Russia Sentence Ukrainian To 16 Years In Prison For Treason

According to Russia’s FSB security service, a military court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia’s southern city, sentenced an unidentified resident of the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine to 16 years in prison on Friday for “high treason.”

Moscow regularly imposes heavy sentences on individuals it accuses of spying for Ukraine and has consistently imprisoned Ukrainians both in Russia and in occupied territories.

The sentencing coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s call for security services to adopt “tough” anti-terror measures, with a particular focus on military counterintelligence, as the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nears its third year.

Putin urged the special services to “identify spies and traitors” and “disrupt the work of foreign security services.”

Prosecutors claimed the accused had passed information about the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.

The FSB, as reported by Russian news agencies, stated that the man was found guilty of state treason, aiding terrorist activities, and the illegal handling and transport of explosives.

The court ordered him to serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony.

The TASS news agency released a video of the man’s arrest, showing FSB officers stopping a car, dragging a man out, throwing him to the ground, and handcuffing him before taking him to the local FSB headquarters.

The video, filmed by the FSB, featured the man—his face blurred—stating that he had been recruited by Ukraine’s SBU security service in 2016.

Russia frequently publishes confession videos filmed by the FSB after arrests.

Meanwhile, independent Russian media reported that an activist had died by suicide on Thursday in a Rostov detention centre, shortly after being sentenced to 16 years in prison, also in the Rostov region.

The Mediazona website confirmed with prison officials that Roman Shved, a 39-year-old anarchist sentenced for an arson attack on a government building following the Kremlin’s 2022 military mobilisation, had died in the detention centre.

Several social media channels reported that Shved had taken his life just hours after being sentenced.

Russia has prosecuted thousands of its citizens for opposing the Ukraine conflict.