DONETSK, June 1. /TASS/. Poland’s special services offered Maxim Likhachev, a former Ukrainian soldier who defected to Russia, to spy in Donbass, the man told TASS.
“I was working at a meat processing plant in Poland, and Ukrainians introduced me to Poles there. Well, those Polish men started to offer me to work [conduct intelligence activities] for their organization, so to speak. They wanted to use me. I refused as I realized that it smells like trouble,” the man said.
According to Likhachev, the Polish special services were interested in information from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. They also wanted to know about his birthplace and where his closest relatives actually lived.
Likhachev indicated that his “new acquaintances” (Russian citizens — TASS) intervened in the situation. According to the man, those people helped him leave Poland.
Earlier, Russian security authorities told TASS that a former serviceman of the Ukrainian army had surrendered to Russian troops near Donetsk. He arrived at the agreed place on a Ukrainian T-64 tank.
Maxim Likhachev was born in the town of Krasnodon of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). In 2014, he left for the Kiev-controlled area, to the town of Svatovo, as he disagreed with the prospect of the region’s secession from Ukraine. However, the man said, he quickly regretted this decision, but it was impossible to come back. In 2021, he left for Poland to earn money, and in 2022 he returned to Ukraine and was called up for military service.
The news has been edited (07:20 Moscow time) - corrects name in para 1.