The Lugansk People’s Republic State Security Ministry (MGB) has filed a criminal case against an employee of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who passed sensitive information to the secret service of a NATO country, the MGB press service reported.
Criminal proceedings were filed under LPR Criminal Code Article 276 (espionage).
Investigators found that British national David Orrells, head of the OSCE Lugansk Mission technical monitoring group, had gathered and passed aerial reconnaissance data on LPR militia positions and locations of its armaments and hardware, as well as civil infrastructure facilities coordinates to a NATO country secret service.
“Under the program of partnership with NATO, the information was passed to Ukraine which used it when shelling the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic,” the MGB said.
The LPR Supreme Court earlier sentenced interpreter of the Lugansk Office of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine Maxim Petrov to 13 years in prison for high treason.
MGB officers had detained two OSCE SMM Lugansk Team members on suspicion of high treason. One of the detainees admitted passing sensitive information to foreign secret services. The LPR MGB also recorded facts of sabotage carried out by LPR residents as members of the OSCE SMM Lugansk team.
LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik banned OSCE SMM activities in the Republic on April 30, 2022. Pasechink said that the OSCE SMM had never contributed to the settlement of the Donbass conflict.
The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. The peace talks that began soon thereafter failed to reach tangible results due to Kiev’s position to settle the conflict by force.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation to protect Donbass residents from Ukrainian aggression. Prior to that, LPR and DPR Heads Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin asked the Russian leader to provide military assistance.
The Lugansk People’s Republic acceded to Russia on September 30, 2022 following the unification referendum.*i*ie
