MOSCOW. May 23 (Interfax) - A court in Tula has sentenced Ukrainian citizen Andrei Petkevich to 16 years in a high-security penitentiary for trying to recruit employees of Russian defense enterprises for espionage, the Russian Federal Security Service's public relations center said on Tuesday.
"A court has sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security penitentiary," the public relations center said.
Petkevich was convicted of espionage, and the sentence has now come into force.
"An investigation carried out by officers of the Russian FSB showed that the foreigner, acting on orders from Ukrainian intelligence, was searching for employees of Russian defense enterprises cleared to access secret information," the FSB said.
According to the FSB, he was tasked with "recruiting Russians and obtaining classified information about small arms development projects."