Two Russian men who say they secretly work for Ukraine’s intelligence services have given rare accounts of operations they claim targeted military assets and personnel inside Russia. Their accounts feature in a documentary by independent Polish journalist Marcin Mamon, which follows the men’s claims about their activities on Russian soil.
One of the men, identified in the documentary as Ivan, says he played a role from inside Russia in Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic bombers and munitions factories. The second, called Foma, is a Russian living in exile in Poland who says he runs a network of undercover volunteers inside Russia. The GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence service, has confirmed that both men work for the agency, though it has also acknowledged that it cannot know the full picture.
Ivan describes drone components and explosives work
Ivan told Mamon that his work involved surveilling military sites and finding places to hide drone components ahead of possible attacks on Russian assets. He said that when the components are combined, they become a weapon that can destroy a target costing many millions of dollars with a single blow. He also sent Mamon a video that appeared to show him hiding explosives near a Russian military airfield.
Ivan said that if he had been caught, he would have faced terrorism charges and decades in prison. He described one particularly dangerous moment, when his car was stopped for inspection while he was carrying handmade explosives. “The risk was very high – however as you can see, I was not detected,” he said.
To reduce the risk of being exposed, Ivan said there was “no clear structure” to the work. He said he had never met and did not know the identity of the others he had worked alongside. He also stressed that the aim was always to avoid harming civilians.
Ivan says he is motivated by ideology and, in the past, was a member of the political opposition in Russia. He said there were few people left in the country suitable for this kind of work. “Most of the ideological people have either left the country or are already behind bars,” he said.
Foma’s remote network of undercover volunteers
Foma said his network surveils high-level officers that the GUR is considering targeting. He stressed that his volunteers are never involved in the attacks themselves, and he said he only passed intelligence to Ukrainian officials. He was tight-lipped about who his network had watched, but after Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov was killed in Moscow in December 2025 by an explosive device hidden under his car, Foma admitted he had supplied the Ukrainians with intelligence on him.
Foma works remotely and trains his volunteers online. Mamon watched one such tutorial on how to trail a senior military official marked for surveillance. In it, Foma told his volunteers they would receive a file on the target, including a photo, personal details and information about any car. “When you go to the target, don’t take a phone,” he told them.
Foma, who was once part of the Russian elite, claimed to have a network of contacts and a steady flow of insider information. He showed Mamon a database on his laptop that he said mapped military targets, including storage warehouses, military units and where generals and bomber pilots live. “In order to break the system, you need to understand how it works. Then you can aim for their weak points,” he said.
Foma said there were about “three dozen” people in his network, spread across Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. He said the members outside Russia provide logistical support, such as tracking targets’ digital footprints. He added that the GUR suggests targets, but that his team checks independently whether those individuals should be considered military criminals before deciding whether to proceed.
Foma defended his team’s work, saying: “I want people who do terrible things on behalf of Putin and Russia in Ukraine… to understand that they’ll have to pay for it. I want them to get scared.” He said his network did not carry out assassinations itself and that he did not share plans with Mamon or the programme’s makers in advance.
Doubts over trust, verification and freedom of movement
The GUR has said it cannot know the full picture of its agents’ activities. When one of Ivan’s handlers was asked whether he could be trusted, the handler replied: “I’m not sure of anyone, except myself.” Mamon asked Ivan to connect him with a GUR handler, who called Ivan on speaker phone while Mamon listened. They spoke in code, referring to “repairs at the school”. Later, however, the handler said he could not rule out that Ivan also worked for the Russians, either voluntarily or under duress.
Ivan’s ability to travel abroad and return to Russia was puzzling, given that he had once been part of the political opposition and would be expected to be closely monitored. Ivan said Ukrainian agents vet him in a third country, where they conduct lie detector tests. Foma said the freedom of movement did not necessarily indicate a problem. “There are all sorts of holes in [the country’s governance], and if you know them, or are just lucky, then you can jump through the holes… and live in the system. Like a mouse in a piece of cheese,” he said.
The documentary also reported that Ivan had told Mamon, more than a year before a large strike by more than 100 Ukrainian drones, that a major attack on strategic bombers at military airfields across Russia would take place. He did not say when or where. Foma, after checking with contacts in Ukraine and Russia, believed Ivan may have been involved in a plan to strike Russia’s largest military drone factory at Yelabuga in June of the previous year. One person was reported to have been killed in that incident.
Both men’s accounts cannot be independently verified, because the GUR and the men are cautious about how much they reveal. The broad tactics they described, however, match what Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged, including coordinated drone attacks on what Kyiv says are legitimate targets inside Russia and the use of secret agents. Ukraine does not officially claim responsibility for targeted attacks, although a Ukrainian intelligence officer previously admitted to a reporter that the country was behind the killing of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov in December 2024. Foma estimated that about 300 to 500 Russians are doing this kind of work for Ukraine, a figure that cannot be confirmed.
Asked how he coped, Ivan said: “Fear is always present… It follows me everywhere.” Even so, he said he was hopeful that his circumstances would eventually change. “Putin won’t live forever,” he said.
