SIMFEROPOL, May 11. /TASS/. The city court in Sudak, the Republic of Crimea, on Thursday issued a sentence for eight years in a general penitentiary to the Ukrainian citizen Gennady Limeshko, a former military intelligence operative of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who planned subversive acts in Crimea, the press service of the Crimean branch of the FSB federal security service said on Thursday.

"The Sudak city court has found Limeshko guilty of the offenses he was charged with and it has issued a sentence to him for eight years in a general prison," the press release said.

Limeshko was found guilty of an illegal manufacturing of an explosive device and an illegal purchase, storage and carrying of explosives and munitions committed by a group of persons upon complicity.

Limeshko, a native of Ukraine’s Kharkov region, was a senior intelligence operative at a regiment deployed in the east of the country. The Russian authorities detained him last August. Two TNT blocks, a mechanism for setting an explosive device off, a grenade for an RDG-5 grenade launcher, and containers with an inflammable mixture were confiscated from him.

Information released by the law enforcement agencies said he arrived in Crimea on August 9, 2017, for the purpose of blowing up a high-voltage power transmission line between the towns of Sudak and Novy Svet. This subversion would have left more than 50,000 people in a blackout.

He was detained while making a cut in a pylon.

A law enforcement source also told TASS the SBU had instructed Limeshko to organize a number of explosions and arsons in Crimea in order to disrupt the normal functioning of transportation and infrastructure facilities.