A sting operation staged by Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, hauled in a ring of Russian spies who snooped around Kyiv gathering information on the military sites and led disinformation campaigns that whitewashed Russia’s aggression.

The spies were led by the Russia colonel Vladyslav Donets, who recruited collobarators for espionage and saboteur work at the time Russian troops invaded Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.

The collaborators’ work was coordinated on the ground  by Luhansk separatists’ security service agent Valentyn Tililim who used private channels of communication, said the SBU.

Their snooping started in the early days of the Russian invasion with all of the group members being soon assigned separate tasks.  They recruited two Kyiv residents who were tasked with spying near the critical structure objects and gathering information on Ukrainian army personnel and law-enforcement officers while one more collaborator was involved in disinformation campaigning.

Police raided the apartments of the group and found mobile phones and other evidence of their espionage and saboteur acts.