In the United States, retired officer David Slater was sentenced to 70 months in prison. He worked as a civilian in the Air Force and passed classified information about the Russian-Ukrainian war on a dating website.
ABC News writes about this.
After retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2020, Slater had a security clearance at the US Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Prosecutors said that as part of the position, which he held from August 2021 to about April 2022, Slater attended briefings on the Russia-Ukraine war that were classified as top secret. He was arrested in March 2024.
In July, the 64-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to disclose national defense information. In exchange for his plea, two other charges were dropped.
In his plea agreement, Slater admitted that he conspired to pass classified information he learned at those briefings through a dating website to an unnamed accomplice who claimed to be a woman from Ukraine. According to the plea agreement, the classified information related to military objectives and Russian military capabilities.
According to the original indictment, the co-conspirator regularly asked Slater for classified information. In one message, she called him “my secret informant, my love!” and in another, she concluded by “You are my secret agent. With love.” In a third one, she wrote, “Dave, I hope NATO has a very nice ʼsurprise’ for Putin tomorrow! Would you tell me?”
It is not known whether this person was from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, or another country. The platform where these conversations took place is also not named.
In addition to imprisonment, the man was fined $25 000 and ordered to spend a year under law enforcement supervision after his release from prison.
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