The Ukrainian security services (SBU) announced on Friday that they had arrested “seven Russian agents” suspected of spying for Moscow in the Dnipro region (east).
“The SBU conducted another important special operation to expose and arrest enemy agents,” its leader Vasyl Maliouk said in a statement.
According to the SBU, the detainees “gave the Russians the coordinates of Ukrainian critical infrastructure” and “collected information about (…) the movements of the units of the (Kiev) Armed Forces in the region” before sharing them with the Russian army.
Their “possible involvement in the attack on a residential building in Dnipro on January 14,” in which at least 45 people were killed, including six children, is “under investigation”, the Ukrainian security services also said.
This attack, which Kyiv attributes to Russia – which denies any involvement -, one of the deadliest for civilians since the Russian invasion began nearly 11 months ago, had sparked great emotion among the Ukrainian population.
According to the SBU, the detained “seven Russian agents” began “reconnaissance activities against Ukraine” from “October 2022”.
To communicate with each other, “they used anonymous messengers and transmitted the locations (of the targets) in the form of electronic coordinates with photographic material,” the same source said.
According to the SBU, “improvised explosive devices” and “computer devices and mobile phones” as well as “pro-Kremlin literature” were also discovered during the various searches carried out “in several stages” in the Dnipro region.