The Zaporizhzhia regional court in occupied Melitopol sentenced the administrator of the local Telegram channel Georgiy L. to 16 years in a strict regime colony on charges of treason and public calls for extremism, reported the court's press service, not providing the full surname of the convicted person, only the year of birth.
As noted by «Mediazona»*, Georgiy Levchenko of the same year of birth was the administrator of the popular Melitopol Telegram channel «RIA-Melitopol».
According to the court, «harboring a negative attitude towards the SVO», in 2023 he organized a network of correspondents who transmitted information to him, in particular, «data on the locations of Russian Armed Forces units, which were later targeted for missile and bomb strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces». According to the court's press service, Levchenko received 20 thousand hryvnias per month for his activities.
In October 2023, the FSB reported the detention of the administrators of «RIA-Melitopol» and the chat «Melitopol is Ukraine», which, according to the intelligence service, were used «by foreign intelligence for gathering intelligence information and exerting psychological influence on the residents of the region». One of the detainees has already been sentenced and was returned to Ukraine as part of an exchange, while the cases of the others are either under investigation or being heard in court.
* Recognized in Russia as a «foreign agent».