Three Russian agents who helped the enemy fire missiles at a military airfield in Ivano-Frankivsk in the first hours of the full-scale invasion were sentenced to 13 years in prison with confiscation of all their property for treason. They are a 51-year-old woman from Kyiv, a 44-year-old man from Kharkiv and a 28-year-old native of Zaporizhzhia. None of them pleaded guilty. However, the special services exposed their spying career almost minute by minute, TSN reports.
The woman and two men helped Russia in the first hours of the full-scale invasion to hit the Ivano-Frankivsk airfield with missiles. Military airfields were then the enemy’s number one target.
Russian special services recruited them in advance for material gain. The woman was found in Belarus back in 2013. The 44-year-old man was found a year before the full-scale invasion in Nice, France, where he was a parishioner of the Russian Orthodox Church. His younger partner was recruited remotely in Ukraine.
According to Maria Rymar, a spokeswoman for the SSU in Ivano-Frankivsk region, they communicated with their handlers and with each other through secret chats on Telegram.
The Russians ordered the agents recruited abroad to return to Ukraine. They had a special plan for the older man. A cover story was created for the traitor – to travel under the guise of a ‘travel blogger’ and openly post videos of infrastructure facilities taken by drone on Instagram.
In Kyiv, he filmed bridges, entrances to them, and forks in the road. In Kharkiv, he filmed a complex of Derzhprom buildings. In Odesa, the seaport.
Later, they received an actual order to prepare to shell a military airport.
‘The woman settled near the glideslope of the Ivano-Frankivsk airfield in December 2021. She filmed and sent to the third accomplice the take-offs and landings of military aircraft, which he was supposed to pass on to the curator,’ said the spokeswoman for the SBU Main Directorate in Ivano-Frankivsk region.
And the so-called travel blogger, armed with a drone recoded to fly unimpeded in the restricted area, checked into a motel near the airfield two days before the full-scale war. He was the one who installed the beacons to help the enemy hit the target more accurately.
Enemy agents still managed to send a report on the results of the shelling to Russia. But they could not escape to Europe. All three were soon detained by the SBU. However, none of the convicts admitted their guilt.