Russia’s FSB tried to infiltrate Ukraine with prisoners recruited from occupied Luhansk Oblast

OLENA ROSHCHINA — THURSDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2022, 18:13 

The Counterintelligence Unit of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) has neutralised a Russian intelligence network consisting of former prisoners from the occupied territory of Luhansk Oblast. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had dispersed members of this network across different oblasts in Ukraine.

Source: Security Service of Ukraine

Details: According to the information of the Ukrainian Security Service, the exposed agent network consisted of seven inmates of prisons in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Chernihiv oblasts. They had been transferred to these oblasts from prisons in temporarily occupied Luhansk Oblast. 

All of them had a minimum term behind bars; therefore, the FSB recruited the "cons" and "suggested" they ask Ukraine to transfer them from prisons in temporarily occupied Luhansk Oblast, as provided by law. 

After their prison terms ended, the new Russian agents had to carry out assignments set by the Russians against Ukraine. 

The SSU has established that the handler of this network was the so-called "head of the operational unit of corrective colony No. 38" in the "LPR" [self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic - ed.]. He was working in coordination with Russian FSB officers. 

The Security Service of Ukraine said its employees had unmasked the Russian agents in time to foil the Russians’ plans to obtain intelligence information.

Previously: Russian conscripts have started arriving in Luhansk Oblast. The vast majority of them are men who were serving sentences in Russian prisons at the time of conscription. 

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