Passing intelligence in Kherson cost Russian agent life imprisonment

The court found the Kherson resident guilty of high treason and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The man passed the coordinates of Ukrainian military units and equipment to the occupiers.

This is evidenced by the verdict of the Kherson City Court.

The case file shows that from June 2023 to August 2024, while in Kherson, he systematically transmitted prohibited information to Russian representatives about the location of the Armed Forces units and the movement of military equipment in the city via Telegram.

The data was transmitted using mapping services and links with precise geographic coordinates. Based on this data, the occupiers planned shelling and hit the designated targets.

During the court arguments, the prosecutor demanded life imprisonment under Part 2 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, emphasizing the intentional and systematic nature of the defendant's actions and the full evidence of his guilt. The defendant's lawyer objected to the qualification and punishment, stating that the evidence did not confirm high treason, and asked to reclassify the actions under Article 114-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - unauthorized disclosure of data on Ukrainian troops and weapons during the war.

The accused did not admit his guilt or the factual circumstances of the criminal offense. During the interrogation, he provided his own version of events, noting that before the war he worked in a medical institution and lived with a partner who worked in the ambulance service. After the outbreak of war, he continued to work both in Kherson and in Tsyurupynsk.

The defendant said that he kept contacts of people he worked with in his phone. His partner said that his house was shot at from the area where he lived at the time, and several hits came from the hospital where she worked. He added that in a state of affect, he opened a map and looked for coordinates on it without leaving his home. He did not create any new accounts, only used a page in the messenger with his own phone number.

The defendant claims that he did not join chats and bots, but he received messages from these resources, and he did not pay attention to them. He communicated with the doctor he used to have repairs done and informed her about possible shelling to keep her safe. His last words were limited to a statement that he regretted the outbreak of war.

According to the Patriot of Donbas media outlet, this is Andriy Belyaev, who was a member of a Russian agent network. It was coordinated by a collaborator from the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region, Oleksandr Kostin, who was fulfilling the tasks of the Russian special services to create an agent network in the territory of the region controlled by Ukraine.

The verdict lists 39 episodes of coordinated transfer, but in fact Belyaev transferred more than 60 precise locations - the locations of deployment and movement of units of the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine, the location of infrastructure facilities and military equipment. The court found that he acted for ideological reasons. On August 16, 2024, the agent was detained by law enforcement officers.

The former employee of the humanitarian headquarters in Kherson region also remained in custody. He is suspected of passing intelligence on the location of the Ukrainian military to the enemy.

Анна Бальчінос