Russian IT pro sentenced to 14 years forced labor for sharing medical data with Ukraine

A Russian programmer will face the next 14 years in a “strict-regime” (high-security) penal colony after a regional court ruled he leaked sensitive data to Ukraine.

Aleksandr Levchishin, 37, from Bratsk, worked in one of the city’s hospitals and, according to the Irkutsk Regional Courts, is alleged to have copied the medical records of Russian soldiers to transmit their details to “the other side.”

An Irkutsk regional court claimed that Levchishin made the transfers in April 2022 while one of his primary responsibilities was to secure personal data held by the hospital.

The court also found Levchishin guilty of transferring money to the Ukrainian armed forces for the purchase of vehicles, earning him a treason charge.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor of the KGB) arrested Levchishin in July 2023, according to independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, originally on charges related to using software to illegally influence critical information infrastructure.

He was held in Bratsk for a week before being transferred to Irkutsk, where he remained until his closed-door trial on May 20.

To put information and claims from Russian courts into context, according to the Human Rights Foundation, “in modern-day Russia, under Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, courts serve merely as a tool used by the Kremlin to target critics and stifle dissent.” Until 2022, Russian citizens had some rights to appeal the decisions of domestic courts before the European Court of Human Rights because Russian was then a member of the Council of Europe (CoE). However, the country was formally “excluded” shortly after its attack on Ukraine.

Mediazona reported that Levchishin left behind his disabled mother and father, Vadim, who had cancer at the time of his arrest. Neither of his elderly parents believed they were informed of the exact nature of the charges against their son.

“First we came to work, and then we came home, and we were at a loss – elderly sick people, I have cancer, my wife is also barely alive,” Levchishin’s father said (translated). “We could not really demand anything legally specific, some documents and so on. 

“Well, they wrote everything here, and we stood like fools and waited. There were supposedly witnesses, a search, they took away laptops, took phones, took bank cards. They slapped all sorts of epithets on him. Here they accused him of being a traitor, an extremist, and transferring information.”

In addition to 14 years in a penal colony, the court issued Levchishin with a 50,000 Ruble fine ($627), one year of restricted freedom after his release, and a ban on working with critical information infrastructure for four years.

Levchishin is the latest Russian tech pro to be found guilty of acting against Russian interests in recent years.

Just this month, an 18-year-old student programmer from Tomsk was sentenced to six years in a penal colony for his alleged role in the pro-Ukraine Cyber ​​Anarchy Squad – a group responsible for several cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, The Record reported.

Likewise, Yevgeny Kotikov was sentenced to three years in a penal colony for his role in DDoS attacks targeting Russian government websites back in 2023. And the founder of cybersecurity research company Group-IB, Ilya Sachkov, was also sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for high treason.

Sachkov supposedly handed over details about the Kremlin’s APT28 offensive cyberespionage group to the FBI, and that warranted a huge punishment.

Penal colonies refer to Russia’s fancy way of saying labor camps. They’re like prisons, but much worse. Some are more lenient than others, but for crimes such as high treason, conditions can be quite unpleasant.

Prisoners are often kept in barracks rather than cells, subjected to forced labor, and some colonies are located in the harshest environments within Russia.

For example, Alexei Navalny, the lawyer, human rights activist, and highly prominent Putin critic ultimately died while serving a 19-year sentence in IK-3, one of Russia’s most bleak correctional facilities.

Located above the Arctic Circle, it’s known for extremely low temperatures, unpalatable food, unsanitary conditions, and beatings from guards. 

According to Russian legal group First Department, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 792 people were charged with treason (as of December 2024), 359 of whom were convicted last year.

It also claimed that at least nine of these people have died while in custody, and that courts publish less than 70 percent of treason cases through their press services. ®

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