The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), together with the Main Directorate of the National Police, detained agents of the Russian special services in Nikolaev, who organized a pro-Russian underground and prepared stories for the Russian propaganda agency RIA Novosti on order. This is stated on the official website of the service.
According to the SBU, the attackers were engaged in "hidden preparation of custom-made stories for the Kremlin information resources." In the materials, they called for the capture of the region of Ukraine and the physical liquidation of the leadership of the regional military administration (OVA, the official authorities of Ukraine, in contrast to the occupational military-civilian administrations created by Russia – VGA) .
The report says that in order to disguise subversive activities, the agents posed as bloggers, allegedly informing citizens about the situation in the Nikolaev region. Representatives of RIA Novosti determined the topics of propaganda materials, as well as the timing of their preparation and transmission to Moscow. One of the tasks of the attackers was "gathering intelligence about the places of temporary deployment and movement of units of the defense forces in the front-line areas." The SBU claims that the agents received financial rewards for this. The information was transmitted through anonymous Telegram channels in the form of media files with a text description.
“The hostile henchmen are two local residents who, after the start of a full-scale invasion, were recruited by the Russian special services. The SBU investigators informed both detainees of suspicion under Part 2 of Art. 111 (high treason committed under martial law) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The court chose them as a preventive measure in the form of detention.”
RIA Novosti is one of the largest state news agencies, part of the MIA Rossiya Segodnya media group, headquartered in Moscow. The agency adheres to the Kremlin's position, in all incidents it transmits only the official position of the Russian authorities, quotes the first persons of the state. With the outbreak of war, RIA publishesmaterials with the headings: “What Russia should do with Ukraine”, “Europe is afraid of denazification”, “How to cure Ukrainians from the Stockholm syndrome”, “Russia entered the fight with the West for the future of the world”. Many of these articles and columns get about one and a half million views.
The agency also regularly publishes fakes , which The Insider exposes in the “Antifake” section. So, on October 22, RIA Novosti claimed that residents of Helsinki and Luxembourg, fleeing the cold, come to warm themselves at the local representative offices of Rossotrudnichestvo under the name “Russian Houses”. However, in Luxembourg in those days, the weather was still very warm, almost summer. On October 21, when Rossotrudnichestvo “warmed up” local residents, the daytime temperature was 18 degrees, and at night it did not fall below 11. In general, the weather in mid-October in the country turned out to be warm – from 17 to 21 degrees during the day, 10-14 degrees at night.