The Moscow City Court sentenced Safronov to 22 years in prison, which he will serve in a high-security prison colony, on charges of high treason. The court sat behind closed doors.
A Russian court today sentenced former journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in prison after finding him guilty of treason in a landmark case of the Kremlin’s crackdown on press freedom.
Safronov, who worked as a military expert at Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers and then as an adviser to the head of the Russian Space Agency (Rosksomsos), was arrested in 2020 on charges of passing on classified information.
The Moscow City Court sentenced Safronov to 22 years in prison, which he will serve in a high-security prison colony, on charges of high treason. The court sat behind closed doors.
The troika of judges chaired by Dmitry Gordeev announced the decision without mentioning the reasons for the decision due to “confidentiality” and announced only the sentence.
Earlier, the prosecutor had requested that Safronov be sentenced to 24 years in prison, fined 500,000 rubles, and all his “criminally acquired” assets be confiscated.
Safronov’s lawyers told Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency that they would appeal the decision.
As Yevgeny Smirnov’s lawyer stated, during the recess the prosecutor offered Safronov to cooperate and plead guilty in exchange for his sentence being reduced to 12 years, but Safronov rejected the offer.
“Ivan never sent any information anywhere, not for money, not for free. All prosecution witnesses told the court that he had not been involved in criminal activity. He was an ordinary journalist, doing his job honestly,” his lawyers said in a statement.
Ivan Safronov has been held in Lefortovo prison since July 2020. Safronov was accused of passing information to the Czech intelligence services. According to the version of the secret services, Safronov gave information concerning military and technological cooperation, defense and security of Russia. Later, evidence related to Syria was added to the indictment. Until the investigation was completed, the FSB refused to disclose details of the indictment even to his defense counsel.
In August, investigative journalism website Proekt received the indictment in the Safronov case. The prosecution failed to locate the crime weapon, did not find witnesses and did not determine the defendant’s motives, while all the so-called “secret” information provided by Safronov is in open sources, the website wrote.
Among other things, the indictment included statements from journalists, whose work was usually far from military issues. For example, the website Proekt writes, the investigators gave Jelena Vikokurova, who is a member of the Human Rights Council (despite the president of Russia – USSR) the correspondence that Safronov had with the Czech Martin Laris, who after reading it stated that these issues “allow the disclosure” of state secrets.
His supporters say the case is retaliation for his reporting that revealed details of international arms deals signed by Russia.
“Anyone close to Safronov believes that the charge of high treason is absurd,” said journalist Ekaterina Gordegeva after interviewing his mother, sister and former colleagues for a documentary on the case.
Ahead of the sentencing, the European Union called on Russia to drop all charges against 32-year-old Safronov and release him unconditionally.
Safronov strongly denied the allegations and stated that the information he allegedly passed on to the Czech Republic was all open source public information.
During the trial, his legal team released links to 19 published articles and government statements that prosecutors say are “state secrets” that Safronov allegedly passed on to Czech foreign intelligence.
The heavy sentence – more than what Russian courts usually hand out in murder cases – is seen as a landmark blow to Russian journalism amid increasing pressure on press freedom by the Kremlin since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine. at the end of February.
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