The court chose a preventive measure against Roman Chervinskyi, the former acting commander of one of the units of the Special Operations Forces. He will be held without bail for two months.
This is reported by "Suspilne".
The court session was closed. The lawyers stated that Chervinskyi was illegally detained and imprisoned. They will appeal the courtʼs decision.
The case concerns the failed hijacking of a Russian plane, which, according to the investigation, led to a Russian missile attack on the Kanatove airfield in the Kirovohrad region in July 2022. The plan was that a recruited Russian pilot would fly to Ukraine, where Ukrainians would meet him, help him hide, and pay him.
Two days after the attempted hijacking of the plane, the FSB of Russia announced that it allegedly thwarted the operation of Ukrainian military intelligence. Propaganda Russian media accused Bellingcat project journalist Hristo Grozev of participating in the operation.
Grozev, in a comment to Radio Liberty, denied his participation in any special services operations. According to him, the Bellingcat team filmed an investigative documentary about how the FSB and Ukrainian special services have been playing the game for many years, trying to deceive each other.
On his Twitter, Grozev added that his participation in this operation was limited to the fact that he was documenting the events for his film. The investigator called the special operation, which Russia tried to present as its achievement, "a serious mistake by the FSB", because the special service revealed the identities of dozens of counterintelligence officers, their work methods, and other secret data.
- On April 21, the SBU reported the suspicion to ex-intelligence officer Roman Chervinskyi. The SBU claims that Chervinsky arbitrarily organized a failed special operation to hijack a Russian military plane, which led to the leakage of data about the airfield.
- On April 20, it became known that the Security Service of Ukraine initiated a criminal case due to the unsuccessful operation of the Ukrainian military to hijack a Russian plane.
- On April 24 , the SBU detained Roman Chervinskyi.