Ukraine
fired its deputy-head of foreign intelligence and expelled a
Belarussian diplomat a day after the government of Belarus claimed that
it busted a Ukrainian spy ring that recruited local agents. The chain of
events began on October 25, when the Belarussian Committee for State
Security (KGB) arrested a Ukrainian journalist. The journalist, Pavlo
Sharoyko, is based in the Belarussian capital Minsk and works as the
Belarus correspondent for the National Radio Company of Ukraine —the
country’s public broadcaster. Even though Sharoyko was arrested in
October, his imprisonment was not publicly announced by Belarus until
last Saturday. On Tuesday, November 21, at a press conference held at
the KGB headquarters in Minsk, KGB spokesman Dmitry Pobyarzhin told reporters that Sharoyko was arrested for engaging in espionage on behalf of the Ukrainian government.
According to Pobyarzhin, Sharoyko is an undercover intelligence
officer masquerading as a journalist. His real employer, said
Pobyarzhin, is the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of
Defense of Ukraine. While based in Minsk, the Ukrainian radio
correspondent allegedly built an extensive network of spies, consisting
of Belarussian citizens who carried out espionage tasks in exchange for
financial compensation, said Pobyarzhin. The KGB spokesman also claimed
that Sharoyko was not officially associated with the Ukrainian embassy
in Minsk, but he had a spy handler there. The alleged handler, a
Ukrainian diplomat by the name of Ihor Skvortsov, had been confronted by
the KGB and expelled from the country for engaging in espionage, said
Pobyarzhin.
Late on Tuesday, The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said that Sharoyko
had worked there as a spokesman before 2009, but rejected the charges
against him. However, on Monday, a day after Sharoyko’s arrest was
announced, Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, dismissed
the deputy director of the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service, V.
Sinkevich, from his post. It is not known whether the surprise dismissal
is connected to the announcement by the Belarussian KGB. On Tuesday,
Kiev announced
that it had expelled a Belarussian diplomat from the embassy of Belarus
in the Ukrainian capital, in response to the expulsion of Skvortsov the
day before. The Ukrainian government did not name the expelled
Belarussian diplomat.Source