MOSCOW: A Russian court sentenced a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Sushchenko, to 12 years in a maximum security prison on Monday after convicting him of spying in a case his lawyer and Ukraine said was fabricated for political reasons.
Relations between Moscow and Kiev have been tense since 2014 when a popular uprising drove a pro-Russian president from power. Russia went on to annex Crimea from Ukraine and backed a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in the country’s east.
Russia’s FSB state security service detained Sushchenko, 49, in 2016 after he flew into Moscow from Paris where he worked as a correspondent for Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform.
The FSB accused Sushchenko of working for Ukrainian military intelligence and of gathering classified information about Russia’s military, charges he denied.
Mark Feygin, a lawyer for Sushchenko, said on Monday that a Moscow court had sentenced his client to 12 years in a maximum security prison after finding him guilty. He said he would appeal.
“We consider Roman Sushchenko innocent, but in such cases only political results are possible,” Feygin told reporters after the verdict.
Feygin himself was stripped of his status as a lawyer during the trial, a move he believes was linked to his work defending Sushchenko.
