​ARMAMENTS WERE SMUGGLED FROM TRANSNISTRIA TO ODESSA – UKRAINIAN SECURITY SERVICE

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has distributed information that arms used to be trafficked to Odessa from Transnistria.

According to the official SBU website, a criminal community seeking to create an “Odessa People’s Republic” mobilized Transnistrian smugglers, who previously supplied contraband cigarettes to Ukraine, for trafficking armaments, ammunition and explosives over into the Ukrainian territory.

The SBU maintains that an Odessa resident nicknamed “Skat” coordinated his criminal activities with a criminal community from the town of Gorlovka [in the Donetsk region uncontrolled by the official Kiev], receiving instructions from there.

The SBU further wrote that standing behind these activities is the Russian secret service. For instance, Skat was recruited in Moscow by a Russian General Headquarters officer named Stepanov.

“The main objective of that subversive group was to set groups of local residents at one another, to provoke them for protests against the constitutional authorities, to declare the so-called “Odessa People’s Republic”, to organize unlawful armed formations from among trained mercenaries”, explained the Ukrainian SBU.

According to it, a series of terror acts were going to be organized in Odessa in November and December.

The SBU press release said that during a number of searches, Ukrainian security officers revealed 3 (three) kilograms of TNT, detonators, arms and ammunition, postcards with anti-Ukraine contents, telecommunication means, electronic information copying devices etc.

The SBU did not mention how many persons had been detained.