The FSB security service accused Nikolai Zyuzev of promoting “national liberation movements of small ethnic groups” in Russia on foreign orders.
He was sentenced in his native Komi Republic, in northern Russia, in the latest imprisonment of a Western citizen during Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
Canada is a Ukraine ally.
The Memorial rights group, which recognises Zyuzev as a political prisoner, said he had left Russia after it launched its Ukraine offensive in 2022 but periodically returned to his remote native village.
Little is known about the circumstances of Zyuzev’s arrest last year. The FSB alleged he had worked with European organisations and spread “extremist materials.”
The Komi Republic is home to the Komi ethnic minority. According to Russian media, Zyuzev spoke the Komi language.
Russia is home to dozens of ethnic minorities and has historically accused Western countries of fuelling separatist movements among them.
Moscow has arrested Westerners and Russians with ties to the West regularly during its military campaign in Ukraine, and the announcement of Zyuzev’s sentencing came shortly after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky visited Canada.
According to Memorial, which describes him as a philologist, philosopher and historian of sciences, Zyuzev is 70 years old.
The group says he moved to Canada in 2008, where he worked in academia and received Canadian citizenship in 2015.
He then returned to Russia to lead a new research centre in Syktyvkar — the main city in the Komi Republic.
He is believed to have been arrested last summer during one of those visits.
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