Priest of Moscow-controlled church sentenced to 15 years for leaking Ukraine’s defenses to Russia

Ukraine's Security Service collected the evidence base on a priest of the Moscow-controlled church, which helped to expose him as a member of the FSB's intelligence apparatus.

The spy collected intelligence on the defense system of the Sumy region during Russia's invasion in 2022.

The SSU detained a cassocked Russian agent in March this year while he was attempting to pass intelligence to Russian special forces. The aggressor remotely recruited the priest after the start of the full-scale war. The intelligence he gathered included information on military command posts and artillery warehouses, which Russia could use for targeting strikes.

To gather the data, the priest tried to use local residents in the dark, asking them for the "necessary" information under the guise of everyday conversations. He also recorded the locations of Ukrainian troops while traveling around the border region.

The Russian agent transmitted the received intelligence to his FSB supervisor through anonymous messengers, using text messages and georeferenced media files. During searches at the residence, the SSU found cell phones he used to communicate with the aggressor and pro-Kremlin literature.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is subordinate to the Russian church. Ukraine has long accused the Moscow Patriarchate's representatives in Ukraine of serving as the Kremlin's propaganda arm in the war.