Moscow, Russia:
Russia on Friday sentenced a resident of east Ukraine’s Lugansk region to 16 years in prison for “high treason”, Moscow’s FSB security service said.
Moscow regularly hands heavy sentences to people it accuses of spying for Ukraine and has also consistently imprisoned Ukrainians in Russia and occupied regions.
The unnamed man was sentenced by a military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
Prosecutors said he had handed information on the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.
The FSB, cited by Russian news agencies, said the man was found guilty of state treason, being an accomplice in terrorist acts as well as the illegal handling and transport of explosives.
The court ordered he serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony.
The TASS news agency published a video showing the man’s arrest, in which FSB officers stopped a car, dragged a man out and threw him to the ground, before handcuffing him and taking him to the local headquarters of the security force.
The video showed a man with his face blurred — filmed by the FSB — saying he had been recruited by Ukraine’s SBU security service in 2016.
Russia regularly releases confession videos filmed by the FSB after arrests.
Moscow’s Ukraine offensive has dragged on for nearly three years.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
