In late February, Musk announced that the Starlink internet provider became operational in Ukraine, adding that thousands of terminals for internet access were en route. Upon arrival, these terminals were distributed among the military, the SBU, and senior Kiev officials.
According to Yuri Samofal, a former employee of the Mikhailovsky village council in the Zaporozhye region, who had been detained by the Russian military, he was acting at the orders of an SBU agent and a former chairman of the Mikhailovsky village council, Vladimir Rykun.
"In late January or early February, I was invited by Rykun to his deputy's office... And there was a guy sitting there, a man who was introduced to me as Lyosha, and I was told that he was an SBU employee... He gave me this Starlink system and said: 'You should have it, you will mount it somewhere on a tree or a pipe, it will not be visible, and I will be calling you. If there is something interesting, you will convey [the information] to me secretly," Samofal said after being detained, adding that he was threatened with a cut-off of his salary payments should he reject.
An employee of a Russian law-enforcement agency told Sputnik that Rykun and Bogdan Starokon, another SBU agent and former head of the Vasylivka district, attempted to install another Starlink access terminal in one of the grocery stores in the Dneprorudnoe city of the Zaporozhye region.
"Rykun had established a full-fledged criminal group on the liberated territory of the Zaporozhye region. He had also enlisted Marina Peresypkina, the head of the financial department of the Mikhailovsky village council. With fierce Russophobia and hatred, the woman had been sending over any possible information: the movement of military columns, the exact number of equipment and personnel of the Russian military. She had been watching the movement of planes, monitoring messengers, and promptly relaying everything she saw to Rykun," the Russian law enforcer said.
According to other employees of the Russian law-enforcement, Rykun and Starokon had fled to the city of Zaporozhye, leaving a whole network of SBU informants in the Zaporozhye region behind. Russian agents continue to identify and arrest remaining informants.