MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. A Russian court sentenced Sergey Shvidenko, an operative of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s spy agency, to six and a half years in jail for overseeing a sabotage plot in Crimea, the Federal Security Service told TASS.
"Based in Ukraine, Shvidenko coordinated the training and supervised a sabotage group that was sent to Russia," the Federal Security Service disclosed.
In 2016, the group’s members, which included four officers of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Chief Intelligence Directorate and a local asset, were taken into custody, the FSB said. They were given orders and drew up plans to blow up a tower belonging to a radio and television transmission center in Crimea, a mobile gas-fired power plant, a fuel warehouse and a radio tower of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, according to the security service.
The names of the agents are Dmitry Shtyblikov, Alexey Stogny, Gleb Shably, Alexey Bessarabov and the name of the asset is Vladimir Dudka, the FSB revealed.
Russian security agents nabbed Shvidenko in July 2021, and he confessed to hatching a sabotage plot in Russia under the direction of Colonel Nikolay Spodar, who headed the South Unit of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Chief Intelligence Directorate, according to the FSB.
An investigation has fully established the guilt of the former Ukrainian military intelligence operative, and in November 2021 a court considered the evidence submitted by the FSB, and consequently convicted Captain 1st Rank Shvidenko of plotting to commit crimes against the security of Russia, sentencing him to six and a half years in a maximum-security prison, the FSB stated.