Two young people were desperately short of cash. Then the Kremlin stepped in to help.
Olena, 19, and Bohdan, 22, smile happily as they enter the room; they’re in handcuffs and are accompanied by armed Security Service of Ukraine agents.
It’s the first time the couple has seen each other in a month; both are being held in a detention center until their trial on treason charges.
Olena is blonde with soft, childish features, and Bohdan is an athletic young man. Both admit that they colluded with Russia in hopes of getting a 15-year prison sentence instead of spending life behind bars. They were not identified by their last names.
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The security service, or SBU, accused Olena and Bohdan of using spy cameras to watch Western weapons deliveries and a police station, and that they were preparing to reveal air defense locations in Kyiv and the northern Chernihiv regions to the Russians. They were caught by SBU agents.
Bohdan and Olena are not alone. The SBU has investigated more than 24,000 cases of crimes against Ukrainian national security since February 2022, and more than 4,100 cases of state treason, with more than 2,300 being currently before the courts, said the SBU press service.
Crimes and misdemeanors
“It all started when we found an ad in a Telegram channel called Jobs in Kyiv. The ad promised easy money. We started doing it, because we really needed some cash, like most of the people in Ukraine nowadays,” said Olena.
“We really wanted to live together, but we were in debt, worked a lot, fought a lot because we still had no money,” Bohdan said.
First, Olena and Bohdan were asked to scout out local supermarkets, taking pictures of shelves and price tags and checking shop schedules. But over time, the tasks changed.
They got orders to set cameras next to a police station and then on a railroad used to carry shipments of Western weapons into Ukraine. Then there was the final task — set up spy cameras to spot air defense locations in the Kyiv region.
Bohdan admitted he figured out they were working for Russia after the first two jobs, but preferred to “think positively.”
There was also fear about what Russia could do to them if they tried to stop. “Those guys would not let you jump off that easily,” Olena said.
Usually, Russians promise different sums to their recruits in Ukraine, depending on the complexity of the job, an SBU official said on condition of anonymity to reveal details of investigations.
The tasks can vary: from taking pictures of military factories, railways, electricity infrastructure and oil refineries — which helps Russians locate targets and direct missiles and drones — to bombing military recruitment offices and police stations, and burning military cars.
Four years into a brutal war, the motivation for turncoats is more money than ideology. There are few Russian allies left in territory held by Ukraine, instead, Russia hunts for agents among the poor and desperate who need cash, several SBU officials said.
Olena and Bohdan admit that they were helping Russia for money. She worked as a fast-food cook, sometimes for 12 to 16 hours a day for little pay, while he worked temporary jobs.
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“The reward can start from several hundred to several thousand hryvnias, with no guarantee that they would actually get paid,” the SBU official said. “Olena and Bohdan were getting 400-3,000 hryvnias (€8-€62) for a mission.”
Even the money Moscow was paying left them struggling to survive.
The Kremlin’s game
The SBU said that Russia is directing a lot of resources to destabilize Ukraine from the inside.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, the country’s top law enforcement agency, has registered 1,500 criminal proceedings for treason against Ukrainian officials, judges, military personnel and law enforcement officers since 2022.
“Each fact of high treason, collaboration, aiding the aggressor state, and other crimes is thoroughly investigated by law enforcers in accordance with their jurisdiction,” the SBU said.
Then there is the issue of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation, where the struggle to survive can put them on the wrong side of Ukrainian law.
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“In no way am I justifying real collaborators. But many of those on trial for collaborationism are just people trying to survive under Russian occupation,” said Hanna Rassamakhina, head of the War and Justice Department at the Media Initiative for Human Rights nongovernmental organization. “We see that any person who remained in the occupied territory, who is forced to look for work, means of livelihood, of course, he is in contact with the occupation authorities against his will, such a person cannot be 100 percent sure that he will not be accused of collaborationism later.”
While some more high-profile defendants can hire expensive lawyers to try to get them off the hook and cut their sentences, that’s unlikely to happen for Bohdan and Olena.
“A professional lawyer is often enough to destroy the accusation. But many of these people are not able to hire a professional lawyer. In the end, courts actually accept all the arguments of the prosecution, and these people are convicted,” Rassamakhina said.
That prompts many accused to go for plea deals to reduce the harshness of the sentence.
Olena and Bohdan have made peace with the fact that they will likely not see each other for at least 15 years. They are planning to meet again after they have served their time.
When reminded about a possibility of being released from prison if a convict agrees to serve in the Ukrainian army, Bohdan said he would rather stay in prison.
“I already talked to some inmates about that and, you know … People don’t come back from there … And I don’t want to waste my life in vain,” Bohdan said.