When a state catches a spy, it is usually some marginal figure - a reservist, a guard, someone who photographed a barracks for money. This time it is different. Ukraine's Security Service announced it had arrested in Odesa the commander of a special purpose group of the National Guard, accused of working for Russian military intelligence, the GRU.

This is not a civilian recruited over the internet. According to the Ukrainian service, the suspect was a serving officer with access to the National Guard's closed information network and to data on how the unit operates at the front and behind enemy lines.

He handed over his own access

The accusation is almost banal in its simplicity, and that is exactly what makes it heavy. The officer, the Ukrainian service claims, gave the Russian side the credentials he uses to log in to his own account on the National Guard's official platform.

"The officer gave the Russian special services the personal login details for his own account on the official internet platform", the statement says.

With that, according to the investigation, the GRU was trying to obtain remote access not only to data on the preparation and conduct of combat operations, but also to the algorithms for managing members of the special unit. The difference between a spy who reports a location and a spy holding a key to the system is the difference between a leak and an open door.

From data to a burning vehicle

Then the investigation takes an even more unusual turn. According to the Ukrainian service, the commander did not stop at handing over data - on GRU orders he set fire to a military vehicle in Odesa and filmed the blaze on his phone as proof the task had been carried out.

The next assignment, investigators claim, was meant to be more serious: to build an improvised explosive device and hand it to a "courier", who would then use it for an attack in southern Ukraine. During the search, his phone, laptop and other data carriers were seized. He is charged with high treason committed during a state of war, is being held without the possibility of bail, and if convicted faces life imprisonment with confiscation of property.

How much confidential information actually reached the Russian side has not been specified. Which means either Kyiv does not know, or does not want to say.

Odesa is not the first time

The case is not isolated. In early July, a 45-year-old lecturer at the research centre of the Military Academy was also arrested in Odesa, with access to state secrets and documents marked "secret" and "strictly confidential". According to the investigation, he copied and sent Russian military intelligence design documentation for Ukraine's newest strike drones. He too was charged with high treason.

The two cases differ in something essential. The academic was looking into the system from inside, but from the side. The commander of the special group was the system - he commanded people and held his own key to the closed network. If the charges hold, the GRU did not recruit an observer but a man who made decisions.

The Balkans know this scene. The most expensive betrayals never come from outside - they come from the man with the badge, the one nobody asks to identify himself. The question every service in every country is afraid to ask out loud is the same: how many more are there who have not been caught?