A Ukrainian court sentenced the former chief engineer of Lyman’s locomotive depot to 15 years in prison with property confiscation for helping Russia target the frontline city, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said on 11 August. Investigators report he sent a Russian handler the locations of Ukrainian positions intended for guided-bomb and artillery strikes.

Lyman blocks Russia’s northern route toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which are part of Ukraine's fortress belt in the Donbas. As attacks on supply lines intensify, information about Ukrainian positions can help Russia direct bombs and artillery. The case fits a broader pattern of Russian intelligence recruiting people inside Ukraine to locate targets. Russian services have used money and blackmail, including threats against recruits’ families, to secure their cooperation.

According to the SBU, the former engineer traveled around Lyman and its outskirts to record Ukrainian military bases. He marked possible targets on Google Maps, then sent screenshots to a handler in Russia through a messaging app.

The collaborator operated from basement

The agency said an acquaintance whom it described as a “DNR deputy” in occupied Donetsk Oblast connected him with Russian intelligence. The SBU said the man moved into an apartment building’s basement to shelter himself while directing Russian strikes on the community.

SBU officers detained him in Sloviansk in May 2026. The agency said a seized smartphone contained evidence of his reconnaissance and contacts with the Russian side.

The SBU did not identify the man, the court, or any specific strike enabled by his information.

How Russia turns locals into spotters 

The Lyman case involved an acquaintance of the former engineer, but Russian services also use money, blackmail, and online platforms to find recruits. The SBU says minors may initially receive simple assignments, such as taking photographs or painting graffiti, before being directed toward more serious sabotage.

Other recruits have allegedly answered Telegram offers of “easy money.” These include a Zaporizhzhia man later convicted of building bombs and a Dnipro suspect accused of activating more than 1,000 Starlink terminals for Russian forces.

Ukraine has prosecuted similar cases before. In November 2024, a court sentenced another Russian agent to 15 years for guiding missile and drone strikes in Zhytomyr Oblast.

More recent cases remain at the allegation stage. The SBU has accused a Kharkiv Oblast man of installing hidden cameras near military sites and a Poltava student of mapping energy facilities while filming air-defense units.

Sweden says it caught and stopped a Russian spy operation. Säpo Security Service has exposed the intelligence operation aimed at discrediting the country, Sweden Herald reported.

The operation is one strand of Russia's hybrid campaign against Europe. Since the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia has run espionage, sabotage, and influence operations across European states, from undersea cable damage in the Baltic to disinformation. The Swedish case is one such effort, aimed at undermining Swedish decision-making and discrediting Sweden and the EU.

The agent worked from a diplomatic mission

For the operation, Russian intelligence recruited its source inside a foreign embassy. The agent, recruited at a foreign diplomatic mission in Sweden, gathered information on the decision-making processes of Sweden's central government bodies and the kingdom's relations with other countries.

The goal was influence, not just information. The operation was meant to give Russian intelligence the ability to influence contentious issues, undermine Swedish decision-making, and discredit Sweden and the EU. It is the classic shape of a Russian influence operation: acquire inside knowledge of how a target state decides, then use it to steer or discredit those decisions.

Säpo watched it for a long time

The service said it tracked the operation before shutting it down. Säpo long monitored and documented the operation, recording meetings at which the agent passed information to two officers of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). It knew the tasks the agent was given and the questions he put to his handlers, Christoffer Wedelin, a deputy operations chief, said.

Säpo said it acted to contain the damage.

"Our assessment is that we have prevented the Russian intelligence operation. They have not succeeded in their mission," Wedelin said.

No one can be prosecuted

The case ends without arrests. The agent and the two Russian officers have left Sweden, and because all three hold diplomatic immunity, they cannot be arrested or prosecuted.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) caught a Russian agent red-handed as he was filming a military airfield in preparation for a Russian strike, the agency reported on June 15.

According to the SBU, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) recruited the unemployed 24-year-old via the Telegram messaging app to collect coordinates for air attacks on airfields and logistic depots.

The FSB had allegedly instructed him to find military facilities and carry out reconnaissance on the ground in exchange for “easy money.”

The man was detained outside an airfield in Rivne Oblast while filming its outer perimeter with a hidden camera in his car. The SBU seized a phone and the camera on the scene, while other evidence was taken from the agent’s apartment.

If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment for high treason.

The SBU regularly announces it has foiled Russian agents and terrorist plots against military and civilian targets. The FSB usually targets unemployed people, those with criminal records, or addicts, according to the SBU's data.

In April, the SBU detained an instructor at a training center in Lviv Oblast who was planning to assassinate the base's commanders. That same month, the SBU detained nine FSB agents, including five minors, for plotting terrorist attacks in central and eastern Ukraine.

More than a fifth of FSB recruits in Ukraine are minors.

Power cut off in Russia’s Kaliningrad in sabotage operation, Ukrainian military intelligence says

In the early hours of June 14, Ukrainian agents drained the coolant from the substation’s power transformer before setting the facility on fire.

The Kyiv IndependentDominic Culverwell