Ukraine spy chief arrests FSB ‘rat’ in his own ranks

Ukraine’s intelligence service has detained one of its own officers on suspicion of spying for Moscow in an arrest led by Kyiv’s own espionage chief.

Dmitry Kozyura, head of counter-intelligence, is detained by Ukrainian spy chief Vasyl Malyuk.

Ukraine’s state intelligence service has detained one of its own most senior officers on suspicion of spying for Moscow in an arrest operation led by the SBU chief himself.

The suspect, identified as Dmitry Kozyura, the head of the SBU’s counter-intelligence, was arrested on Wednesday morning after a months-long entrapment operation.

Catching the alleged high-level spy included feeding misinformation that the suspect then relayed back to his handlers in Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the post-Soviet incarnation of the KGB.

“The SBU exposed a top FSB ‘rat’ in its ranks!” the agency announced immediately following the arrest. “The traitor was personally detained this morning by the head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk. As it turned out, the head of the headquarters of the anti-terrorist centre of the SBU of Ukraine was working for the enemy.”

Mr Malyuk led the operation to investigate and entrap the spy, during which the security service collected evidence of 14 episodes in which real and fake classified information was passed to Russian intelligence, first as a counterintelligence measure and then as part of a criminal investigation.

“It was an extremely complex development and subsequent multi-step implementation, during which we used all possible overt and covert forms and methods of our activities, as well as the entire possible palette of operational and technical measures,” Mr Malyuk said.

“Using encrypted software bookmarks, we penetrated the traitor’s gadgets – mobile terminals, computers. We actually lived with him, conducting audio and video monitoring. In the process of all this, we managed to qualitatively document the collection and transmission of relevant information by the traitor to the enemy.”

According to the SBU, Kozyura was recruited by Russian agents in Vienna in 2018 but “canned” by his handlers for security reasons, until he was reactivated last year.

SBU investigators then discovered a hidden channel of communication between Kozyura and the FSB “organised through a citizen of Ukraine who had previously fled to Russia”, having taken part in organising paid protests in 2014 against the pro-European Maidan movement. He is also to be charged with treason.

Kozyura communicated with his FSB handler, who the SBU named as Yuriy Shatalov, using a Russian supplied mobile phone, SIM card and Wi-Fi router from a safe house in Kyiv. The agency said that their surveillance had revealed that Kozyura had worked for Moscow for both ideological and financial reasons.

Audio intercepts revealed that Kozyura’s close relatives, including his mother and father, were aware of his work and expressed support for President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They are to be charged under wartime laws that outlaw support for the Russian invasion.

Mr Malyuk labelled the operation as part of a continuing “self-purification” to remove Russian assets from the Ukrainian security service. “No matter how the enemy tries to penetrate our ranks – he thinks he has all possible forms and methods of conspiracy – he will not be able to do it successfully. Because we detect, document, and detain them in a timely manner,” he said.

The SBU said it would disclose further details of the special operation in the near future.

Kozyura would be only the latest suspected Russian spy uncovered working for the SBU. Oleh Kulinich, a former senior SBU commander who headed the service’s Crimea department, is on trial behind closed doors in Kyiv at present on treason charges for spying for Russia in the lead-up to the 2022 invasion.

Kulinich is alleged to have worked deliberately to undermine Ukrainian counterintelligence and undertake anti-terrorism exercises to identify weaknesses before passing the information to the FSB.

He is also accused of blocking intelligence about Russia’s use of the Crimea peninsula for the invasion from reaching Kyiv and supplying details of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s movements to Moscow to aid assassination squads.

In May last year, the SBU announced it had thwarted an FSB plot to kill Mr Zelensky and arrested two colonels of the State Security Administration on suspicion of leaking classified information to Moscow to assist its assassins.

THE TIMES