A Ukrainian court on Thursday sentenced a Kyiv lawyer to 15 years in prison for spying on Ukrainian military movements and weapons facilities and passing that information on to Russian intelligence services.
The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine stated that the unnamed lawyer was charged with high treason. He was convicted of photographing and sending information on strategically important military facilities: defense-industrial complex buildings and other institutions responsible for the supply of weapons, energy infrastructure facilities, etc.
He also monitored the deployment location and movement of Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) military personnel and equipment in Kyiv, and then passed the images and information to representatives of Russian special services (FSB).
This is at least the fourth such sentencing of Ukrainian civilians this month for espionage-related activities.
The lawyer was arrested at the end of December 2024 and had awaited the court’s verdict while in custody.
The Kyiv resident reportedly cooperated with Russian intelligence, hoping to obtain, prosecutors alleged, a high-ranking position in Russian government structures in the future.
Also on Thursday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced it had detained a 45-year-old female resident of Kharkiv accused of helping the Russian army to prepare missile strikes on Kharkiv City Hall.
According to the SBU press service, the woman was allegedly gathering intelligence for a potential new strike by Russian forces on a location linked to one of the city council departments.
“The suspect was preparing a new Russian strike on a city council department site. She believed Ukrainian military personnel could be nearby and therefore passed the coordinates to the occupiers for a possible attack,” the SBU statement said on Thursday, July 17.
Similarly, this week, a separate court handed down the same sentence – 15 years in prison with property confiscation – to two agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU) for adjusting Russian strikes on Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.
Last week, a 43-year-old Russian, identified as German Aksyonov, was found guilty of downloading sensitive technical information relating to semiconductors from the computer servers of two Dutch companies – ASML, a leading producer of machines to manufacture semiconductors, and NXP, which makes microprocessors used in advanced communications systems – and passing it to an unnamed Russian intelligence agency.
Aksyonov was sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday for breaking sanctions laws, illegally appropriating confidential secrets, and “computer trespass.”