Two Ukrainian military intelligence officers detained in Kaliningrad for spying

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained two officers of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate for spying on the Russian-Lithuanian section of the border in the Kaliningrad Region. The detainees were also plotting the kidnapping of a minor, a Russian citizen, whose father is a Ukrainian military intelligence officer, the FSB’s Public Relations Center has said.
The Ukrainian spies made an attempt to illegally enter Russia from Lithuania only to be detained. Investigators have found out that a collateral purpose of the operation was the kidnapping and illegal trafficking across Russia’s state border of a “minor citizen of Russia, whose father is an officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry,” the FSB said.
The FSB said it thwarted “espionage activities of Ukrainian special services, aimed at harming the security of Russia.”
“It has been found that the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry set the task of collecting information concerning the security of the Russian-Lithuanian section of the state border for possible subsequent illegal infiltrations of agents and for committing other crimes on the territory of our country.”
Secret service officers ordered their agent, a Ukrainian citizen, to gather sensitive data “by interviewing local residents in Lithuania’s border area and conducting reconnaissance with the use of technical means,” the FSB said.
Having collected the necessary information, the Ukrainian spies tried to illegally cross the Russian border from Lithuania, but were detained.
The FSB’s investigative department in the Kaliningrad Region initiated criminal proceedings against the detainees under Article 276 of the Criminal Code (espionage) and put both in custody.