MOSCOW—A court in Russia’s far-eastern city of Vladivostok on Friday convicted a former U.S. Consulate worker charged with cooperating with a foreign state and sentenced him to four years and 10 months in prison.
Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen and former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok, was arrested in May 2023. Russia’s top domestic security agency, the FSB, accused him of “gathering information about the special military operation” in Ukraine.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow condemned the sentence and rejected the charges against him as “completely false and unfounded.”
Shonov was charged under a new article of Russian law that criminalizes “cooperation on a confidential basis with a foreign state, international, or foreign organization to assist their activities clearly aimed against Russia’s security.” It carries a prison sentence of up to eight years.
The U.S. State Department last year said Shonov worked at the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years. The consulate closed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened.
The State Department has said that after a Russian government order in April 2021 required the dismissal of all local employees in U.S. diplomatic outposts in Russia, Shonov worked at a company the U.S. contracted with to support its embassy in Moscow.
Shonov was held in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, pending investigation, but stood trial in Vladivostok’s Primorsky District Court.
In addition to a prison term, which Shonov was ordered to serve in a general regime penal colony, the court ruled that he must pay a fine of 1 million rubles (just over $10,000) and face additional restrictions for 16 months after finishing his prison sentence.
