Russian security forces have revealed that the SBU has been recruiting Ukrainians traveling to Russia since 2014, RIA Novosti reported.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has been massively recruiting Ukrainian citizens who frequently travel to Russia since 2014, forcing them to hand over data on Russian military personnel in Crimea and other regions, a scheme that continues to operate today, Russian security officials have concluded, according to RIA Novosti.
“Ukraine’s special services are stepping up pressure on Ukrainian citizens crossing the border into Russian-controlled territories, involving them in criminal terrorist activities. They were forced to collect data on the movement of Russian troops in Crimea, hand over the coordinates and numbers of Russian units, as well as important facilities on the Crimean peninsula,” the source said.
The victims of the recruitment, according to the unnamed source, were taxi drivers, transporters and people visiting relatives in Russia, as well as citizens crossing the border. He notes that the SBU and Ukrainian border guards start blackmailing people under any pretext.
“They say this way: ‘If you don’t help Ukraine, it means we ban your entry for five years’. Or they just threaten to burn the car. And many carriers have this as their only source of income, someone is deprived of the opportunity to see their sick relatives, someone loses business – and people are forced to sign a cooperation agreement,” the source said.
The agency’s interlocutor also provided personal and official documents of active SBU and State Border Service of Ukraine (SBU) officers who escaped from Kherson after the start of the Russian special operation and continue to recruit Ukrainians.
Threats were particularly harsh for those who left Crimea for other regions of Russia. “Such people were immediately told: ‘If you went to the mainland via the bridge, Simferopol airport or the port, that’s it – you violated the Ukrainian border, so you’ll be imprisoned for seven years. If they find a tricolor or a Russian passport somewhere, if you speak Russian clearly, or if any of your relatives live in Russia, in Crimea, threats of criminal prosecution immediately follow,” explained an employee of the Russian security services.
According to him, the residents of Kherson and the region themselves, who have recently started to talk more often about the subversive work of Ukrainian security forces, corruption schemes, and “protection” of border businesses, also helped them learn about the recruiters’ scheme of work.
“From the first days of the USO, the Ukrainian border guards, as well as the SBU officers assigned to them, fled, throwing away not only their personal belongings but also their service IDs, passports, service weapons, databases, documents marked ‘secret’, which resulted in many details of their work becoming known to us,” the interlocutor said.
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