FSB recruits relatives of captured Ukrainians

The FSB forces Ukrainians whose relatives are in Russian captivity to spy, blackmailing them with the well-being of their relatives. Moreover, we are talking not only about soldiers of the Ukrainian army who were captured, but also about Ukrainians living in territories occupied by Russia. The American newspaper The Washington Post writes about this.

One such case was reported in March by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). According to the intelligence service, its employees detained a Ukrainian military man who tried to poison the commanders of one of the units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Zaporozhye region. As it turned out, he did this on the instructions of the FSB, which threatened his parents living in the Russian-occupied part of the Lugansk region. They were reportedly captured and brutally tortured, thus forcing their son to follow the instructions of the Russian secret service. As a result, the poisoning operation failed, and its executor was charged with treason, and now faces life imprisonment.

According to The Washington Post, this is not the only such case. The publication notes that after Russian troops occupied 20 percent of the territory of Ukraine and captured thousands of Ukrainians living there, this method of recruiting agents in the Ukrainian rear has become very common.

Often, people who have no experience in espionage activities are recruited in this way. Blackmailing them with the well-being of their relatives, Russian intelligence services force them to talk about the movements of military equipment or confirm that a missile fired by Russian troops hit the target.

Among others, the publication tells the story of a Ukrainian woman named Yana, whose mother served as a border guard in the northeastern Kharkov region and was captured by Russia almost immediately after the invasion of Ukraine began. A few months later, Yana began receiving messages from her mother’s phone. In them, Russian intelligence officers demanded information about the movements of Ukrainian military equipment, in exchange promising not to harm her mother. Yana refused, and then they began to threaten her. Then the mother herself called her and asked her daughter to comply with the demands, emphasizing that her life depended on it.

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