The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has deported to Russia a Russian citizen who, as an agent of Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov, was collecting information about ethnic Chechens with pro-Ukrainian views in Ukraine, the SBU press service said on Friday.

Officers of law-enforcement agencies established that this citizen had left Ukraine after the Maidan protests in Kyiv and had returned to Grozny, the press service said. At the end of September 2017, he returned to Ukraine using a new Russian passport with different personal details, it said.

SBU officers documented that "during his illegal presence in Ukraine, this Russian citizen gathered information about the activities of pro-Ukrainian natives of the Chechen Republic who were involved in the anti-terrorist operation in the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions."

"Since the foreigner's activities posed a threat to Ukraine's national security - he gravely violated the law on the legal status of foreigners and non-citizens while crossing the state border of Ukraine and staying in the territory of our state with documents containing another person's personal details - a decision was made to deport him to Russia," the SBU press center said, declining to name the citizen in question.

According to local media reports, it is Kadyrov's former representative to Ukraine, Ramzan Tsitsulayev.