Odesa convicts Russian agent who went on a business trip to spy in Zhytomyr

Khadzhybeyskyi District Court of Odesa found a local resident guilty of high treason and sentenced him to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property.

As stated in the court' s verdict, in the spring of 2024, the man took photos and videos of military facilities and sent them to a user with a Russian mobile phone number on Telegram.

On March 12, 2024, he took photos and videos of the territory of the Multidisciplinary Veterans Hospital from different angles and sent these materials to a man using a Russian mobile phone number. Along with sending the above photos and videos, he sent the same user a screenshot from a navigation application, in which he accurately delineated the location of the hospital, as well as its entrances and exits. On March 13, he filmed border guards.

On March 19, he went to Zhytomyr and made a video of the building of the Zhytomyr Military Institute named after S.P. Korolev. In total, the prosecution reported eight episodes of criminal activity over a period of one and a half months - from March to the second half of April 2024.

According to the prosecution, the gunner received remuneration from the curator on a bank card. During the period of correspondence, his account received money five times for approximately the same amount - UAH 3.8 thousand-3.9 thousand.

The defendant pleaded not guilty in court. He said that until February 2022, he and his family lived in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia region. But after the full-scale invasion, they moved. In Odesa, he first worked at a bakery, then at the Western Cemetery, and since February 2024, at the Starokynnyi Market. They had enough money because their relatives from occupied Enerhodar allegedly helped them. But in 2024, according to the accused, he rented out his Telegram account. And for this, he received 1-1.5 thousand hryvnias on his bank card every week. He allegedly never communicated with the user with the Russian phone number and does not know where the correspondence came from.

The accused claimed to have an alibi for the days when he was accused of taking photos and videos of objects in Odesa, as he was detained by police officers at the request of his wife and neighbors and taken to the police station for disorderly conduct. On March 16, 2024, the police received two reports that the man was shouting, behaving inappropriately, disorderly, and hitting everything in the house. At the request of the court, the police reported that the citizen had not been brought to the police station and that there had been no visits to his address of residence. In the end, the court decided that such documents did not refute the prosecution's case.

Кирило Бойко