A court in western Russia has sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for spying for Ukraine's border service.
Viktor Shur, a Russian national, was convicted Wednesday of treason for reportedly gathering classified information on a Russian Defense Ministry facility on the orders of the Ukrainian border service, the Bryansk regional court said Thursday in an online statement.
“If this information had been passed on to the Ukrainian special forces, they could have used it against Russian national security,” the statement said, adding it considered his acts “a particularly serious crime.”
Shur was detained by Russia's Federal Security Services, or FSB, when he tried to cross the border from Ukraine back into Russia on Dec. 9 last year, the statement said.
He pleaded guilty to charges of treason and collaboration with the secret services of a foreign state, the court said.
Russia has seen a series of treason cases since the eruption of the conflict in Ukraine last year.
Last month a Moscow court sentenced a former employee of Russia’s military intelligence services to 14 years in a high-security prison for sending a job application letter to a Swedish defense company in 2010.