The former head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in the Kharkiv region will be tried for “treason”, the National Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine said on Monday, accusing him of sabotage in favor of Moscow at the beginning of the Russian invasion, AFP reports. .

A Ukrainian soldier at the front in the Kharkiv regionPhoto: Andriy Marienko / AP / Profimedia

40-year-old Roman Dudin “de facto engaged in (sabotage) instead of organizing” the defense of this region, – National Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine(DBR)in a statement published in Telegram.

“After the defense gets acquainted with his materials, they will be submitted to the court,” the SBI said, adding that the man arrested in September, who is in the pretrial detention center, faces life imprisonment.

Much of Kharkiv Oblast, which borders Russia, was occupied by Moscow forces from the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022 until their retreat last September.

Dudin believed that “the Russian offensive would succeed and that the Russian occupation authorities would take into account” his “subversive activities,” the SBI statement continued. At the beginning of the invasion, he “arbitrarily” left his post and ordered “without any legal grounds” to leave his subordinates from the city of Kharkiv, the Investigative Department also accused.

According to the same source, the former official “deliberately created conditions” so that the Russians could take possession of weapons and ammunition stored in the regional office of the SBU in Kharkiv.

He held the position from 2020 and was then dismissed in May 2022 by President Volodymyr Zelensky following the leader’s trip from Kyiv to Kharkiv. “I dismissed the head of the SBU in the Kharkiv region because he did not work for the defense of the city in the first days of the (Russian) invasion, but thought only of himself,” the Ukrainian president said at the time.

In July of last year, Volodymyr Zelensky also fired his childhood friend, head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, accusing him of insufficient efforts in the fight against spies and Moscow collaborators. Several regional heads of the SBU were also dismissed.

According to regional authorities, a senior SBU official in Kherson Oblast (south), another area quickly occupied by Moscow’s army at the start of the invasion, was suspected of having provided the Russians with secret maps of minefields intended to impede their advance.

(Source: Agerpres)