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Isabelle Chapman
This is the third and final installment of this series. If you're just finding us, we recommend you go back and listen to the first two episodes. Previously on Civilian or Spy.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
I said, is my friend dead?
Isabelle Chapman
And he goes, yeah.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Ilya was a deeply, deeply a patriot of the United States.
Alexander (Ilya's son)
I think that he got caught in a lie. And after that he decided the best choice was to run.
Eric O'Neill
The guy's spying for some.
Isabelle Chapman
It's December 2022, not long before Christmas. A massive winter storm is just starting to pummel a huge swath of the United States. A Air Force jet touches down at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. On that plane is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia's invasion of Ukraine started 10 months before. It's not going well for the Ukrainians. And Zelenskyy has come to D.C. to make an impassioned pitch to Congress.
Evan Perez
Zelensky pleaded his case to lawmakers and the American people to continue supporting his country in their war against Russia.
Eric O'Neill
Some of the new Republicans have been more skeptical about support for Ukraine. President Zelensky appealing directly to the American people. Ladies and gentlemen, this struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live.
Isabelle Chapman
For the pro Ukraine camp, the funding fight in Washington is life or death. Is the US Going to give Ukraine what it needs to survive? Money, weapons, intelligence?
Eric O'Neill
It is in your power to help us bring to justice everyone who started this unprovoked and criminal war.
Isabelle Chapman
Let's do it. Something else happened in December 2022. Ilya Beluzarov started a new job as a systems administrator on a contract for the Department of Defense. It would be the last job Ilya ever held. From CNN Presents, I'm Isabelle Chapman. And this is Civilian or spy?
Audie Cornish
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Eric O'Neill
Could you give me a quick 10 count?
Evan Perez
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Isabelle Chapman
Evan Perez has been at CNN for 12 years. He's a veteran Justice Department reporter, developing expertise and contacts. On a beat like his, it takes time.
Evan Perez
Building sources, you know, getting people to tell you stuff that they're not supposed to tell you, finding the Right. People who can tell you stuff that you're not supposed to know.
Isabelle Chapman
And that's why I first got in touch with Evan back in February of this year.
Evan Perez
It sounded like a very, very fascinating story. I was hooked immediately on trying to figure out, you know, are we dealing with a spy spy, or are we dealing with something else?
Isabelle Chapman
This is the question I'd been chasing for over a year. Was Ilya Beluzarov a spy? Like a spy spy? Here's what I knew at this point. He had a security clearance connected to his employment. Pretty high level clearance, too. I learned that from his son Alexander, who also said he was a really
Alexander (Ilya's son)
big supporter of Ukraine. He just kind of lit up when he talked about it. He loved it there.
Isabelle Chapman
So Ilya's feelings toward Ukraine, positive. His ex wife Marina, had told me
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
he was very disappointed how Russian opposition was crushed, had been crushed. He only saw bad things on the side of Russia.
Isabelle Chapman
So his feelings toward Russia, negative. I knew his clearance could have given him access to sensitive information that could have really mattered in the war. The kind of imagery Maxar produced could show things like troop movement on a battlefield, stockpiles of weapons. It could show damage after an attack. And there's something else, something I learned this spring. Sources familiar with how all of this went down told me that Ilya had done something at work that raised red flags. When his company learned about it, they notified the authorities and terminated him. When I talked to my colleague Evan about this, he said it made sense.
Evan Perez
A lot of contractors have systems that will flag anomalies. For instance, if you have a clearance, if you are doing one specific kind of work, and suddenly you're now accessing files related to something that's not really part of your normal course of work, it'll get flagged, and someone will take a closer look at it and see whether there's something there.
Isabelle Chapman
Employers like Ilya's are on high alert for this kind of thing because. And this is a TV drama stereotype, that actually is true.
Evan Perez
Evans says if you have a sensitive job, especially in Washington, you have to be very careful about who you're interacting with and who you're talking to, because pretty much everywhere you go, there are spies lurking.
Isabelle Chapman
Whatever happened, somebody at Maxar Technologies flagged it to the government. The company told us later that no data was compromised, but they declined to discuss Ilya's role there. From that point on, it seems likely the FBI was watching Ilya, it appears,
Evan Perez
going in, you know, they didn't know what they had. They don't seem to know exactly what is his motivation. But when the FBI started digging into what Ilya was doing, they noticed that he was communicating with people that were of concern to the FBI.
Isabelle Chapman
Part of the job of the FBI's counterintelligence division is to protect the US from foreign intelligence activities. They keep tabs on people working for American adversaries. They monitor threats. They hunt spies. From what we've learned, it seems likely they were monitoring Ilya's private text messages. They might not have known going in what Ilya's motivations were, what he was trying to do, but what they found.
Evan Perez
Ilya appears to have had sympathies towards the Ukrainians in the Ukraine Russia conflict and was trying to see if he could provide some kind of assistance. We don't know whether he actually provided that assistance, but the people he was dealing with that he appears to have thought were working with the Ukrainians were actually working for the Russians.
Isabelle Chapman
Ilya was spying, but he wasn't spying for the people he thought he was spying for. He was duped.
Audie Cornish
I'm Audie Cornish.
Eric O'Neill
I'm Ari Shapiro. And it's engagement party, and we get to talk about what we're obsessed with, what we're engaged with, what we need to process with a friend.
Audie Cornish
First, we're going to have a scroll and tell from one of you. We're also going to be talking about something called Boy Throb, which Ari is going through.
Eric O'Neill
I can't wait to tell you what
Audie Cornish
it's all about editing me on, because it's not in my timeline. And what else?
Eric O'Neill
It's the Song of the Summer episode.
Audie Cornish
Oh, boy.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Ugh.
Audie Cornish
Ugh. Song of the Summer.
Eric O'Neill
I'm gonna make a very simple statement that obscures a very complex debate.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Okay?
Eric O'Neill
And the simple statement is this. Ella Langley's Choosin, Texas, is the song of the summer.
Audie Cornish
Yeah.
Eric O'Neill
Audie Cornish, discuss.
Audie Cornish
Well, I don't think I want to discuss, because I actually did a video on this for CNN where my take was that there is no more Song of the Summer because it's personal. Each one of our algorithms does deliver something to us.
Eric O'Neill
Follow engagement party wherever you get your podcasts.
Isabelle Chapman
How did Ilya Belizearov, who by all accounts loved Ukraine and despised the Russian government, end up in a situation where it looks like he was trying to help people working for the Russians?
Evan Perez
The Russians are very, very active in the US they're very active in the Washington area. They are constantly trying to find sources and to dupe people who may have access to sensitive, classified information. They're very good at doing this. Whether they actually are card carrying FSB members, people who work for the Russian intelligence services, or whether they're just cutouts, people who are business people who also help out with what the Russian state needs.
Isabelle Chapman
But it wouldn't have mattered if he were helping Ukrainians or if he were helping Russians. It's still illegal.
Evan Perez
Yes, exactly. It doesn't matter who he was working with or who he thought he was working with. Even if it's Ukraine, even if it's uk, if it's Israel, all of those things would still be illegal.
Isabelle Chapman
Evan learned something else, too. His sources told him the FBI has effectively closed the book on what happened on the day Ilya was killed.
Evan Perez
There was an internal investigation done, review of the shooting. The FBI viewed that the use of force was appropriate under the FBI's use of force policy. The caveat here is, for the FBI, you know, that bar is pretty low. It's not at all like a police shooting by a local police department at all. Which, you know, police officers, at least the good ones, are trained, that there are different stages before you pull the trigger. To kill somebody, that is not how the FBI works. That's not the way federal law enforcement works.
Isabelle Chapman
Do you think that Ilya had a gun?
Evan Perez
I don't know. But typically what happens is they have to believe that there's some kind of threat to their safety. And so that could have been a gun, that could have been something else in his hand, something that they viewed as a valid reason why this agent fired their weapon. And something has to have gone really wrong for them to kill somebody who really they wanted to talk to. They needed to talk to him because they wanted to get more information from him.
Isabelle Chapman
Do you think Ilya was a spy?
Evan Perez
I don't think that Ilya thought himself as a spy, but I think in the way espionage works in 2026, I think that that's what he was trying to do. I think he was trying to help the Ukrainian side of this conflict that he sympathized with. And, yeah, he was doing a little bit of spy work, perhaps amateur spy work, but it's spy work nonetheless.
Isabelle Chapman
Evan said this is what spying looks like. A lot of the time. It can be clumsy and confused, but it's still dangerous.
Evan Perez
People aren't always printing out things and hiding them under a rock in a park in Virginia. They don't always do what Edward Snowden did, which is just to download troves of information and then get on a plane and fly to Hong Kong. That's not all how all of this works. As a matter of fact, 99% of it doesn't work that way.
Eric O'Neill
Well, it sounds very much a very true tale of espionage.
Isabelle Chapman
You met Eric o' Neill in the last episode. He's the former FBI agent who investigated spies. I caught up with him again after this big revelation. We sat on the front porch of his house outside D.C. and I told him what I'd learned. O' Neill had seen this play out before, and he helped me understand how it all could have unfolded.
Eric O'Neill
It was discovered that he had these proclivities to Ukraine, and the Russians used it against him. Sort of a double blind, right? They pretend that they're Ukrainian and they're seeking help, and they completely run him as an asset. He spies, he thinks he's handing it over to Ukraine, and he's handing it to them. And in fact, they might have even given him an entire escape protocol. Like, if you can get to Ukraine, we'll take care of you, we'll hide you, we've got a whole bank account for you. And he is just trying to get away to affect his escape plan.
Isabelle Chapman
That care package Ilya sent to Ukrainian troops, o' Neill said that could have been the opportunity that Russian operatives took to wiggle their way into Ilya's life. If somebody working for Russia knew he'd sent that package, that's all they'd need.
Eric O'Neill
Then it's a great way to create a correspondence. You intercept, you respond. I'd love to start a correspondence with you and a friendship across the continents. Right. You know, there's this very emboldening language that makes him feel good about what he's doing, but that's the kind of game of espionage that Russia plays. He probably had a plan A and plan B. Plan A was that he was going to escape. Plan B was that he was not going to get arrested. Whatever happened in that motel parking lot right when he was shot to death, he closed the door on a lot of information that would have been public as they tried to charge him. You know, there's so many questions will never get answered.
Isabelle Chapman
By the time I left Oneils house, I had the clearest picture that I'd ever had about what Ilya was likely doing and what led to his death. I knew at this point that I had to go talk to Ilya's family.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Yes, guys, you know, I have two big chairs I have.
Isabelle Chapman
Where should we sit?
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
What's.
Isabelle Chapman
Where's the best place?
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Wherever you guys feel more comfortable. Okay. And I have some water for you guys.
Isabelle Chapman
Oh, my gosh. We sat in Marina's living room. She'd put out snacks, water, had a photo of Ilya propped up in a prominent spot. She fielded a call from her mom.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Okay, give me one moment.
Isabelle Chapman
She was anxious, but she looked very put together. She always is.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Okay. Okay. Okay, bye. Okay. All right.
Isabelle Chapman
And then I got straight into it. Told her we knew at least some of what the FBI had been holding back from her about Ilya. So we have learned through our reporting, the FBI was investigating him for espionage at the end of his life. You know, the counterintelligence folks at the FBI believe he thought he was working for the Ukrainians. And it turns out that the people that he was working for that he
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
thought were Ukrainian, they were not Ukrainians.
Isabelle Chapman
They were working for the Russians.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Oh, my God. Jesus Christ.
Isabelle Chapman
So there's a lot that's still unknown. It seems as if the investigation at the FBI is ongoing. They're still looking into this. I think they think that a lot of the answers that they would have sought or been able to get died with Ilya.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Oh, God. I am really surprised, Isabel, because I never, ever, ever, ever had any hesitation that he was or could be unfaithful in terms of his work
Isabelle Chapman
in front of me in real time. She was processing all of this. She was trying to square the person she knew with the truth of what happened.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Ilya was always identifying himself as a nail that sticks and the nail which is to be hammered. And I think this idea that you can twist some rules for the great, for the salvation of the nation, for the greater good, for the greater good, I think it stems from Soviet dissident movement. It was like the main move was to suffer, to die for the right cause. Ilya's stepfather was fighting against totalitarian regime. This is how Ilya was brought up. Probably that was reflected on Ilya's mind, that you can twist government rules if it's for the good cause. I by no means condone him. I believe whatever beliefs we have, if we are sworn, we must. We must carry out our duties, because if everybody will start playing their own chord, the country would collapse very soon.
Isabelle Chapman
As I sat there and listened to her, I was kind of surprised by how much empathy Marina had for Ilya in this moment. She talked about the choices he made with a certain amount of respect, sadness, frustration, but not anger.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Even though Ilya committed, I would say, a crime against the United States by doing what he had done, I see him as a victim.
Isabelle Chapman
She also said she's owed more Information from the FBI. What she's been able to find out through our reporting, it's not enough for her. Not even close.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
The agency left me with this body. Every single door was closed to me, okay? And it's maddening. I would lose my mind. It's my duty to make these people to explain why we have a dead body and not a live person. And handcuffs. You killed the person. Stand up and tell me. Be brave enough. Have enough heart and the guts to give us full, explicit response. Why have you done what you've done?
Isabelle Chapman
I asked Marina if knowing all of this gave her and her son any kind of closure.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
To be honest with you, when we speak about closure, we probably think that it will be the moment when you sort of close the door and you move on on a fresh path. It will never happen. I think we are permanently wrecked. We experience like our experiences, like we are half, half dead people. His death is penetrating almost every other minute of our existence. I wish I could tell it to you. For instance, if in the past you hear the news and they say two people died, hundred people died, it's only numbers. But now I know what does mean when person is killed when you lost him.
Isabelle Chapman
We reached out to the FBI with our questions about this case. They declined to comment. We pieced together a lot about Ilya's life and death, but the fact is there's so much we don't know. The FBI killed an American citizen, and they haven't said why. They haven't said anything. And Ilya's family has to live with that.
Alexander (Ilya's son)
It's been really hard. When I lost my dad, it was, in a way, the only real support system I had.
Isabelle Chapman
When I talked to Ilya's son Alexander, last fall, we ended the interview standing in the yard. He's over six feet tall now, and he'd just gotten his first tattoo. But when all of this happened, he was still a kid.
Alexander (Ilya's son)
I could always depend on my dad. He was always there when I needed him, no matter what. So losing him was kind of when I had to grow up and just kind of be on my own.
Isabelle Chapman
I asked him, is he angry at his dad, the FBI, the way this has all played out,
Alexander (Ilya's son)
I would say I have more regret than anger.
Isabelle Chapman
What do you have regret about?
Alexander (Ilya's son)
Just being kind of apathetic towards the situation when he was leaving and not asking more questions and not caring more and not freaking out. You know, why did I just kind of let stuff happen?
Isabelle Chapman
What answer do you come up with to that?
Alexander (Ilya's son)
I haven't come up with one yet. I want people to know that he wasn't a bad person. He definitely didn't hurt anybody.
Isabelle Chapman
What do you wish you could tell him?
Alexander (Ilya's son)
I wish I could tell him that I love him.
Marina (Ilya's ex-wife)
Beautiful.
Isabelle Chapman
I'm Isabelle Chapman. Thanks for listening. I reported this story and helped produce this series with Graylin Brashear, Jesse Remedios and Sofia Sanchez. Matt Lait, Patricia DeCarlo and Tim Lfrank oversaw editorial along with Zach Goldbaum, who edited the podcast. Additional editing came from Lacey Roberts. We had production help from Dan dezulla, Grace Walker and Kira Daring. Joey Salvia wrote the original theme music. Sean Clark and Meg Pearlstein created the beautiful video piece about Ilya Belousarov that you can watch on CNN's All Access. Nicole Bzorgmir, David Von Blaan and John Anglem also contributed to that documentary. Thank you to Maile Depew Camp, who helped me find Ken and Green to Evan Perez, John Miller, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Casey Tolan, who also helped with reporting and to Kaitlin Pollance, who sent me the original tip for this story. Special thanks to Robert Mathers, Emma Lacy Bordeaux, Drew Shankman, Frank Lamani, Steven Nanez de Hanya Oliver, Adam Levine, Ben Weltman and Amanda Wills.
Eric O'Neill
Go inside the sports moments that brought
Isabelle Chapman
us together and made history.
Eric O'Neill
From the underdogs to the rivalries and
Evan Perez
the miracles, it sends chills down your spine. It's what sport was all about. The new CNN original series, Decades in
Eric O'Neill
Sports, now streaming on the CNN.
This third and final installment of “Civilian or Spy” unravels the mysterious case of Ilya Beluzarov, a systems administrator and Ukrainian-American patriot who worked on a Department of Defense contract and ended up dead in a confrontation with the FBI. Reporter Isabelle Chapman, alongside expert voices and personal testimony from Ilya’s family, explores whether Ilya was an intentional spy, the tangled web of modern espionage, and the devastating impact on loved ones left behind. The episode probes questions of loyalty, manipulation, and government accountability in high-stakes national security scenarios.
“Ilya was spying, but he wasn't spying for the people he thought he was spying for. He was duped.”
– Isabelle Chapman [08:00]
“Even though Ilya committed, I would say, a crime against the United States by doing what he had done, I see him as a victim.”
– Marina, Ilya’s ex-wife [19:11]
"It was discovered that he had these proclivities to Ukraine, and the Russians used it against him...he thinks he's handing it over to Ukraine, and he's handing it to them.”
– Eric O’Neill [13:19]
“...the main move was to suffer, to die for the right cause. Ilya’s stepfather was fighting against [a] totalitarian regime. This is how Ilya was brought up.”
– Marina [17:38]
“I want people to know that he wasn't a bad person. He definitely didn't hurt anybody.”
– Alexander, Ilya’s son [23:22]
| Timestamp | Segment Description | | ------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | 00:46–02:43 | Ukraine war background & Ilya’s new job | | 04:19–04:43 | Ilya’s loyalties—son and ex-wife reflect | | 05:28–06:41 | Work anomaly flagged; importance of vigilance | | 06:41–08:00 | FBI investigation; Ilya was duped | | 09:32–10:26 | Russian operations in the US | | 10:35–12:49 | FBI shooting review & realities of espionage | | 13:19–14:13 | O’Neill explains Russian “double blind” tactics | | 15:25–19:11 | Marina’s emotional processing | | 20:23–21:27 | On closure and living with loss | | 22:01–23:41 | Alexander on grief, regret, and his father’s legacy|
The episode is investigative yet intensely personal, toggling between high-stakes national security and intimate family loss. The hosts and guests speak with clarity and gravity. Marina and Alexander’s heartfelt testimonies convey the raw human cost, while the journalists and former FBI agent explain the mechanics and ambiguities of modern espionage without sensationalism.
“Civilian or Spy: Double Blind” winds together a web of national and personal tragedy: a patriotic man manipulated and ultimately killed in a shadowy world of international deception, leaving a family desperate for answers. The episode portrays the complexity, confusion, and heartbreak inherent in contemporary intelligence work—and the persistent, unresolved pain when the truth remains just out of reach.
For listeners who missed the episode, this summary covers the critical facts, emotional arcs, and sharpest insights while preserving the documentary’s empathetic, probing voice.