Russia sentenced former US Consulate employee to nearly 5 years in prison

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MOSCOW (AP) — A court in the Russian far eastern city of Vladivostok on Friday sentenced a former U.S. Consulate employee to four years and 10 months in prison on charges of collaborating with a foreign state.

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Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen and former employee of the US Consulate in Vladivostok, was arrested in May 2023. Russia’s top internal security agency, the FSB, accused him of “collecting information about a special military operation” in Ukraine. The increase in Russian regions and its impact on “public protest activities ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.”

The US Embassy in Moscow condemned the sentence and dismissed the charges against him as “completely false and unfounded”.

“The criminal prosecution of Mr. Shonov only underscores the intimidation campaign the Russian government is increasingly employing against its own citizens,” the embassy said in a statement.

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Shonov was charged under a new article of Russian law that makes it a crime to “collaborate on a secret basis with a foreign state, international or foreign organization for the purpose of assisting its activities clearly aimed at the security of Russia.” Kremlin critics and human rights advocates say the law is too broad and could be used to punish any Russian with foreign connections. It provides for a prison sentence of up to eight years.

The US State Department announced last year that Shonov had worked at the US Consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years. The consulate closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and has never reopened.

Shonov worked for a company contracted by the United States to support its embassy in Moscow, the State Department said, following the Russian government’s April 2021 order requiring the firing of all local employees at U.S. diplomatic posts.

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State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in May 2023 that Shonov’s sole role at the time of his arrest was to “compile media summaries of press matters from publicly available Russian media sources.”

Shonov was held in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, notorious for its harsh conditions, and the investigation continued, but he was tried in Vladivostok’s Primorsky District Court.

In addition to the prison sentence Shonov was ordered to serve in a general regime penal colony, the court ordered Shonov to pay a fine of 1 million rubles (just over $10,000) and face additional restrictions for 16 months after completing his prison sentence. .

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