved ammunition and explosives from a cache near the village of Velyka Balka. They stored some of it at home and hid the rest in a new cache on the outskirts of Odesa. During searches, law enforcement officers seized plastic explosives based on hexogen, TNT blocks, and electric detonators.

In court, both defendants pleaded guilty. One of them stated that he was hostile toward the Ukrainian authorities and, together with his accomplice, passed information about various facilities in Odesa to the Russian side. The other confirmed that he had conspired with representatives of the Russian special services, scouted out poorly guarded facilities, climbed over the fences of power substations, set equipment on fire, and recorded his actions on video to report back to his handler. Both were sentenced to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property.

The SBU also detained an FSB agent in Odesa who was gathering information on the deployment locations of the Defense Forces in the south of the country and passing it on to the Russian intelligence service to prepare missile and drone strikes.

Анна Бальчінос