The suspected Ukrainian saboteurs apprehended in Crimea bear no relation to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman for the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in Donbas Andriy Lysenko has said.

"Those people were discharged from military service a long time ago. They had a business, they lived there with their families," Lysenko said on the 112.Ukraine TV channel on Monday, speaking of the Russian media reports on the detention of Oleksiy Stohniy and Hleb Shabliy in Crimea.

Lysenko said those were reserve officers and that Russian security services "did not have to search for them anywhere."

"The Federal Security Service simply comes to military registration and enlistment offices where personal files of reserve officers are stored, retrieve those files and publicly designate their owners as Ukrainian saboteurs. Clearly, such people have certain training but they are not active servicemen, including those of the Ukrainian Armed Forces," the ministry spokesman said.

According to him, the reserve officers had been on the peninsula before its occupation by the Russian Federation.

"These are people who finished military service long ago, ran business, lived there and had families there," Lysenko said.

He called this a regular situation, "of false series under the authorship of the Russian FSB called "everywhere you look - they are everywhere."

On Monday, the Russian Federation reported that the alleged Ukrainian saboteurs Oleksiy Stohniy and Hleb Shabliy were detained in Crimea.