In St. Petersburg, Ukrainian citizen Alexey Efimenko was sentenced to seven years in prison in an espionage case

The St. Petersburg City Court sentenced Alexei Efimenko to seven years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony in a case of espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code), the joint press service of city courts reported .

The press service clarified to Mediazona that Efimenko is a citizen of Ukraine. The 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 took place on July 1. The Ukrainian's case was considered in three sessions.

According to information from leaked databases, a man named Efimenko Alexey 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, last summer Efimenko was detained by Russian troops 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 who knows who, but they look very little like Russians." Melitopol residents reported that protesters against the invasion of Ukraine had begun to be systematically kidnapped in the city.