The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has arrested a suspect for scouting out locations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) after being asked to do so online by a woman he met on a dating site.
The SBU’s Wednesday press release said the 23-year-old suspect from Pokrovsk was recruited when “the young man was looking for a partner on dating sites,” where the Russian agent tasked him with relaying intelligence about Ukrainian positions and coordinating airstrikes.
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“A representative of the Russian special service approached the suspect and offered to get to know him ‘better.’
“Subsequently, she sent the young man to go around the area in the Pokrovsk region, where he secretly recorded the positions of defense forces. The individual also reported to the occupiers about the consequences of enemy airstrikes on the city,” the press release said.
The female then reportedly ordered the suspect to do the same thing in Ukraine’s Sumy region, where he rented an apartment to set up an online broadcast, using a mains powered smartphone to continuously monitor the results of Russian strikes.
The SBU arrested the suspect and seized the phones used, without specify where the arrest was made. The man faces a 12-year sentence if convicted.
The SBU also did not establish the identity of the Russian agent in the press release, and it’s not clear if the woman in question was actually a woman.
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In June, the SBU reported the arrest of another collaborator near Kharkiv also recruited through a dating site and published correspondence between the traitor and the Russian agent.
Conversely, Ukraine has employed similar tactics against members of Russia’s armed forces, triggering Moscow’s Ministry of Internal Affairs to issue a memo in August against the use of dating platforms for its citizens as it claimed that Ukraine “actively uses such resources for the covert collection of information.”
Molfar, a Ukrainian risk assessment and analysis firm, has, in the past, lured lonely Russian troops on dating sites to share information that is then passed on to the Ukrainian military.
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