For several months last year, a Ukrainian housewife, 35 and lonely in a marriage that had gone cold, traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander, Achmad, stationed somewhere in Ukraine's occupied south. They wrote about their days, their disappointments, what they hoped to do when the war ended. She asked about the front. He told her. One afternoon, he obliged'a photograph taken inside the barracks, of himself and another soldier grinning for the camera. Behind them, pinned to the wall, was a map of the compound showing the unit's position. The housewife did not exist. 'She' was a middle-aged officer named Serhiy working for Ukraine's military-intelligence directorate, part of a concerted effort to draw secrets from the men sent to occupy his country. 'Serhiy was great at flirting,' his commander told me. 'Guys in our team started asking him for dating advice.' Shortly after Achmad sent that photograph, the coordinates it revealed were struck by a Ukrainian drone. Ukraine's...
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