A Ukrainian court sentenced three Russian agents to 15 years each for guiding Russian strikes on Donetsk Oblast, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on 26 August. Each had been recruited to mark Ukrainian military sites or civilian targets in the east, and counterintelligence exposed them between spring 2025 and March this year. The court found all three guilty of treason committed under martial law. The SBU did not name the court or say which specific strikes the men enabled.

The informer inside the armor repair base

One of the convicted men worked at a Defense Forces repair base, and the SBU detained him in the Kramatorsk sector in April 2025. Russian services noticed him through his brother, who lives in Russia and works for the Federal Security Service (FSB), the investigation established. Recruitment through relatives in Russia or the occupied territories is a method Ukrainian counterintelligence has documented before, including inside a marine brigade on the active front.

During his own shifts at the defense enterprise, he recorded the geolocations of repair shops used to restore heavy armored vehicles for Ukraine's Armed Forces. He tried to pass the photographs and building coordinates to his Russian handler through an anonymous chat in a messenger.

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The Dobropillia man who aimed 1.5-ton bombs near Pokrovsk

The second man was an unemployed resident of Dobropillia and an agent of Russian military intelligence, which noticed him through anti-Ukrainian comments in Telegram channel chats, the SBU said. The agency's counterintelligence detained him near Pokrovsk in March this year. Investigators established that he directed 1.5-ton guided aerial bombs at fortified areas and at artillery positions that keep Russian assault groups under fire control on the Pokrovsk axis. Russian forces have leaned more heavily on heavy glide bombs across this stretch of front this year, hitting fortifications and reducing towns to rubble their infantry then uses as cover.

The Kostiantynivka resident who marked his own city

The third man, recruited by the FSB, lived in Kostiantynivka, and SBU military counterintelligence exposed him in August 2025, according to the report. He approached Russian services through pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and offered them his help.

He directed Russian guided aerial bombs and small first-person-view drones at the civilian infrastructure of the front-line city, according to the case materials. He also tracked the positions of Ukrainian drone units carrying out combat tasks on the Kramatorsk axis. Russian strikes on that axis have repeatedly hit residential blocks, with prosecutors opening war-crimes investigations.

A retired Russian FSB major-general whose company built secure communications for the Kremlin's security services and military has been found dead in his Moscow apartment, RFE/RL's Current Time reported. Russian outlets, citing their own sources, say the 83-year-old apparently killed himself, though authorities have released nothing. His death adds to a run of senior Russian military and security figures dying in the capital.

An FSB veteran who wired Russia's spies

Igor Laptev, 83, was found dead in an apartment in Moscow. Russian outlet MK and others, citing sources, wrote that he probably took his own life on the afternoon of 20 August. Izvestia claimed he died from a gunshot wound to the head. No suicide note or motive has been reported, and Russian law enforcement has issued no official statement.

Laptev was a chemist-technologist by training who served in the Soviet KGB, including combat in Afghanistan, according to Delovoy Peterburg. In the KGB and later the FSB, he worked on information security. In the late 1990s, he was a deputy minister for taxes and duties, and from 1998, he chaired the board of Informtekhnika i Svyaz, now the Informtekhnika group.

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A supplier to the FSB, the guards, and the army

The company says on its own site that it makes communications systems for federal authorities and security structures, including the FSB, the FSO federal guard service, the Defense Ministry, and the interior ministry. According to OSINT VARTA, it develops and produces specialized telecom equipment and software for secure communications, building switching systems and special-comms platforms for security agencies and state bodies. It also works with Voentelecom, a Russian Defense Ministry structure, to supply troops with digital telecom gear, Militarnyi reported.

A string of deaths among Russia's brass

Laptev's death is not the first in Moscow involving retired Russian generals. On 2 May, retired colonel-general Stanislav Petrov — founder of Russia's radiological, chemical and biological defense troops, who helped create the TOS-1 Buratino heavy flamethrower system — was found dead in a central Moscow apartment. Weeks ago, Moscow buried a general under roadblocks and metal detectors after a bombing that likely killed him at a commander's gathering.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) plans to abolish special border zones along several boundaries with Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, according to draft orders reviewed by the Russian outlet Agentstvo.

The proposed changes would remove restrictions that currently treat movement between Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine much like crossing an international border. The FSB says the move follows Russia’s claimed incorporation of the occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia.

FSB seeks to remove border zones

The draft orders, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda, would invalidate previous FSB orders establishing border zones along the boundaries between Russia’s Rostov and Voronezh oblasts and the occupied territories of Ukraine.

A similar change is planned for occupied Crimea, where the current border zone along the boundary with occupied Kherson Oblast would be abolished.

The existing rules effectively impose additional controls on people entering and leaving the occupied territories, making movement subject to procedures similar to those used at Russia’s state border.

In the draft orders, the FSB justifies the changes by referring to the alleged “admission into the Russian Federation” of the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts.

Russia illegally claimed to annex those territories, along with Zaporizhzhia Oblast, in September 2022. The move has been rejected by Ukraine and the international community, and Russia does not control all of the territory it claims to have annexed.

Border zone would remain around Crimea's islands

The FSB proposal would not completely eliminate the border zone in occupied Crimea.

A restricted zone would remain “within the boundaries of the Black Sea islands belonging to the Russian Federation,” according to the draft. The FSB’s regional directorate would determine where and when people could enter the zone and would install warning signs.

The proposed changes would remove the existing border zones along Russia’s boundaries with occupied Ukrainian territories, while retaining a border zone around certain Black Sea islands in occupied Crimea.

Russia treats occupied territory as part of its territory

The planned changes reflect Moscow’s effort to incorporate occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia’s administrative and legal system.

In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed so-called “accession treaties” claiming to incorporate Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts into Russia. Russia’s parliament subsequently approved the claims.

The treaties purported to define the boundaries of the annexed territories according to the borders they had on the day Russia claimed to admit them into the Russian Federation, despite Russia not controlling the entirety of those regions.

Russia previously used similar measures to formalize its control over occupied Crimea after illegally annexing the peninsula in 2014.

Russia is trying to kill Ukrainian soldiers by offering them dates with women who do not exist. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) has warned that the occupiers have begun actively using "honey traps" to try to kill Ukrainian military personnel, luring soldiers through online dating and staged meetings.

Honey traps were a classic method of the Soviet security services, the NKVD, MGB, and KGB, which used romantic or sexual relationships to recruit or gather compromising material on foreign diplomats, journalists, politicians, and military officers.

Russia has now revived the technique for a deadlier purpose: not to compromise Ukrainian soldiers but to kill them, and since the start of 2026, the SBU has prevented more than 50 such attempts.

It is a lethal variant of the Telegram-based recruitment and assassination campaign Russia has run throughout the war, which Ukraine has documented in bomb plots and forged-document schemes against soldiers.

How the trap works

The method starts on dating platforms. Russian agents work from fake accounts on dating sites and themed messenger chats, offering soldiers close relationships, then Russian special services arrange a meeting at a prepared location for the soldier's murder, according to the SBU.

The killers use bombs and poison. Most often, the attackers plant improvised bombs at the planned attack site, and they also use lethal poisons synthesized from narcotic, psychotropic, and other chemical substances.

The documented cases

The SBU described specific attempts it stopped. In March 2025, in Kharkiv Oblast, an FSB agent posing as a volunteer gave a soldier medicine and food laced with poison, and another agent sent a soldier a bottle of drink spiked with a lethal dose of methadone, proposing they drink the "gift" together over a video date. SBU officers intercepted the package, and chemical analysis confirmed the poison.

In January 2026, counterintelligence detained an FSB killer who lured a soldier to a Zaporizhzhia industrial zone for a "date," where a masked attacker stabbed him six times in the neck, chest, abdomen, and leg. The SBU detained the attacker and identified the woman who had baited the soldier from a fake account. The soldier survived.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) detained a Ukrainian Air Force major suspected of spying for Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the agency reported on July 3.

The alleged spy, arrested during a special operation in Lviv Oblast, was reportedly recruited through his ex-wife, a former military officer now cooperating with Russian forces in occupied Melitopol.

According to the SBU, the officer was gathering coordinates of operational airfields, logistics hubs, and maintenance centers used by Ukrainian combat aircraft. If successful, Russia intended to launch missile and drone strikes on those locations.

The SBU said the operation was coordinated with Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief and that the agent was supervised by Aleksandr Belodedov, an officer in the FSB's Alpha special operations unit.

Authorities said they intercepted the agent before any damage was done, documenting his communication with Russian intelligence and securing military sites at risk.

The suspect has been charged with high treason committed during wartime by a group of individuals under Ukraine's Criminal Code. He remains in custody and faces life imprisonment with asset seizure.

His ex-wife was also charged in absentia for treason during wartime.

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Editor's note: The story was updated after the Sputnik news agency disclosed the names of those detained in Baku.

Azerbaijani police detained two alleged agents of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on June 30 following searches at the Baku office of the Russian state-controlled news agency Sputnik, the Azerbaijani news outlet Apa.az reported.

Sputnik later elaborated that Igor Kartavykh, chief editor of Sputnik Azerbaijan, and Yevgeniy Belousov, managing editor, had been detained in Baku. The agency called the allegations that the detainees were FSB agents "absurd."

The move comes amid a major deterioration in Russian-Azerbaijani relations that followed the detention of over 50 Azerbaijanis as part of a murder investigation in Yekaterinburg on June 27. Two people died during the detentions, and three others were seriously injured.

The searches in the office of the Russian propaganda media outlet, which operates as a local branch of Russian state news agency Russia Today (RT), began on June 30.

The Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today, said that representatives of the Russian embassy in Baku were on their way to Sputnik's office. Sputnik employees were offline and probably did not have access to phones, she added.

According to Simonyan, some of Sputnik's employees were Russian citizens.

The Azerbaijani government ordered in February that the activities of Sputnik's Azerbaijani office be suspended.

The authorities said that the move was intended to ensure parity in the activities of Azerbaijan's state media abroad and foreign journalists in the country. This meant that the number of Sputnik Azerbaijan journalists working in Baku was to be equal to the number of journalists of the Azerbaijani news agency Azertadzh in Russia.

As a result, Sputnik Azerbaijan had to reduce its staff from 40 people to one but refused to do so and continued to operate despite the Azerbaijani government's decision, according to Apa.az.

As the Russian-Azerbaijani relations deteriorate, Azerbaijan has cancelled all planned cultural events hosted alongside Russian state and private organizations, the country's Culture Ministry announced on June 29.

The announcement followed the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens during police raids in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said on June 28 that Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov had died during a raid carried out by Russian authorities. Azerbaijan called the killings "ethnically motivated" and "unlawful" actions.

Baku called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and said it expected Moscow to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident.

In the meantime, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the detentions were carried out as part of an investigation into serious crimes. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed that these were cases related to murders committed in 2001, 2010, and 2011.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 authorized the ordering of at least two attempts to assassinate Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Maliuk told media on June 23,  RBC-Ukraine reports.

Gordon is a prominent journalist and media personality popular in both Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, known for his sharp criticism of Russian aggression. His YouTube channel has 4.5 million subscribers.

"Gordon triggers Russians. He has a large audience in Russia and in the (Russian) occupied territories (of Ukraine)," Maliuk said. "There are two networks that worked on Gordon that we can speak (publicly) about."

According to the SBU, the first network was led by a former lawmaker from the now-banned pro-Russian Party of Regions, originally from Poltava Oblast. The agency did not name the lawmaker.

The former MP was allegedly tasked by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) with coordinating surveillance and preparations for a strike that would kill Gordon.

"The plan was to use a homemade explosive device or coordinate a missile or a drone strike — but only if Gordon's presence in the targeted house was confirmed," Maliuk said.

The SBU had already been investigating the ex-lawmaker for involvement in a separate railway bombing case in Poltava Oblast when the assassination plot was uncovered. The group was arrested before executing the plan.

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The second assassination team, Maliuk said, was a criminal group from Dagestan working secretly for the FSB under the cover of being fugitives from Russian law enforcement.

"They sent this individual here long before the full-scale war. He carried out FSB tasks all the time — very professionally, very covertly," Maliuk said.

The group monitored Gordon's movements and residence, planning to assassinate him either with a short-barreled weapon if he was alone, or with a rifle and follow-up pistol shot if accompanied by a bodyguard.

The SBU detained the group, and its leader confessed to preparing the hit on Moscow's orders. He said he had been promised $400,000 for the killing.

Gordon, who has become a high-profile figure on Ukraine's information front, regularly uses his platform to expose Russian disinformation and advocate for Ukrainian sovereignty.

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Ukraine's security service (SBU) is teaching teenagers how to avoid recruitment by Russian intelligence online, the New York Times (NYT) reported on June 21.

"Maybe not all of these special operations are reported in the media — but believe me, the enemy is not sleeping... They are working actively and carrying out illegal activities, as strange as it may sound, directly inside your phones," SBU spokesperson Roksolana Yavorska-Isaienko told students.

Approximately 22% of Ukrainians recruited by Russian intelligence to conduct sabotage or terrorist attacks are minors, Artem Dekhtiarenko, SBU spokesperson, said on April 2.

Russian intelligence attempts to recruit Ukrainian civilians online, offering easy money in return for sharing sensitive data or preparing sabotage or terrorist acts.

Russian intelligence finds its recruits using social platforms, including Telegram, Discord, and TikTok.

Unsuspecting teenagers are often offered hundreds or even thousands of dollars to conduct simpler tasks such as delivering packages or taking photos of energy sites, the NYT reports.

More serious tasks are commonly assigned to teenagers once they have been blackmailed for conducting less serious operations beforehand or when their phones are hacked to reveal compromising photos.

Russian intelligence is actively attempting to recruit Ukrainian nationals for illegal operations across the EU, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) said on June 2.

"The recruitment of Ukrainians for hostile operations in Europe is yet another tool of hybrid aggression that the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine and the entire European community," HUR said.

The SBU caught a Russian agent as he was filming a military airfield in preparation for a Russian strike, the agency reported on June 15.

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 SBU said.

The Russian FSB allegedly offered "easy money" and instructed the recruit to find military facilities and carry out reconnaissance on the ground.

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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.

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