Russian agents caught at Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers and Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Security Service of Ukraine caught Ukrainian officials from the Cabinet of Ministers and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry who cooperated with Russian special services and provided them with intelligence information.

Ukrainian counterintelligence detained the Head of the Department of the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat and the Head of one of the directorates of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

According to the SSU, these officials transferred information on the state of Ukrainian defenses, the arrangement of the state border, and the personal data of Ukrainian law enforcement officers to Russia.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) paid these officials between $2,000 and $15,000 per task. The amounts depended on the secrecy level and the information's importance.

Both detainees were declared suspects of treason (Article 111 of the Criminal Code). They face 12 to 15 years in prison with or without confiscation of property. They have now been remanded in custody.

The investigation says that the FSB recruited an employee of the Cabinet of Ministers back in 2012 during his trip to Russia. Then the official received an operational pseudonym, a mobile phone, and a task to collect secret information. He printed or photographed confidential documents and stored them on a flash drive.

To transfer the files, the official arranged a meeting with his liaison officer, who worked in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, through a closed Telegram channel. The transmission scheme worked as follows: the Cabinet of Ministers employee passed information to an employee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the latter transferred it to Russia through encrypted communication channels.

The SSU says that the agents received money for espionage directly from their curator during personal meetings in temporarily occupied Crimea or abroad. Usually, a CCI employee received money for two and, upon arrival to Kyiv, paid the "salary" to the Cabinet of Ministers official. In addition, the liaison officer was looking for new candidates to recruit.