A Russian proxy court in eastern Ukraine on Monday sentenced two former Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) staff to 13 years in prison on treason charges that the OSCE called "inhumane and repugnant".
The court in the Russian-backed breakaway Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) - one of two self-proclaimed "people's republics" in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine - announced the sentences on Dmytro Shabanov and Maxim Petrov in videos aired by state-run media.
Separatist authorities said the pair, detained in April, had been recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Ukraine's secret services and were passing information about Luhansk's military personnel and equipment to Washington.