Ukraine: do not come here to spy

There is a simple rule for foreigners in wartime Ukraine: do not try to play both sides. On 29 October 2025 the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) detained a British citizen in Kyiv and accused him of acting for Russia. According to Ukrainian prosecutors and the SBU’s published account, the man is a former military instructor who had taught recruits in southern Ukraine and then passed sensitive information to a handler from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Investigators say he transmitted the coordinates of active defence facilities, including locations he knew from his own training work, and that he was preparing attacks. He faces up to twelve years’ imprisonment. 

Some details of the case remain withheld. Ukrainian statements have not named the suspect, and early wire reports referred only to a “European” or “foreign” ex-soldier before national outlets clarified he is British. His Ukrainian Armed Forces callsign is believed to be "Horse". But the core allegations are consistent: recruitment after he offered services in pro-Kremlin online groups; tasking by an FSB officer; and the provision of targeting data about Ukrainian military infrastructure. These particulars, if proven, would place the conduct squarely within Ukraine’s wartime criminal provisions on unauthorised dissemination of defence information and collaboration with the enemy. 

The case illustrates three elements of Russia’s tradecraft against Ukraine. First, Moscow seeks out foreigners with legitimate access, however limited, to Ukrainian military locations. Instructional or volunteer roles become vectors for collection because they provide plausible reasons to be on bases and training grounds. Second, initial recruitment often occurs in the open—message boards, Telegram channels, and comment threads frequented by sympathisers—before a cut-out or handler takes the conversation to encrypted channels. Third, the intelligence being sought is frequently pedestrian but lethal: grid references, shift patterns, delivery timetables, or the whereabouts of specific units. In a war prosecuted by long-range strike and cheap reconnaissance, a handful of coordinates can be the difference between routine and catastrophe. The SBU’s public narrative in this arrest fits that pattern precisely. 

Ukraine’s agencies are not acting in a vacuum. Britain herself has confronted a series of Russia-linked prosecutions since 2024, from the Wagner-orchestrated arson attack on a warehouse storing aid for Ukraine, to recent National Security Act arrests of men suspected of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Those cases—some now resulting in convictions and lengthy sentences—underscore a broader theme: the Kremlin’s appetite for sabotage and influence operations across Europe, and the willingness of a small number of Western nationals to take the rouble. Ukraine watches these developments closely because the same networks and methods spill over its borders. 

What, then, should foreign visitors, contractors, and volunteers understand? First, that Ukraine is a state at war. She will investigate anomalies in your movements, communications, and associations; she will do so lawfully yet firmly; and she will prosecute those who cross the line. Secondly, transparency is a shield. Foreign trainers and consultants should ensure that their Ukrainian counterparts know exactly where they are going, what they are doing, and why. Thirdly, casual online bravado is perilous. Boasting in a hostile forum or offering ‘help’ to the wrong audience may be the very opening an adversary needs to begin a recruitment conversation. The SBU’s chronology in this week’s arrest—starting with online offers of service—should be warning enough. 

None of this justifies hysteria; it demands sobriety. Ukraine’s openness to foreigners—journalists, aid workers, technicians, legal advisers, trainers—has been essential to her survival. But openness is not naïveté. The British suspect now in custody allegedly used knowledge gained under the pretence of assistance to help an enemy that bombs cities and abducts children. If the charges are sustained in court, he will have betrayed not only the country that hosted him but the men and women he taught. The moral is as blunt as the title of this essay: do not come here to spy. If you truly wish to help, do so within Ukraine’s laws, with humility, and with the understanding that in this war every careless word and every illicit coordinate has a human cost.