Ex-major general of Ukraine's Security Service sentenced for treason
Valerii Shaitanov, a former Major General of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of treason, an attempted act of terrorism, and possession of ammunition.
Source: Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine; Security Service of Ukraine
Details: Valerii Shaitanov, the former first deputy head of the SSU’s Special Operations Centre Alpha, was found guilty of treason, an attempted act of terrorism, and illegal handling of firearms, ammunition or explosives by the Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv on 14 August.
Shaitanov was sentenced to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.
The prosecutors proved in court that he had collected information that was a state secret and passed it on to representatives of the Russian Federation.
The investigation established that the official, under the alias Bobyl [a solitary man - ed.], had been in contact with an agent named Igor "Elbrus" Yegorov, a colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yegorov was involved in the occupation and organisation of terrorist activity in Donbas in the summer of 2014, the Security Service of Ukraine said.
Acting on the instructions of the Russian secret services, Shaitanov looked for people among former SSU servicemen in order to commit a terrorist attack.
His objective was to assassinate a major in the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria who has headed the Dzhokhar Dudayev International Peacekeeping Battalion since February 2015, during the war in the east of Ukraine.
Law enforcement officers warned at the time that the assassination was being planned by the Russian secret services.
Criminal proceedings against the employee of the FSB’s Counterintelligence Operations Department who recruited Shaitanov are currently being heard in court in absentia.
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