Russian spy sentenced to 15 years in prison in Odesa

An Odesa court found an entrepreneur detained in 2022 guilty of high treason and illegal handling of weapons and sentenced him to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property.

This was reported by the press service of the Security Service of Ukraine.

According to the investigation, the offender was guiding Russian missiles at the places of concentration of the Defense Forces in the port city. Among the priority targets monitored by the agent were Ukrainian checkpoints and bases of the Territorial Defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

According to the case file, a 54-year-old businessman from Odesa district, recruited by the federal security service, was involved in adjusting enemy strikes. He came to the attention of the Russian secret service in the summer of 2018 when he was visiting relatives in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol.

In 2021, in Odesa, the man received a task from a representative of the Russian Federation to collect and transmit information about the joint military exercises of NATO and Ukraine "Sea Breeze". Following the instructions, he obtained photos of the exercise and sent them to the curator via the Telegram messenger.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the racists have activated the agent and instructed him to collect the coordinates of the Defense Forces' bases, where the enemy was preparing air attacks. It is documented that he drove around the regional center and its surroundings in his own car, took pictures of the outer perimeters of military facilities and marked them on a Google map.

During reconnaissance missions, the agent also tracked the approximate number of personnel and military equipment at the locations of Ukrainian defenders. SBU officers detained the offender in his home. During the search, a smartphone with an anonymous chat in a messenger was seized from him, in which he was in contact with an FSB supervisor. In addition, an AK-74 rifle, a Makarov pistol, more than 1,100 rounds of ammunition and three F-1 and RG-42 combat grenades were found in the detainee's apartment.

Кирило Бойко