SIMFEROPOL. May 10 (Interfax) - A court in the Crimean town of Sudak on Thursday handed down an eight-year prison sentence to a Ukrainian man who was accused by Russian security services of making an improvised explosive in order to blow up an electricity pylon on the peninsula.
"[Hennadiy] Lymeshko got eight years of imprisonment at a medium-security facility," a court spokesperson told reporters on Thursday.
In the middle of August 2017, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia announced the arrest of a Ukrainian man from Kharkiv region. An agent of the Ukrainian Security Service, Lymeshko was sawing off a pylon off the Sudak-Novy Svet highway with a view to blowing it up later, the FSB said.
The SBU called the man's arrest a "provocation." According to the Ukrainian Army General Staff, Lymeshko had served in the Ground Forces between November 2016 and May 2017 and was dismissed for "professional inaptitude" because of systemic discipline violations.
In Russia Lymeshko was charged with "illegal manufacture of an explosive device," "illegal acquisition, storage and possession of explosive substances and ammunition by a group of accomplices."
The FSB investigators in Crimea and Sevastopol sent the dossier to the Sudak court which registered it on May 3.
According to Russian law enforcement authorities, Lymeshko "pleaded guilty to all charges and petitioned for a fast-track trial."