Russian Couple to Serve 10 Years in Jail for Spying for Latvia

A Russian court sentenced, Thursday, a married couple to more than 10 years in jail, as they were spying for Latvia, EU member, according to the FSB security service.

FSB security service said that the pair had been found guilty of state treason, noting that Baltic affairs expert Antonina Zimina, the wife, was recruited by Latvia’s security services in 2012 while travelling abroad.

Then, Zimina began to gather classified information, handing it over to Latvia.

FSB pointed that her husband Konstantin Antonets had been conscripted as a spy by his wife in 2015, as he had stolen information from his employer at that time, at the Kaliningrad region’s economics ministry, giving it over to Latvia.

The couple denied any wrongdoing and will appeal the verdict, according to what their lawyer Mikhail Bayev told the MBKH online news site.

The case has previously made headlines in Russia, as state prosecutors had accused them of sharing a photograph with Latvia of an FSB officer who had attended their wedding.

The couple was charged with treason after Zimina’s old classmate, a Federal Security Service (FSB) counterintelligence officer, appeared in their wedding photos.

The photographs with the FSB agent’s true identity were said to have circulated on social media and on Baltic television.

The Kaliningrad District Court found the couple guilty of high treason, sentencing Zimina to 13 years in a penal colony and Antonets to 12 years in maximum-security prison in a closed trial, TASS quoted Zimina’s father as saying.