Ukraine arrests air force officer for spying on Western-supplied fighter jets

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KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s domestic security agency has detained an air force officer on charges of having spied for Russia by leaking the location of prized F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighter jets, officials said on Wednesday.

The unidentified officer, a flight instructor holding the rank of major, stands accused of helping Russia carry out air strikes by providing coordinates and suggesting strike tactics, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement.

“In particular, the enemy’s priority targets were airfields where F-16s, Mirage 2000s and Su-24s were based,” it said. F-16s are U.S.-made and Mirages are French while the Su-24 is an older, Soviet-manufactured jet bomber.

“The agent collected the coordinates of the location of these aircraft, schedules and …the order of their departure.”

The SBU said the suspect had also passed data on Ukrainian air force personnel and combat tactics to Russian military intelligence.

Moscow regularly targets airfields and military bases across Ukraine, especially areas it believes are home to Western-provided weapons like the F-16 or Mirage jets.

The two aircraft have been critical to bolstering Ukraine’s defences against mounting Russian air strikes and grinding battlefield advances in Moscow’s three-and-a-half-year-old, full-scale invasion.

This month, the SBU detained two Chinese nationals on suspicion of spying on Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missile programme, a key part of Kyiv’s growing domestic arms industry.

(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic and Dan Peleschuk; editing by Mark Heinrich)