Separatists acted on a tip to capture SBU officers, Ukraine’s security service says (VIDEO)

The SBU officers were captured in the city of Horlivka in Donetsk region on April 26. They were then transported to Sloviansk and are still being held there, the SBU believes. They were reportedly on a mission to conduct surveillance of and possibly arrest alleged Russian Military Intelligence Lieutenant-Colonel Igor Bezlier, who is suspected of involvement in the murder of a local city councilman. 

Several Russian media released shocking photos and video footage of three men in their underwear, bruised and blindfolded, and covered in blood. The men were recorded undergoing a barrage of questions that resembled a hostile interrogation. They confessed to being SBU officers on a counterterrorism mission. 

Their identification and personal effects were sprawled on a nearby table, showing their ranks being lieutenant colonel, major and captain of the elite Alpha unit of the SBU.

Ostapenko said that SBU has information that the three officers were captured because of an information leak inside the agency, but emphasized that it didn’t come from the anti-terrorist center’s headquarters.

“We are seeking and have almost identified from where the information was leaked. We knew they were under surveillance,” she said. “I hope soon we will be able to tell who betrayed, how and for what.”

In an April 25 briefing, SBU Anti-Terrorist Operation commander Vasyl Krutov said that it is very difficult “to implement, let alone plan (counterterrorism) missions in extreme secrecy” because of spies, agents and informers working on Russia’s behalf. 

Ostapenko added that Kremlin-backed militants are holding some 40 people hostage in Sloviansk and assured that Ukrainian forces are working to release them. She did not provide any details.

Previously, separatists said they would exchange hostages for their own militants, but Ostapenko said there were no negotiations about any exchange as of yet.

Among the hostages, there are seven members of a military monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They were captured on April 25, along with five Ukrainian military personnel, and only one of them was later released for medical reasons.

SBU showed a transcript of an intercepted telephone conversation that implicates alleged Russian Military Intelligence Colonel Igor Girkin (formerly known as Igor Strelkov, by the SBU) of giving the order to detain the OSCE monitors. He is wanted by the SBU and is believed to be based in Sloivansk and hides behind a human shield inside one of the occupied government buildings. 

Ostapenko said that the SBU on April 25 caught Igor Perepechayenko, the deputy of the self-proclaimed leader of Sloviansk, Viacheslav Ponomariov.

In a video of Perepechayenko’s interrogation demonstrated by the SBU, he said that on April 22 he traveled to Moscow by charter flight to give interview to a Russian TV channel and also to get instructions from the Russian security services.

“They gave me $19,000 in Moscow and also special (telephone encryption) devices,” Perepecheyenko said in the video. 

There have been about 40 people detained by SBU for spying in Ukraine to date, including 25 Russian nationals. But the Ukrainian media have not been allowed access to these people, causing speculation that the SBU may be exaggerating its success.

Ostapenko said that, unlike the separatists, the SBU treats the detainees well. “Look at our officers with blood on their faces and look at Perepechayenko, who sits as a regular man at the table and just speaks,” she told the Kyiv Post.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at grytsenko@kyivpost.com