Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is recruiting Moldovan citizens to use against Ukraine, according to the Moldovan YouTube channel Little Country (Malenkaya Strana). An investigation published on the channel describes the case of 43-year-old Sergei Midar, who was previously convicted of fraud in Moldova and whom the Russian security service was allegedly preparing to carry out a terrorist attack on Ukrainian territory.
Midar was detained in August 2025 at the Palanca checkpoint on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border while traveling on a Chisinau-Odesa bus. A kilogram of RDX was found in his luggage. He was arrested by Moldovan authorities, and the case against him is still under investigation. Little Country said it had obtained access to the case materials.
According to Sergei Midar’s written testimony, which The Insider has reviewed, he went to Kaliningrad in 2004 for work, where he was involved in transporting undeclared goods across the Polish border. In 2010, he was stopped at the border by an FSB officer identified as Dmitry Dubrovsky. “He explained that I could avoid punishment if I cooperated with him. At first I refused. But he explained that I would receive the harshest possible punishment and, in addition, that my relatives would suffer. I had to agree to work as an FSB source,” Midar told Moldovan law enforcement.
At the same time, Moldovan authorities have information suggesting Midar did not have the documents required to stay legally in Russia and was pressured into cooperation under threat of punishment for illegal residence. Later, according to the Little Country investigation, the Moldovan man obtained a Russian passport. Midar said that for several years he passed information to the FSB about smuggling on the Polish-Russian border, and also about illegal crossings and forged documents. He typically received between 5,000 and 15,000 rubles per assignment.
In 2022, after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Midar returned to Moldova and, according to his account, stopped cooperating with the FSB. Then, in July 2025, Dubrovsky contacted him again. Knowing that Midar was involved in cargo transportation, the FSB officer offered him a job delivering a package from Poland. According to Midar’s testimony, he brought the package, which contained explosives and detonators, into Moldova, kept it at his home for some time, and then attempted to transport it by bus to Odesa.
This is not the only case in which Russian security services have recruited Moldovans to commit crimes in Ukraine. In February, Moldovan and Ukrainian law enforcement uncovered a group suspected of preparing assassination attempts against officers of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), as well as Ukrainian journalists, public figures, and the head of a strategic enterprise. Authorities detained the group’s alleged leader, a 34-year-old Moldovan citizen whom the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) described as an agent of Russian intelligence, along with accomplices from Ukraine, EU countries, and Transnistria.
