IC Operations & Tradecraft — 2026-06-29

Former SBU Counter-Terrorism Chief Sentenced to Life for Passing State Secrets to Russian FSB Since 2018

BLUFMoscow's 2018 recruitment of an officer at SBU's anti-terrorism command level exposes a pre-invasion penetration strategy whose full intelligence damage remains unquantifiable despite Kyiv's claimed mitigation.

The Shevchenkivskyy District Court in Kyiv sentenced Col Dmytro Kozyura, former chief of staff of the SBU anti-terrorism centre, to life in prison for high treason under martial law 12. The SBU and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said he was recruited by the FSB in Vienna in March 2018 for financial reward, with active collection resuming in December 2024 12. From a Kyiv safehouse using a dedicated phone and router, Kozyura passed documents marked "secret" on SBU command posts, strike casualties, military unit positions, and critical infrastructure data 12. Before his February 2025 arrest, the SBU said it monitored him continuously, using that window to flood Russian forces with disinformation while blocking his access to sensitive intelligence 1.

Analysis
Recruitment in March 2018 marks deliberate pre-positioning of a counter-terrorism asset four years before the conflict that made that access most valuable. The materials passed from December 2024 through February 2025, including air defense plans for gas infrastructure and strike casualty figures, fed Russian targeting in near-real time. SBU's claim to have controlled the channel as a disinformation window is plausible given the arrest's operational security, but all reporting traces to official Ukrainian sources with no independent corroboration. The genuine intelligence loss before that window opened is unverifiable from open sources. If Kozyura suspected surveillance, Russian handlers may have throttled his tasking, meaning the actual damage is smaller than official statements imply.

3 sources

Senior Ukrainian intelligence official jailed for life for spying for Russia - BBC
SBU colonel sentenced to life imprisonment for transferring secret data to Russian special services - Kravchenko - Ukrainian News Agency (UNN)
Former SBU counter-terrorism chief sentenced to life in prison for passing state secrets to Russia - Kyiv Independent