The “Supreme Court” of the so-called LPR sentenced Dmitry Shabanov, an employee of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a citizen of Ukraine, to 13 years in prison for treason. It is reported by RIA Novosti.
Shabanov was a security assistant for the mission's Stakhanov Forward Patrol Base.
In July, a newscast aired on Russian television, reporting that Shabanov had confessed. He confessed that, while working in the OSCE, he "carried out the tasks of CIA agents and collected secret information about the number and armament of the people's militia."
At the end of March, Russia blocked the extension of the OSCE mission in Ukraine: on April 1, the mission stopped the work that it had been conducting in Donbas since 2014. In mid-April, the so-called DPR and LPR banned the work of the OSCE mission and demanded that the organization's employees leave the territory of the self-proclaimed republics by the end of the month. The "LNR" stated that they detained two employees of the OSCE SMM on suspicion of treason.
Deputy British Ambassador to the OSCE Deirdre Brown criticized Russia for refusing to extend the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. “And now we have received disturbing reports that Russian proxies in Donbas are threatening mission personnel, equipment and facilities and that Russian forces have taken SMM personnel prisoner,” Brown said in a statement quoted by Reuters.