Ukraine’s Spy Agency Says Russian ‘Sleeper’ Agents, Collaborators Detained

Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the SBU, says it detained three Russian “sleeper” agents in the southern Dnipropetrovsk region and two “collaborators” working for the state railway company.

The three suspected “subversive” agents had been operating in Ukraine since 2015 under the guidance of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the SBU said on April 19.

Their duties were to monitor “critical and military infrastructure objects” as well as to set ablaze “the premises of patriotic civil society organizations.”

The agents’ latest assignments were to infiltrate units of the territorial defense units and “collect information of how the military and National Guard function.”

Collaborators

An employee working for the Donetsk branch of state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia was also detained. In his managerial position, he was providing invading Russian forces information on the location of Ukrainian military equipment and checkpoints.

Another alleged “collaborator” was detained in Kyiv. The suspect worked for the main office of Ukrzaliznytsia and “from the outset of Russia’s full-scale aggression, he called on his colleagues to support the aggressor.”

In addition, the suspect helped invading Russian forces “navigate” the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv “for positions and looting,” the SBU said.

Luhansk foreign agent

State security officers also detained an agent whom Russia had allegedly sent to Ukraine a week before Feb. 24 when Kremlin tyrant Vladimir Putin ordered the multi-pronged invasion of the neighboring country.

The suspect had been released from a pre-trial detention center and was sent to Luhansk region to “conduct reconnaissance of the area and take pictures of Ukrainian military positions.”