A Russian court has sentenced a Ukrainian journalist to 12 years in prison for spying, in a case the Ukrainian authorities have decried as political.
Moscow City Court sentenced Roman Sushchenko on June 4, about 20 months after Sushchenko was detained on Sept. 30, 2016.
Human rights activists and Ukrainian diplomats view the case as politically motivated, and the latest in a string of bogus trials of Ukrainians launched by Russia since it invaded the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and launched its war on Ukraine in the Donbas in 2014.
“Roman Sushchenko was sentenced,” Sushchenko’s Russian lawyer Mark Feygin said on social medium Twitter. “Twelve years of strict regime. The appeal will be filed tomorrow.”
Russian prosecutors had wanted the sentence to be 14 years.
Before his arrest, Sushchenko worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris, France, for Ukrainian online news agency Ukrinform. He was arrested in Moscow while he was visiting the Russian capital on personal business. The Russian authorities claimed he had been collecting classified information while in Russia.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, also accused Sushchenko of working for the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. Both the journalist and the Ukrainian authorities deny the claim.
Speaking after news of Sushchenko’s sentencing broke, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariana Betsa called the case politically motivated and appealed to Russia to release the journalist.
Sushchenko joins at least 64 Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia and Crimea, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, in apparently politically motivated cases. One of them, filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years on disputed charges of plotting acts of terrorism, is on the 22nd day hunger strike, demanding that Russia release all of its Ukrainian hostages. Another activist detained in Crimea, Volodymyr Balukh, has already spent 79 days on hunger strike.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry has offered to exchange Sushchenko for Kiril Vyshynsky, a journalist with the Russian propaganda outlet RIA-Novosti and a Ukrainian citizen suspected of treason. Ukraine’s SBU security service detained Vyshynsky in May.
