“Tried to recruit Russian pilots”
How registered On the FSB website, Ukrainian military intelligence officers “acted on behalf of their country’s political leadership, trying to recruit Russian military pilots for a monetary reward and a guarantee of obtaining citizenship of one of the EU countries.”
“(They tried. – Gazeta.ru) tried to persuade them to fly and land at airports controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the report says.
The Russian department added that “during the operational game” counterintelligence officers received information that helped the Armed Forces “inflict fire damage to a number of Ukrainian military installations.”
In addition, the FSB said that employees and accomplices of the Ukrainian special services involved in the operation have already been identified.
According to TASS, citing FSB video footage, Ukrainian military intelligence was ready to pay pilots up to $ 2 million for a hijacked aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces. According to the Russian authorities, the Ukrainian army had to simulate the intervention of a hijacked plane. They were interested in the Russian Su-24M, Su-34 and Tu-22M3.
Allegedly, the Ukrainian intelligence promised to send the spouses of the Russian army to the European Union – Germany, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries – in exchange for planes and open a foreign exchange account there.
“As follows from the above fragments of correspondence between the Ukrainian intelligence officers and the Russian pilots in the messengers, in order to be ready to hijack the plane, the GUR will pay up to $ 4,000 in advance, which will be transferred by couriers, and then promised to pay. another two million dollars,” reports RIA Novosti, citing FSB data.
“Clonidine poisoning”
Ukrainian intelligence also plans to take hostage the family of a Russian military pilot who was about to hijack a plane bound for Ukraine, the Russian FSB’s operations officer told Russia 24 TV channel.
“As soon as a Russian pilot’s family members leave Russia, they become hostages in the hands of the GUR. Blackmail methods, threats, pressure on relatives have become an integral part of the activities of the Ukrainian special services. There are no moral and moral restrictions for them. They would have simply abducted them,” the FSB official said.
And it was alleged that the sailor of the Russian warplane, which the Ukrainian army was trying to hijack, was planned to be poisoned with clonidine. The TV channel broadcast a portion of the phone conversation between a “Ukrainian officer and a Russian pilot” who allegedly agreed to hijack the plane.
The Ukrainian soldier asked the pilot if the plane’s navigator was drinking coffee. He also offered to prescribe a drug that would take effect “within 30-40 minutes”. Rossiya 24 then shows footage of two packages of clonidine, 10 ampoules each, confiscated from a cache in Volgograd, allegedly the same drug the Ukrainian officer was talking about.
“Obviously, the operation itself was carried out with the support of the Westerners, especially the British intelligence services,” said the FSB official.
The TV channel also showed four thousand dollars allegedly confiscated from a Ukrainian courier. According to the FSB, the money was intended for a Russian pilot who agreed to hijack the plane.
“I took it as a joke”
Rossiya 24 also released a Russian military pilot who helped the FSB thwart Ukraine’s hijacking plans. He said he was approached by “a man who offered to smuggle aviation equipment into Ukrainian territory for a certain amount”.
“At the beginning, I took the information from a person I did not know as a joke, of course. However, after further communication it became clear that I was dealing with representatives of the special services of Ukraine and their Western allies. With these actions, I had to show, in their opinion, my negative attitude towards the policy of the country’s leadership to conduct a special operation, ”the statement said.
He added that the Ukrainian intelligence offered him passports of European countries, promising a comfortable life abroad.
From the video materials published by the FSB, it is also followed that, during the preparations for the hijacking, the Ukrainian intelligence itself disclosed to Russia the location of the Ukrainian air defense systems and airfields. This information was allegedly given to the pilot, who pretended to admit to hijacking.
The data includes air defense coverage areas in the southeast of Ukraine, plans of the airfields of Ozernoe (Chernihiv region) and Starokonstantinov (Khmelnytsky district), elevation map of the vicinity of Priluki airport (Chernihiv region), and elevation map of Zhytomyr district. In addition, it is installed where the largest number of portable anti-aircraft missile systems is concentrated in Ukrainian settlements.
According to Rossiya 24, they also showed a fragment of the correspondence of the lead researcher of the Bellingcat publication (the publication is recognized in Russia as a foreign media agent and is included in the list of undesirable organizations). Ukrainian military intelligence operation.
The story of the channel says that through Grozev’s coordinator, he found two female couriers who met at the train station in Lipetsk with a courier who was being held by Ukrainian intelligence officers from Moscow, carrying an advance of $4,000 for a Russian pilot who allegedly agreed to hijack the plane.
“Not just because of Grozev’s statements that he was involved in MI6, but recently Ukrainian intelligence has stopped hiding its ties with the special services of NATO countries,” an FSB official told TV channel.