The arrest of a Canadian Armed Forces intelligence operator on espionage charges appears to have its origins in another murky episode that has vexed the country’s military establishment for more than a year.

The operator, Master Warrant Officer Matthew Shawn Robar, was arrested and charged Dec. 10 with multiple offences related to passing highly sensitive government secrets to what court documents released this week refer to as a “foreign entity.” He was released from custody Monday under strict conditions.

The court documents show that the allegations relate to events that began in late 2023 and 2024. At the time, the documents say, MWO Robar was assigned to interview “several individuals who wanted to report concerns related to the CAF,” meaning the Canadian Armed Forces. During one of those meetings, the documents say, “one of these individuals told Robar that he should speak with the Foreign Entity.”

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The Globe and Mail reported this week, citing a source, that the country MWO Robar is accused of leaking information to is Ukraine. The court documents do not identify the foreign entity or the foreign intelligence service that had allegedly been engaged in conversations with MWO Robar.

Three separate sources with direct knowledge of the initial events have told The Globe that in 2023 MWO Robar was assigned to interview and assess the concerns of a group of Canadian military officers who said they were targeted for threats after making internal allegations that Postmedia reporter David Pugliese was serving the interests of the Russian state via his coverage of the war in Ukraine – an assertion he denies.

The CAF members were specifically concerned about Mr. Pugliese’s reporting on alleged mismanagement inside a pair of charities, Mriya Aid and Mriya Report. The charities were set up by a group of pro-Ukrainian volunteers that included several serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Mriya Aid raises money online that it uses to purchase and deliver non-lethal military aid, as well as humanitarian assistance, to Ukraine. It was chaired by Lieutenant-Colonel Melanie Lake, a former commander of Operation Unifier, the Canadian military mission to train the Ukrainian armed forces, an effort that ended at the start of the Russian war.

A separate entity, Mriya Report, which raised money to provide medical assistance to Ukraine and also operated a pro-Ukrainian YouTube channel, was founded by Captain Joe Friedberg.

Both Lt.-Col. Lake and Capt. Friedberg declined to comment when contacted for this article.

Sources say the soldiers involved with Mriya Aid asserted that the reporting on their charity was just the latest example of what they alleged was a years-long trend in which Mr. Pugliese’s articles suited the Kremlin’s aims – in this case, by undermining Canadian support for Ukraine.

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That assertion is based largely on a controversial seven-page file – which appears to have been handpicked from a larger dossier – purportedly showing that the Soviet-era KGB had considered recruiting Mr. Pugliese in the late 1980s. The purported KGB documents are the focus of a fierce but whispered debate in Ottawa over the authenticity and provenance of the files.

The sources who talked to The Globe say that as early as 2023, at least two CAF members had endured death threats, suspected home break-ins, or other forms of harassment after receiving copies of the alleged KGB dossier. MWO Robar was assigned to interview the officers and assess the level of risk they were facing, the sources said.

The Globe is not naming its sources out of concern they could face repercussions for speaking about the case.

Mr. Pugliese is a veteran defence writer, whose in-depth reporting and relentless coverage of mismanagement and spending controversies involving military commanders and bureaucrats has made him an unpopular figure within Ottawa’s defence and security establishment.

Nothing in seven pages that have been made public proves that Mr. Pugliese accepted any tasks from the Soviet embassy or was even aware of the KGB’s apparent interest in him.

Mr. Pugliese has said the claims that he is “some kind of Russian agent” are fabricated and that the dossier is full of “factual errors and falsehoods” that were used to smear him.

“I understand my articles anger the Canadian Forces and DND leadership, but it is the role of journalists to hold those in power to account,” he said in a statement to The Globe Thursday.

“If what you have determined is true, then yes, I believe there needs to be a full public accounting, not one hidden behind the secrecy that can shield the actions of the federal government, the Canadian Forces and the foreign intelligence service.”

Among those interviewed by MWO Robar in connection with the case was former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, who used parliamentary privilege to make the alleged KGB dossier public during an Oct. 24, 2024, appearance before the Commons committee on public safety and national security.

Mr. Alexander told The Globe this week that he was contacted by MWO Robar on Oct. 8, 2024, shortly after he first received the dossier naming Mr. Pugliese.

“My only contact with MWO Robar was a single conversation in which he made it clear he was looking into threats and other hostile activities that had been undertaken against those who had received the documents … and those people included members of the Canadian Armed Forces,” Mr. Alexander said.

“Everyone involved in the case assessed these threats and this harassment to have been orchestrated by Russia,” Mr. Alexander said. He added that MWO Robar “100 per cent” shared the assessment that Moscow was behind the threats allegedly directed at the Canadian officers making assertions against Mr. Pugliese.

In his statement, Mr. Pugliese said MWO Robar never contacted him. Neither CAF or the Department of National Defence reached out to “inform me” that the intelligence officer had been asking questions about him, he said.

“I believe that the allegations that are being made against me are designed to specifically discredit me and prevent my further investigation into the alleged misuse and misappropriation of Canadian Forces/DND funds and resources,” he said.

On Oct. 21, 2024, MWO Robar was temporarily relieved of his duties at the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit pending an internal investigation.

The court documents made public this week say MWO Robar repeatedly sought permission to co-operate with the unnamed foreign entity on an unspecified “Project.” His requests were refused, but MWO Robar allegedly proceeded to co-operate with the foreign entity anyway.

It is unclear whether controversy surrounding Mriya Aid, Mriya Report and Mr. Pugliese is related to the “Project” that is the source of the main charges against MWO Robar, but they do seem to be what brought him into contact with Ukrainian officials. A series of messages seen by The Globe show that senior staff at the Ukrainian embassy in Ottawa were aware of the alleged KGB dossier and were aiding efforts to prove its veracity.

Neither the military prosecutor, Major Max Reede, or Major Carlos Da Cruz, the defence counsel for MWO Robar, responded to requests for comment on whether the case against the accused is related in any way to Mr. Pugliese.

On Monday, the military prosecutor and defence counsel told the court that the actions of the accused do not amount to the serious national-security threat posed by former Canadian Armed Forces intelligence staffer Jeffrey Delisle. Mr. Delisle was charged in 2012 with passing secrets to Russia and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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Maj. Reede told the court that Mr. Robar is not a flight risk and was “not motivated by personal or financial gain or to cause harm.” Maj. Da Cruz said Monday that the Delisle case was “serious,” and “We are not dealing with something like this here.”

The Globe asked Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Andrii Plakhotniuk, for comment on whether embassy staff had ever talked to MWO Robar, whether it shared the alleged KGB dossier with any Canadians, what role it played in trying to verify the dossier and how the Ukrainian government viewed the charges against the intelligence operator. The Globe also asked him about media reporting that Ukraine was the recipient country of the allegedly leaked information.

In response to queries from The Globe, embassy press officer Marianna Kulava did not address the specific questions.

“With respect for the important work of the mass media, we would like to note that the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada does not comment on allegations or information attributed to anonymous or unidentified sources,” Ms. Kulava wrote in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

“As the Embassy has not received any official information or requests from the relevant Canadian authorities on the issues raised in your articles and e-mails to us, we will not make any statements or comments.”

The seven pages of alleged KGB files, dated between 1984 and 1990, purport to show the Soviet KGB taking an interest in a young Mr. Pugliese, who was then just beginning his journalism career.

In the first document – a handwritten note on yellowed paper dated Aug. 7, 1984, and signed by A.V. Merezhko – Mr. Pugliese is assigned the code name “Stuart.” The paper says “Stuart” is to be “studied with the perspective of possible operative use.”

One of the most recent documents, dated April 6, 1990, notes that Mr. Pugliese had by then started working at the Ottawa Citizen. The author, V. I. Semeniuk, was seeking permission from Moscow for Stuart “to be made the subject of a series of operative agent measures towards additional study and verification of the possibility of use in interests of Directorate ‘S’.” Directorate S was a KGB program that managed long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents in the West.

The file also includes a $600 expense claim “for work on the Stuart case.”

There are no documents dated later than 1990. The Soviet Union collapsed in December, 1991.

Andriy Kogut, the director of archives for Ukraine’s SBU security service, the successor agency to the KGB in independent Ukraine, told The Globe this week that the names and dates on the documents corresponded with serving KGB officers at the time.

He said that while it would be “wrong to assert anything” regarding the authenticity of the file, the documents would have been difficult to forge without “real documents or perfect and deep knowledge from within the KGB.”

Handwritten numbers atop each of the seven documents suggest that the complete file was at least 33 pages long, leaving open the question of what happened to the other 26 pages.

In his statement Thursday, Mr. Pugliese said there needs to be an accounting of what transpired.

“If what your sources are saying about MWO Robar is accurate, then this is outrageous and undemocratic and further proof that the Canadian Forces needs more, not less, journalistic scrutiny.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Mriya Report is affiliated with Mriya Aid. This version has been corrected.