How a man became a traitor to Ukraine and a Russian spy by Reuters

Written by Tom Balmforth

ZAPORIZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Espionage runs in Oleh Kolesnikov’s family.

The Ukrainian citizen said that his father was a Soviet intelligence agent in Cuba during the Cold War, and he was pretending to be a translator, and that his cousin worked with the Russian security service.

This made him a prime candidate for wartime espionage.

Kolesnikov told Reuters that he agreed to provide the Russians with information about military sites and troop movements in his city of Zaporizhia, and to submit a report on where their missiles landed.

He has supported the concept of the “Russian world,” a principle supported by President Vladimir Putin that emphasizes Moscow’s historical and cultural ties with neighboring countries, and which some hardliners in Moscow have used to justify intervention abroad in defense of Russian speakers.

“I didn’t do this for the money,” he said.

But he felt remorse: because the inaccuracy of some of the missile strikes led to the deaths of civilians, and because the war – which he assumed would be quick and clinical – continued for nearly three years, destroying his homeland.

“I thought they (the Russians) would move quickly,” said the 52-year-old, a former state lands manager who grew up in Soviet Ukraine. “It turns out like it always does. They plan one thing and something else happens entirely.”

His wife left him when he was arrested for treason, taking their 11-year-old child with her.

Reuters spoke with Kolesnikov at a police facility in Zaporozhye in April, in the presence of a Ukrainian Security Service officer, five months before he was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason.

It is among more than 3,200 cases of state treason launched by Ukrainian authorities since the large-scale Russian invasion, including providing information to Moscow to assist in missile strikes and spreading Russian propaganda, according to Ukraine’s security service.

Reuters interviews with three informants convicted by Ukraine and two Ukrainian counterintelligence officers in the SBU spoke of the divided loyalties felt by some people in Ukraine, where older generations grew up as part of the Soviet Union before the bloc’s breakup in 1991 that ended the Cold War.

Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s security service, told Reuters that Ukrainian counterintelligence efforts to eliminate Russian agents were key to victory in the war, adding that the Kremlin had been “secretly infiltrating” the country and recruiting assets for decades.

“Our systematic approach produces results,” he added. “We have purged enemy agents in all areas of life and continue to do so.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Ukrainian spies also played a prominent role in the conflict that erupted in February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion.

Last week, Ukraine’s Security Service orchestrated a bomb explosion outside a Moscow apartment building that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, according to an agency source.

This was the latest in a series of targeted assassinations that Moscow says were carried out by Ukraine during the war.

In November 2022, Reuters interviewed several Kherson residents who provided information to help Kiev launch strikes on Russian targets to help Ukraine retake the southern city.

How to catch a spy

The SBU’s counterintelligence work has identified different categories of citizens vulnerable to recruitment by the enemy, according to a SBU officer interviewed by Reuters in Zaporozhye who identified himself by the call sign “Fanat.”

They are people who were openly pro-Russian or had family ties to the KGB or Russian intelligence; Relatives of captured Ukrainian soldiers; and families of people living in the occupied territories.

He added that Kolesnikov was in the first category.

He was convicted in September of providing the Russians with coordinates and other information about dozens of primarily military sites, according to a treason ruling seen by Reuters. He did not mention the number of sites that were hit.

Kolesnikov’s lawyer said he mainly helped verify the effects of the strikes rather than helping identify targets.

Kolesnikov told Reuters that in September 2022 he conveyed information to the Russians about a meeting of local officials that was scheduled to be held at the Sunrise Hotel in Zaporozhye.

The building was hit by a Russian missile the next day, September 22, 2022, according to the ruling. The ruling said the meeting did not take place for unspecified reasons, even though the strike destroyed the building in the Old Town of Zaporizhya, killing one civilian and wounding five others.

The hotel’s conference room and potholed summer terrace remained littered with rubble during a Reuters visit to the site in April this year.

Fanat said Ukrainian Security Service agents began closing in on Kolesnikov after witnesses spotted the suspect’s car at the site of the Russian raid in March last year that narrowly missed the television tower and hit a residential building, killing several civilians. Kolesnikov told Reuters he was there afterwards to verify the results of the attack.

Ukrainian agents tracked Kolesnikov’s phone to several crash sites, according to Fanat. The Ukrainian security service officer said the breakthrough in the case came after they planted a software device in his car and discussed his plans with Vitaly Kosakin, a friend who worked as a driver for a local official, and whom Kolesnikov recruited to help gather intelligence. .

Kolesnikov was arrested at his home on May 5, 2023.

The ruling said that during his trial before a district court behind closed doors in Zaporozhye, Kolesnikov said that he opposed the Ukrainian government, but not Ukraine itself.

He pleaded guilty “partially” to the treason charges against him, saying he did not know that his cousin, who asked him to provide information, was a member of the Federal Security Service at the time, according to the ruling. A panel of judges rejected this petition and found him guilty of “intentional acts” involving “providing assistance to a representative of a foreign state in carrying out subversive activities.”

Kosakin has been imprisoned for 15 years.

Spy rings and prisoner swaps

Malik, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service, said his agency uncovered 47 Russian agent networks last year and 46 more this year, involving people ranging from lawmakers to active-duty soldiers, without identifying the suspects.

As the war continued, reducing the ease of travel from one side of the front to the other, recruitment methods had to change, security officials said.

The Ukrainian Security Service said that before the large-scale invasion, Ukrainian citizens were mainly recruited during trips to Russia, but communication now often takes place online using social media networks.

“People who express pro-Kremlin views are identified and found based on their comments, and then contacted,” she added.

The Ukrainian Security Service said that the motives for working as an informant ranged from ideology, promises of financial or other rewards, blackmail or other threats.

For Kolesnikov, who says he offers his services freely, the future looks bleak. He told Reuters that his only hope of saving his life was to be released in a future prisoner exchange deal with Russia.

“I would like to be traded,” he sighed. “But it doesn’t depend on me.”