An employee of the OSCE mission in eastern Ukraine, Vadym Golda, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for "espionage" in the pay of foreign secret services, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office announced today.
The "security assistant of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) special observer mission" in eastern Ukraine, aged 56, was "convicted" of "espionage" and sentenced to "14 years in prison in a colony strict criminal regime", says the official Russian statement.
According to the indictment, in 2021, before the start of Russia's campaign in Ukraine, Vadym Golda collected "data on industrial facilities that were subsequently hit by Ukrainian missiles."
Golda was detained in April 2022.
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office states in the same statement that the OSCE official collaborated with "foreign secret services", without identifying them or providing evidence.
Today, the OSCE, created at the height of the Cold War, "categorically condemned" the sentence against the official and called for the "immediate release" of Vadym Golda as well as two other members of the organization, who were sentenced in September 2022 to 13 years of imprisonment by Russian justice.
Since the start of the military offensive in Ukraine, Russian authorities have increased the number of arrests for espionage, treason or collaboration with Ukraine.
In 2022, Russia blocked the renewal of the OSCE's permanent mission in Ukraine, as well as the extension of the mission that, since 2014, had monitored the conflict between Kiev and the separatists armed and led by Moscow in the Donbass (eastern Ukraine).
Russia's security and intelligence services (FSB) announced today, according to Russian news agencies, the arrest of an alleged agent of the Ukrainian military intelligence services in annexed Crimea, accused of "transmitting information about the locations of deployment" of Moscow's forces. on the peninsula.
The man, whose identity has not been revealed, could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, according to Russian authorities.
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