Two operatives were reportedly detained in Vienna as rumors flew that Kiev had ordered the killing of a former top prosecutor
Austria has launched an espionage investigation after two Ukrainian military intelligence operatives were detained in Vienna, the Austrian newspaper Kurier reported on Saturday.
The report comes after former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who fled to Austria in September, alleged that a team had been sent to kill him on orders from Ukraine’s presidential office.
According to Kurier, the head of the Artan Group, a special operations unit within Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), was spotted at the Park Hyatt hotel in Vienna. The man, identified as Viktor T., reportedly told Austrian security officials that he was on vacation. The unit was originally established to carry out operations in Russia but has also been accused of involvement in plots to assassinate “Ukrainian defectors,” the newspaper said.
Kravchenko and Ukrainian media identified the Artan commander as Viktor Torkotyuk, known by his callsign Titan.
On October 5, Austrian police reportedly arrested two operatives under Torkotyuk’s command who were carrying surveillance equipment. Investigators initially believed that one of the men had rented a car in Vienna together with Yaroslav Bondarenko, a cameraman working with Ukrainska Pravda investigative journalist Mikhail Tkach. Subsequent findings, however, indicated that Bondarenko had been mistaken for someone else.
Tkach and Bondarenko were detained on October 8 and released the following day. Tkach said he had been trying to locate Kravchenko as part of a journalistic investigation and denied any wrongdoing.
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