A court in Kyiv sentenced a SBU major general to 12 years for treason

On August 14, the Shevchenko district court of Kyiv sentenced Major General, former first deputy head of the Center for Special Operations “A” of the Security Service of Ukraine Valery Shaitanov to 12 years in prison. He was found guilty of treason, attempted terrorist attack, illegal storage of ammunition and explosives.

Shaitanov allegedly led an assault group that took control of the House of Trade Unions during the events on the Maidan in Kyiv in 2014, knocking out demonstrators from there. After the change of power in Ukraine, Shaitanov allegedly began to cooperate with the Russian special services. The court agreed with the investigation data that Shaitanov collected information that constituted a state secret and passed it on to Russia. It is confirmed that the general was an FSB agent with the pseudonym “Bobyl”, one of his tasks was to search for persons among former employees of the SBU to carry out a terrorist attack.

As stated in the message of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the terrorist attack was supposed to be committed against the “major of the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria” (an unrecognized state organization created in the 1990s on the territory of Chechnya by supporters of its independence from Russia), which since February 2015 wars in the east of Ukraine “was led by the International Peacekeeping Battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev”. The name of this person is not mentioned in the message, however, it is obviously a Chechen commander Adam Osmaev, who fought in the Donbass on the side of Ukraine.

In 2017, two attempts were made on Osmaev in Ukraine. In June 2017, he was seriously wounded in Kyiv, it was claimed that he was shot by a criminal authority from St. Petersburg, Artur Kurmakaev. In October 2017, shots were fired at the car in which Osmaev was driving. His wife Amina Okueva was killed, Osmaev was wounded. In the message of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, it is said that law enforcement officers “warned of a murder planned by the special services of the Russian Federation.”