Russian court sentences kidnapped Ukrainian volunteer to 10.5 years in prison for ‘espionage’ — Novaya Gazeta Europe

A court in the Russian-occupied part of the Ukrainian region of Kherson has sentenced a Ukrainian woman to 10.5 years in prison for “espionage,” the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said on Wednesday.

Irina Gorobtsova, who was kidnapped by Russian security services after helping local residents during the Russian occupation of Kherson, was found guilty of collecting “strategically important data on units of the Russian Armed Forces” in the Kherson region between February 2022 and March 2023 and passing it on to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian military.

The information that Gorobtsova allegedly passed on to the Ukrainian army “could have been used to carry out attacks on Russian armed forces locations,” it said.

After the Russian military captured the city of Kherson in March 2022, Gorobtsova protested against the Russian occupation, wrote pro-Ukrainian posts on social media and provided food and medicine to locals in need.

After her abduction by Russian forces in May 2022, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets claimed that Gorobtsova confessed to forcibly providing Russian military positions to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

Gorobtsova was held for two years in an internment camp in Russian-annexed Crimea, where she was denied contact with her family and lawyer, before Russian authorities opened criminal proceedings against her in April.

About a quarter of Kherson Region, including the regional capital Kherson on the right bank of the Dnipro River, was liberated from the AFU in November 2022, just two months after Vladimir Putin declared that the region would be part of Russia “forever” following Russia's illegal annexation of four regions of eastern Ukraine in September 2022. The rest of Kherson Region on the left bank of the Dnipro remains under Russian control.