MOSCOW – A court in the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok on Friday convicted a former US consulate employee accused of cooperating with a foreign state and sentenced him to four years and 10 months in prison.

Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen and former employee of the US consulate in Vladivostok, was arrested in May 2023. Russia’s top domestic security agency, the FSB, accused him of “collecting information about the special military operation” in Ukraine, a partial appeal- in Russian regions and its influence on “protest activities of the population in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.”

The US State Department last year condemned the arrest and said the allegations against Shonov “are completely without merit.”

Shonov was charged under a new article of Russian law that criminalizes “cooperation on a confidential basis with a foreign state, international or foreign organization to support their activities clearly directed against the security of Russia.” Kremlin critics and human rights advocates said the measure was so broad that it could be used to punish any Russian with foreign connections. He faces a prison sentence of up to eight years.

The State Department said Shonov worked at the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years. The consulate closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened.

The State Department said that after an April 2021 Russian government decree required the firing of all local employees at U.S. diplomatic outposts in Russia, Shonov worked at a company with which the United States United signed a contract to support their embassy in Moscow.

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

Shonov was held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, known for its harsh conditions, pending an investigation, but was tried in Vladivostok’s Primorsky District Court.

In addition to the prison term that Shonov was sentenced to serve in a general regime penal colony, the court ruled that he must pay a fine of one million rubles (a little over $10,000) and make facing additional restrictions for 16 months after serving his prison sentence. .