A Russian court has sentenced a man convicted of spying for the United States to 13 years in prison, Russia’s Federal Security Service said in a statement Friday.
On November 17, the Bryansk western regional court declared Yuriy Yeshchenko “guilty of high treason," the statement said, adding that he would serve the jail term "under severe conditions" in a high-security facility.
According to the FSB, Yeshchenko had tried to pass military secrets to the CIA about Russia's Northern Fleet and pleaded guilty to espionage charges, saying he regretted what he had done.
He was performing maintenance of radio-electronic systems used by the Northern Fleet's ships, the FSB said, where he copied documents from 2015 to 2017 and made contact with the CIA in 2019.
The FSB arrested Yeshchenko in the Bryansk region in July 2019, when he attempted to transmit the state secrets to the CIA, the Russian spy agency’s statement said.
