Over the past few weeks, SBU counterintelligence has been exposing Russian agents in Ukrainian cities literally every day.

As practice shows, spies of the Kremlin turn out to be people with a perfect record, TSN reports. 

It is difficult to recognize traitors in people detained by counterintelligence.

In Kramatorsk, a nurse of the ground defense combat unit was exposed, she was deliberately giving the routes of our equipment to the enemy.

And a woman in the south of Ukraine adjusted Russian missiles at civilian hospitals.

Her accomplice-agent hid behind the word "volunteer".

All of them had a solid alibi and this made them ideal spies for the GRU and the FSB, but Ukrainian counterintelligence outplayed the enemy.

Perhaps the loudest exposure of recent months took place in Ochakov, which had to surrender to the occupiers without a fight.

This would have happened if the Russian military intelligence agent, better known as the GRU, had not been caught by our special forces.

45-year-old Eduard Shevchenko, native of Murmansk - the same agent - pseudonym "Master".

His entire military career was spent in Ukraine.

At the beginning of 2000, he graduated from the naval school in Sevastopol.

In 2014, he became a member of the ATO, a hero of the battles for Sloviansk, this is already an extremely high level of agent protection.

Since 2016, he has been the commander of the 73rd Naval Center of Special Operations Forces, based in Ochakiv.

The elite unit of the "Sea Seals", and he is also a knight of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and a full knight of the Order "For Courage". 

So how and why did he become an agent of Russia?

- You understand that it depends on him, whether he wants to pass or not.

- And where will he go from the submarine?

- And what kind of person?

- The general will call him.

- General of what?

- Three letters, the first G.

- I realized.

"The fact of communication with a citizen of the Russian Federation, a native of the city of Kramatorsk, Serhiy Oleksandrovich Kolesnikov, born in 1971, was established," says the operative.

On the published records of the SBU, Shevchenko's conversation with Serhii Kolesnikov, an employee of the GRU.

"Friend" of Shevchenko, who was supposed to talk with the Russian general, the mayor of the city of Ochakov - Serhii Bychkov.

At the time of the negotiations, Eduard Shevchenko was the deputy mayor of Ochakov, also in charge of security.

about this in an exclusive interview.

"Cameras are placed around the city, I work in the "safe city" system," Shevchenko says. 

"After certain questions were put to me, I accordingly turned to certain authorities," says the mayor of Ochakov, Serhii Bychkov. 

Ochakiv, a city on the banks of the Dnipro-Buzka estuary, is ideal for the landing of Russian troops.

A gentle coast, many backwaters in which you can easily hide.

But the Russians did not manage to implement these plans.

Now they are reducing Ochak to ruins from afar - with rockets and artillery. 

Agent "Master" did a lot for this - he collected information about our bases, informed the curators about the movement of units in the coastal areas. He easily monitored all the maneuvers of the Defense Forces through street cameras. The surrender of Ochakov would be a strategic success - and a direct route to Odesa, bypassing Mykolaiv and Kherson. The agent was promised maximum security:

- So, look, somewhere until the end of the month it will be tough.

I will warn you to leave the city.

- Well, I would like to.

So.

- When ours pass there, ours will come, you know what to say and how to get in touch with me.

And then a tall person will call them and tell them not to go where they don't need to.

- OK, I heard you.

This is not the first time that the choice of the Russian special services falls on "Master".

2 years ago, he was already a participant in a high-profile spy story.

The then commander of the Special Operations Forces, Ihor Lunyov, was abducted.

The prize was supposed to be 100,000 dollars, and the motive was anger and resentment for his dismissal from the army, which he considered illegal.

Although the "master" is an experienced special agent and money is needed for the treatment of a sick child, he probably, having weighed his strength and assessed all the risks, refused.

Now he went to cooperation... Why?

There is no simple answer.

All the combined factors could have played a role here: both money and the promised privileges from Ochakov's occupation authorities and the desire to finally take revenge.

He often repeated about the offense against former managers.

However, by disrupting the plans of Shevchenko and the Russian General Staff, the SBU counter-intelligence literally saved Ukraine's reputation.

"Any city that would be captured in this way would be a huge success simply for the Russian special services, the GRU, in particular, and for Russia in general.

Imagine a situation when we constantly demand huge volumes of weapons of new technologies and so on and show….

and it would demoralize a lot of people in Ukraine.

It would demoralize our Western partners, how can this happen when the war is full-scale with huge casualties and such a special operation is taking place," says political expert Oleksiy Holobutsky.

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