A former employee of an international monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine has been convicted of espionage by a court in Moscow-occupied Donetsk, the Russian prosecutor general’s office said on Friday.
Vadym Golda, security assistant for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s observer mission, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for his alleged crime of collecting information on industrial facilities, a statement from the Russian office said.
The information was collected in 2021, before the start of Russia’s large-scale war in Ukraine, the statement added. Some of the facilities were attacked during the war.
Golda was arrested in September 2022, along with two other mission employees, both of whom had previously been sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission was deployed to the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014 after the start of fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. The aim was to provide safety reports and facilitate dialogue.
The mission withdrew in late March 2022 after the conflict escalated into a full-blown war.
“Individuals working under an international mandate, such as OSCE officials, should never be arrested, harassed or imprisoned for carrying out their responsibilities,” said Helga Maria Schmid, the organization’s secretary general, who said the OSCE will press for the release of all three.
