The St. Petersburg City Court sentenced Alexey Efimenko to seven years in a maximum security penal colony in a case of espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code), the joint press service of the city courts reported.
The press service clarified to Mediazona that Efimenko is a citizen of Ukraine. Details of the case against him are unknown; it was heard behind closed doors, like all other espionage cases.
Efimenko «admitted his guilt in full and repented of his actions,» the press release said. The case was received by the court on June 13, and the preliminary hearing was held on July 1. The Ukrainian's case was heard in three sessions.
According to information from leaked databases, a man named Efimenko Oleksiy Andreevich, born in 1996, is listed as missing in Ukraine. According to the registry, he went missing on June 21, 2023, in the village of Mykhailivka in the Zaporizhia region, which was occupied by Russian troops after the start of a full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian human rights center Zmina wrote that Efimenko worked as an electrical engineer and lived in Mykhailivka with his grandparents. According to the organization's source, Efimenko was detained by Russian troops last summer and taken to the commandant's office in occupied Melitopol, where he was held in custody.
After the occupation began, Melitopol residents told the BBC that the commandant's office was now staffed by «Kadyrovites or God knows who, but they don't look much like Russians.» Melitopol residents reported that protesters against the invasion of Ukraine had begun to be systematically kidnapped in the city.