The fog of betrayal hangs heavy over this grim affair. A man, now cast into the depths of a prison cell, has finally broken his silence. In a confession captured on film by the agents of the state, this miserable wretch admits to a crime of the most sinister sort: acting as a courier for a foreign power.

It began in the shadows, where one accomplice—a man possessed by a dark ambition—sought an audience with the intelligence officers of Ukraine. At first, the poor devil resisted, but the siren song of treason eventually won. He was handed a small, metallic device—a flash-drive, in the modern parlance—containing clandestine recordings of military strongholds in the Tula region. Like a common thief slipping through the alleys of a rookery, he carried this burden across the seas to the Ukrainian embassy in Georgia, delivering the secrets into the hands of the enemy.

“He filmed certain military works in the Tula province,” the prisoner confessed with a hollow voice, “handed me the device, and bid me deliver it to the embassy in Georgia. And so I did.”

But the law, like a relentless bloodhound, was on their scent. On the second of July, the gavel fell with a thunderous crash. Three men, caught in this web of espionage, were sentenced to terms of hard labour ranging from seventeen to twenty-two years. Their purses were further bled by fines reaching some own million and a half rubles.

The details of their plot are enough to make the strongest man shudder. In February of the coming year, these villains descended upon the Orel region to retrieve a cache of gunpowder—over a kilogram of explosives and two detonators hidden in a secret hole. When the authorities finally raided their den, they found an arsenal that would shame a small army: a Kalashnikov, a PB pistol, five civilian firearms, and a heap of one hundred and fifty-three cartridges of various calibres.

The magistrates showed no mercy. The men were found guilty of the highest treason, the attempted sowing of terror, and the illegal trafficking of explosives. They traded the freedom of the streets for the cold silence of the dungeon, a fitting end for those who would sell their country for a handful of silver.