By Tom Balmforth
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) – The search is on for Oleh Kolesnikov's family.
The Ukrainian said his father was a Soviet intelligence agent in Cuba during the Cold War, posing as a translator, and his cousin worked with the Russian security service.
That made him a prime candidate for wartime intelligence.
Kolesnikov told Reuters that he had agreed to give the Russians information about military positions and military movements in his home city of Zaporizhzhia, and report where their missiles had landed.
He supported the idea of ”Russian World”, a doctrine supported by President Vladimir Putin that emphasizes Moscow's historical and cultural ties to neighboring countries, and one that some hard-liners in Moscow use to intervene in foreign countries to protect Russian speakers.
“I didn't do this for the money,” he said.
But he regretted: That the inaccuracy of the missile strike led to the killing of people, and that the war – which he thought would be a quick, medical one – lasted almost three years, destroying his country.
“I thought they (the Russians) would advance quickly,” said the 52-year-old, the country's former land chief who grew up in Soviet Ukraine. “It happened like it always does. They planned one thing and the next thing happened completely.”
His wife left him when he was arrested for treason, taking their 11-year-old child with him.
Reuters spoke to Kolesnikov at the Zaporizhzhia police station in April, in front of an officer of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), five months before he was sentenced to life in prison for treason.
He is among more than 3,200 treason charges brought by Ukrainian authorities since Russia's full-scale invasion, including feeding information to Moscow to aid missile attacks and spreading Russian propaganda, according to the SBU.
Reuters interviews with three informants found guilty by Ukraine and two Ukrainian SBU counter-espionage officers spoke of the different loyalties felt by some Ukrainians, where older generations grew up as part of the Soviet Union before the bloc's breakup in 1991 ended the Cold War.
Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the SBU, told Reuters that Ukraine's counter-intelligence operation to root out Russian agents was the most important factor in the war, adding that the Kremlin “secretly infiltrated” the country and had been recruiting for decades.
“Our systematic approach produces results,” he added. “We have purged enemy agencies from all walks of life and continue to do so.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Ukrainian spies also played an important role in the conflict that broke out in February 2022 when Russia launched an all-out offensive.
Last week, the SBU organized a bomb explosion outside a Moscow residence that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, according to a source in the agency.
It was the latest in a series of targeted killings that Moscow says Ukraine carried out during the war.
In November 2022, Reuters interviewed several residents of Kherson who provided information to help Kyiv conduct strikes against Russian targets to help Ukraine retake the southern city.
HOW TO HOLD THE EXAMINATION
The SBU's counter-espionage operation has identified various categories of citizens prone to being recruited by the enemy, according to an SBU official interviewed by Reuters in Zaporizhzhia who identified himself as “Fanat”.
People who were openly pro-Russian or had family ties to Soviet or Russian intelligence; relatives of captured Ukrainian soldiers; and the family of the people who live in the confiscated land.
Kolesnikov was one of a kind, he added.
He was convicted in September of providing the Russians with coordinates and other information about several military sites, according to his treason conviction, which was seen by Reuters. It did not say how many of those sites were hit by the strike.
Kolesnikov's lawyer said it helped more to determine the outcome of the protests than to identify targets.
Kolesnikov told Reuters that in September 2022 he passed on information to the Russians about a meeting of local officials that was to take place at the Sunrise Hotel in Zaporizhzhia.
The building was hit by a Russian missile the next day, September 22, 2022, according to the verdict. The meeting did not proceed, for undisclosed reasons, although the protest destroyed a building in the old town of Zaporizhzhia, killed a citizen and injured five others, the verdict said.
The hotel's conference hall and sprawling summer terrace remained rubble during Reuters' visit to the site in April this year.
Fanat said SBU agents began closing in on Kolesnikov after the suspect's car was seen by witnesses at the scene of a Russian protest in March last year where it crashed into a television tower and hit a residential area, killing several people. Kolesnikov told Reuters he was there afterwards to observe the aftermath of the attack.
Ukrainian agents traced Kolesnikov's phone to several influential locations, according to Fanat. The breakthrough in the case came after they planted a bug in his car and further discussed his plans with Vitaly Kusakin, a friend who worked as a local officer's driver, and whom Kolesnikov had recruited to help gather information, the SBU official said. .
Kolesnikov was arrested at his home on May 5, 2023.
Giving evidence at his trial in a district court behind closed doors in Zaporizhzhia, Kolesnikov said he was against the Ukrainian government, but not Ukraine itself, the verdict said.
He pleaded guilty to “partial” treason charges, saying he did not know the cousin who asked him for information was a member of the FSB at the time, according to the ruling. A panel of judges rejected the request and found him guilty of “intentional acts” including “giving assistance to a foreign representative in the commission of subversive acts”.
Kusakin was jailed for 15 years.
LION ABOUT AND PRISONER EXCHANGE
Maliuk, the head of the SBU, said his agency found 47 Russian agents last year and 46 more this year, including people from law enforcement to active servicemen, he added, without identifying the suspects.
As the war continues, limiting movement from one side to the other, recruitment methods have had to change, security officials said.
Before the full attack, Ukrainian citizens were mostly employed during the trip to Russia, but the routes are usually made on the Internet using social networks, the SBU said.
“People who express pro-Kremlin views are identified and found based on their views, then contacted,” it said.
The motives for acting as information range from ideas to promises of money or other rewards and blackmail or other threats, the SBU said.
For Kolesnikov, who says he freely offered his services, the future looks bleak. He told Reuters his only hope of saving his life was to be released in a prisoner exchange with Russia.
“I'd like to be exchanged,” he sighed. “But that's not up to me.”