Russ, former U.S. Consulate staff sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison.

A Russian court has sentenced a former U.S. consulate employee accused of covert foreign cooperation to four years and 10 months in prison, Interfax news agency reported.

The court in Russia's Primorsky Krai released an appearance on social media on the 1st local time of Robert Shonov, a Russian national who was an employee of the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok, at the sentencing hearing.

Shonov was arrested in May last year on charges of serving as an informant for an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Russia in Moscow.

Russia's Federal Security Service says Shonov is accused of providing information on Russia's Ukraine and about the possibility of protests ahead of Russia's presidential election in March.

In response, the U.S. State Department denied that it was "completely unfounded."

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in May last year that "Shonov's only role was to summarize and edit articles in public Russian media."