Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a married couple in the country’s tank manufacturing hub on suspicion of sharing details of a defense enterprise with Ukraine, state media reported Tuesday.
Video of the detention in the industrial Ural Mountains city of Nizhny Tagil posted by the TASS news agency showed agents in military uniforms forcing a man to the ground and then handcuffing him outside an apartment building.
The man is then taken into an apartment, where the video cuts to an interrogation of a couple.
The FSB claimed that the unnamed woman had admitted to selling blueprints of an unidentified Nizhny Tagil defense enterprise to Ukraine’s intelligence agencies for 100,000 rubles ($1,200).
The blueprints could be “used against the Russian Armed Forces during the special military operation,” the press office of the FSB’s Sverdlovsk region department said in a video shared by TASS.
The FSB said that “items used in espionage activity” had been discovered during a search of the unnamed couple’s apartment.
A court placed the couple in pre-trial detention on charges of treason.
Treason carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison under Russian law.
The Nizhny Tagil couple’s detention follows a slew of treason cases amid a sweeping crackdown on Russians accused of publicly opposing their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
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