A Russian man was sentenced to 19 years in prison by a court in Orenburg, in the southern Urals, for passing information on Russian soldiers to the US Federal Police (FBI), the security services announced on Saturday of the country.
This man born in 1993 was found guilty of several charges, including “high treason,” the Russian security services (FSB) said in a statement.
The investigation “confirmed that he had established a confidential cooperative relationship with representatives of the United States intelligence services,” according to the same source.
He allegedly transmitted “the identity and other personal data of Russian soldiers” to the FBI, the security services said.
The Orenburg Regional Court sentenced him to 19 years of detention in a “strict regime penal colony”, according to the same source.
The FSB released images purported to show the accused being framed by agents and then in court. Dressed in jeans and a green sweater, he sits, his head resting on his hands, in the glass box of the accused.
He was arrested in January 2023 “for helping a foreign organization carry out activities undermining the security” of Russia, according to the Russian security services.
Neither his identity nor the precise date of his conviction have been made public.
The verdict “has not yet entered into force,” according to the FSB. This could be due to the existence of a period during which the convicted person can appeal.
Tensions between Russia and the United States, already high, have further increased in recent years around the conflict in Ukraine.
Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, trials for “treason”, “terrorism”, “sabotage” or “espionage”, which always carry heavy sentences, have multiplied in Russia.
