The defendant was identified by The Insider from a video recording of the verdict being read out, in which the judge states her name and date of birth: Natalia Petrovna Slanovskaya, born 21 March 1961. Her name is withheld in the published case card for criminal case No. 2-118/2026. The case reached the court on 24 August, the first hearing was held on 14 September, and Judge Vladimir Gorban read the verdict.
According to the prosecution, the woman was receiving treatment at a sanatorium in Anapa in February 2026. There she took several photographs of an unnamed Defence Ministry facility and sent them to a representative of the Main Counterintelligence Directorate of Moldova's Information and Security Service.
The court said the Moldovan security service acts in the interests of the Security Service of Ukraine. Russian authorities allege the photographs could have been used by Ukraine in preparing sabotage against the Russian army. No evidence for this account has been presented beyond statements by the Russian authorities. The court's statement also asserts that Slanovskaya opposed the war in Ukraine and cooperated confidentially with Moldovan counterintelligence.
Before the criminal case was opened, the pensioner was subjected to "carousel" arrests, Mediazona reported. On 18 May the Zyuzinsky District Court of Moscow imposed an administrative arrest on her under a petty hooliganism protocol. On 1 June she was given another 15 days' arrest under the same article, this time in the Khoroshevsky district of the capital. She was apparently sent to a pre-trial detention centre on the treason case after serving the latest term of administrative arrest.
The Insider established that Slanovskaya was born in the village of Gorodishche in the Moldavian SSR and lived in Moscow. According to a CV found in open data, she worked as an economist at the company Progressive Biomedical Technologies and was looking for work as an economist or accountant. Border-crossing records show her trips to Moldova and Ukraine before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, including to Chisinau between 2014 and 2020.
It is not known whether Slanovskaya pleaded guilty. There is no information on when she was detained or what evidence of the alleged cooperation with Moldovan counterintelligence was presented to the court.