“Leaked” data about the war in Ukraine through a dating site: an Air Force employee was detained in the United States

US Air Force employee transmitted data about the war in Ukraine through a dating site/Collage 24 Channel (Photo by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Shutterstock)

In the USA, an Air Force employee is accused of illegal disclosure of classified information. He was detained on charges of disclosing secret information about Russia's invasion of Ukraine through an online dating platform.

The suspect is known to be 63 years old. The man was detained on Saturday, March 2.

A former US colonel leaked secret data to a “woman from Ukraine” on a dating site

63-year-old defendant David Slater worked at the US Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The man had access to classified information between August 2021 and April 2022. The United States Department of Justice said that before he began working for Stratcom, he served in the US Army and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

According to the US Department of Justice, the indictment states that Slater attended strategic command briefings that were devoted to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is alleged that the man passed this secret information, which he collected at the briefing, through an online dating service to an accomplice who posed as a woman who lives in Ukraine.

So, it is known that his interlocutor regularly asked for classified information and called him in personal messages a “secret informant”, as well as a “secret agent”.

In response to these requests, Slater did provide him with classified intelligence, including on military targets and Russian military capabilities related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US Department of Justice said.

The US Department of Justice noted that the first court hearing in the Slater case will take place today, March 5. If proven guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 250 thousand dollars on each count.

SBU detained officials of the Ukrainian special services who “leaked” information about the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The SBU neutralized a powerful intelligence network of military counterintelligence of the Russian FSB, which operated in several regions of Ukraine. As a result, 5 former and current officials of the Ukrainian special services were detained.

Thus, among the participants there are former officials of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. In particular, we are talking about an employee of the regional department of the Security Service.

It is known that the defendants communicated with each other with the help of the same curator. He is an employee of the Russian special services who is in temporarily occupied Crimea.