Moscow — 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 sentencing came as President Vladimir Putin called on security services to be “tough” in anti-terror measures and especially vigilant in military counterintelligence as the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive drags on for almost three years.

Putin called for special services to “identify spies and traitors” and to “stop the work of foreign security services.”

The unnamed man was sentenced Friday 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 that 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.

Russian independent media reported that an activist had killed himself Thursday in a Rostov detention center, shortly after being sentenced to 16 years in prison also in the Rostov region.

The Mediazona website said it got confirmation from prison officials that Roman Shved — a 39-year-old anarchist sentenced for an arson attack on a government building after the Kremlin announced a military mobilization in 2022 — had died in a Rostov detention center.

Several social media channels had said Shved had killed himself hours after being sentenced.

Russia has punished thousands of its citizens for opposing the Ukraine campaign.
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