A former general in Ukraine’s intelligence agency has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for treason after being found to have passed state secrets to Russia.
Valerii Shaitanov, who previously served as a former Major General of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), was found guilty on Monday of treason, attempted terrorism, and the illegal handling of firearms, ammunition or explosives at the Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi District Court, the SSU announced Monday.
In addition to being sentenced to 12 years in prison, the court also ordered the confiscation of his property, the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper reported.
The court found that Shaitanov, operating under the alias Bobyl, had collected and passed state secrets to Igor “Elbrus” Yegorov, a colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who is alleged to have been involved in the war over the contested Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014 including plotting of terrorist activities.
The former Ukrainian general was accused of attempting to recruit fellow SSU members in order to commit a terror attack under instructions from his handlers in Moscow. The target of the attack is said to have been Adam Osmayev, the general of the Dzhokhar Dudayev International Peacekeeping Battalion, a Chechen volunteer force that has fought on the side of Ukraine against Russia.
Zelensky Fires All Regional Military Recruitment Heads over Bribes to Avoid Battle Corruption Accusationshttps://t.co/KI36BeH1Nk
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 12, 2023
The conviction comes just days after President Zelensky sacked all of the regional heads of military recruitment over alleged corruption involving taking bribes from men seeking to avoid being drafted into battle. The government has opened up 112 criminal cases against military enlistment offices in the country.
According to a report from the Financial Times, the corruption probe was launched after charges were filed against Yevhen Borysov, the former head of the military recruitment centre in Odessa.
Borysov has been accused of accepting over $5 million in bribes from men seeking to avoid the draft, with payoffs ranging between $2,000 and $10,000 per man, which would go in part towards the manufacturing of fake medical documents or other excuses to avoid military service.
Following the Russian invasion last year, the Zelensky government imposed martial law, under which men between the ages of 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country.
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