Russian hospital programmer gets 14 years for leaking soldier data to Ukraine

A Russian court sentenced a former hospital programmer to 14 years in a high-security penal colony for allegedly leaking personal data of Russian soldiers to Ukraine, authorities said.

The court in the Russian Irkutsk region found 37-year-old Alexander Levchishin guilty of treason after he copied electronic medical records of Russian military personnel from his workplace computer at a hospital in the city of Bratsk in April 2022. Investigators said he sent this data to Ukrainian intelligence services to post on a Telegram channel reportedly operated by Ukrainian agents.

Russia’s FSB security service said Levchishin, who was arrested in July 2023, also shared the phone numbers of several soldiers from Bratsk and transferred money to a bank account allegedly used by the Ukrainian armed forces to help purchase a vehicle.

During the trial, the prosecution reportedly questioned his mother about whether he had studied the Ukrainian language.

The court also fined Levchishin 50,000 rubles (about $550) and banned him from working in certain fields for four years after serving his sentence. 

According to the Russian human rights project First Department, at least 792 people have been charged with treason, espionage or collaboration with foreign states in Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

Activists say that FSB agents often initiate conversations with their suspects on social media, typically starting with casual topics before shifting to questions about the war. They pretend to share similar views in order to provoke responses that can later be used as grounds for opening a criminal case.

Earlier in May, a cadet from the Russian military space academy in St. Petersburg was reportedly arrested for allegedly developing and attempting to sell a hacking tool capable of breaching a classified security system used by law enforcement and military personnel.

In a separate case this month, a Russian court sentenced a university student to six years in a penal colony for allegedly aiding hacker groups linked to Ukrainian security services.