Budapest’s national military intelligence agency operated a clandestine spy network in west Ukraine with the mission of determining the level of local support to a possible invasion by Hungarian troops, the Security Service of Ukraine (Служба безпеки України – SBU) said in a Friday statement.
SBU counter-intelligence operators in Ukraine’s far-western Zakarpattia (old name: Transcarpathia) region arrested two Ukrainian citizens secretly recruited to determine whether or not people living there would approve of a Hungarian “peacekeeping contingent” sent to the province, among other hostile spy missions ordered by Hungary and targeting Ukrainian national security, SBU spokesman Artem Dekhtaryenko said in the video announcement.
The arrests, he said, marked the first time ever Ukrainian counterintelligence had broken up a spy ring from a NATO state. The pair also was tasked to collect sensitive information about the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) installations and units, to track local officials, and to construct and expand a local agent network, Dekhtaryenko said.
The SBU said one suspect is a former Ukrainian military man, aged 40, from the western Beregov district who was recruited by Hungarian military intelligence in 2021 as a sleeper agent “in stand-by mode.”
The SBU statement identified his handler as a member of Hungarian military intelligence who, in September 2024, ordered the Ukrainian agent to begin active spy work against Ukrainian targets. The Hungarian spymaster’s identity and location are known to Ukrainian secret services, Dekhtaryarenko said.
Source: www.kyivpost.com
