RUSSIA — A Russian court sentenced a U.S. citizen Tuesday to 15 years in a high-security prison for espionage, state media outlets reported, prompting speculation that the Kremlin might seek to use him as leverage in negotiations for a future prisoner swap.

The man, Eugene Spector, was already serving a 3 1/2-year sentence for a 2021 bribery conviction when he was charged with spying.

On Tuesday, the Moscow City Court convicted him of espionage and sentenced him to an additional 13 years, for a total of 15 years, at the end of a closed-door trial, according to Russian state news agencies.

Details of the charges were not made public. The case files for Spector were not available online, and The New York Times was not immediately available to identify or track down his attorney. The State Department said in a statement that it was aware of reports that an American citizen had been sentenced in Russia and it was monitoring the situation.

Spector, 52, was born in Russia but later moved to the United States.

— The New York Times