MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, who has been sentenced to a prison term in Russia on espionage charges, is currently kept at Moscow’s Lefortovo detention center, Ivan Melnikov, executive secretary of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission, told TASS on Thursday.
"Sushchenko has been transferred to Lefortovo," he said, adding that other Ukrainian nationals, namely Vladimir Balukh, Pavel Grib, Stanislav Klykh, Alexander Kolchenko and Yevgeny Panov, are currently kept at the same facility.
A source at the Lefortovo detention center told TASS that most of these people, including Sushchenko, have been kept there for about a week.
Apart from that, a source familiar with the situation told TASS on Thursday that film director Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a sentence in Russia for plotting terror attacks in Crimea, has been transferred to Moscow to be exchanged with the Ukrainian side. However human rights activists were told he had not been taken to Lefortovo.
On June 4, 2018, Ukrainian national Roman Sushchenko was sentenced by Moscow City Court to 12 years in a high-security prison on espionage charges. According to Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, Sushchenko is a career officer of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Department and was detained while on a spy mission. He reportedly collected top secret information on Russia’s Armed Forces and the National Guard, FSB said. The Ukrainian citizen pleaded not guilty.