• A student in Birobidzhan, Russia, was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly passing troop locations to Kyiv.
• The student collected information on Russian troops and military units in Ukraine.
• Russia has been cracking down on critics of its military offensive in Ukraine since 2022.

On Thursday, a Russian court in the far eastern city of Birobidzhan, 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) from Ukraine, sentenced a student to five years in prison for allegedly passing troop locations to Kyiv.

According to Russia’s FSB security service, the unnamed man collected information “using the Internet” on “Russian troops and locations of military units in the zone of the special military operation” in Ukraine. He allegedly did this in exchange for payment from Kyiv’s SBU security service, as reported to the RIA Novosti news agency.

The FSB stated that the court convicted the man of treason but reduced his sentence to five years in a strict regime penal colony and one year of community service because he pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigation.

Since the start of its military offensive in Ukraine in 2022, Russia has cracked down on all Kremlin critics and opponents of the military action, issuing lengthy sentences on charges of collaboration or espionage for Kyiv. Treason, punishable by up to life in prison, has been a primary focus.

Birobidzhan, the main city of Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, was created in the early Soviet era as a Jewish homeland. However, it now has only a very small Jewish population.

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