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Russia gives Ukrainian 6 years over espionage

Former defense factory chief Yuri Soloshenko is sentenced to six years in jail for espionage.

A former defense factory chief from Ukraine has been sentenced to six years in prison by a Russian court for attempting to smuggle missile components out of Russia.

Seventy-three-year-old Yuri Soloshenko was found guilty of spying by the Moscow city court on Wednesday and will remain in a pre-trial detention pending his sentence to take effect.

According to a court official, Soloshenko, who was detained in the summer of 2014, pleaded guilty to all espionage charges.

He was detained attempting “to illegally purchase secret components for the S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems on behalf of the generator plant and the Nebo Ukrainy (The Sky of Ukraine) Corporation,” the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) told the TASS news agency.

Soloshenko was the director of the Znamya defense plant located in Poltava, northeastern Ukraine. The factory had been specialized in manufacturing electrical components used in equipment related to air defense and went bankrupt in 2012.

"It is not the first time that Russian security services have thwarted an attempt by separate Ukrainian nationals to buy military products in Russia and smuggle them out of the country. In December 2014, Russia expelled Ukrainian citizen Denis Danchenko who had arrived in Moscow to illegally obtain secret klystron tubes and magnetrons for the S-300 and Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missiles complexes," the FSB noted.


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