The judicial panel of the Zhytomyr region's Andrushivka District Court has sentenced two persons, who had facilitated the creation, launch and broadcasting of the Novorossiya TV channel to nine-year imprisonment each on the grounds of materials provided by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), the SBU said on its website on Friday.

According to the SBU, two men, residents of Kyiv and Berdychiv, had arrived in Donetsk, where they "provided technical, practical and methodical consultations for the establishment of the separatist Novorossiya TV channel."

After returning to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities, they helped with technical support and ensuring broadcasts of terrorists' propagandist channel," the SBU said.

Those persons "posed as independent social activists and journalists of an independent online media, joined a public council of a ministry and were members of several public councils of other bodies of state administration and local government" in Kyiv, the SBU said.

Law enforcement structures detained them in Kyiv in November 2015.

The court found the aforementioned citizens guilty of committing crimes under articles of 'creation of a terrorist group or organization,' 'public calls for committing a terrorist attack, as well as distribution, production or possession in order of distribution of materials with such calls,' and 'infringement on citizens' equality on the grounds of their racial or national identity' of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, it said.