Russia on Monday said it had expelled a local translator working for the OSCE's monitoring mission in Ukraine's separatist east for allegedly handing Kiev intelligence on the Moscow-backed rebels. Russia's FSB security service said it had "exposed and detained on Russian soil a Ukrainian national who was an agent of the Ukrainian Security Force," adding that the man had confessed.
The man, identified as Artyom Shestakov, worked as a translator for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European body that monitors Ukraine's shaky truce.
He was recruited to work for Ukraine's security service on a trip to Kiev in June 2015, the FSB said.
He then handed Kiev information gleaned through his work with the OSCE in the rebels' self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic, meeting rebel officials and police, FSB said.
He reported "the movements of military equipment and rebel troops" and passed on mobile numbers of military commanders, the feared Russian security agency said.
This information helped the Ukrainian government forces kill a rebel leader, Pavel Dremov, in a car bombing in December 2015 in the Lugansk area, the FSB claimed.
Since Shestakov did not obtain information that undermined Russia's security, however, "he was allowed to return home to Ukraine," the security agency said, adding that he would not be allowed to re-enter.
The OSCE's special monitoring mission to Ukraine said on Facebook that "one of its local staff members" in the Lugansk region "was temporary out of reach while being on leave.
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