A Moscow court on Monday sentenced a prominent former military-affairs journalist to 22 years in prison on treason charges for allegedly passing state secrets to NATO states, amid an escalating campaign to wipe out independent media.
The length of the sentence handed to Ivan Safronov, 32, a journalist specializing in the defense industry and space sector, is “unprecedented,” with the harshest prison term for treason until today being 20 years, said his attorney, Yevgeny Smirnov. Lawyers will appeal the sentence, he said.
Investigators accused Safronov of passing classified information to Czech intelligence that Prague then passed on to the U.S., according to former defense lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, who continues to advise his legal team. Both Smirnov and Pavlov now live outside Russia after being forced to leave the country by official pressure. A third lawyer for Safronov is in detention.
The conviction came on the same day Russian authorities stripped the license of Novaya Gazeta, one of the last remaining independent newspapers. Since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February, he’s stepped up efforts to stamp out remaining pockets of dissent with opponents jailed or driven into exile. Critics of the war also face a crackdown after a law was passed making spreading information that discredits the Russian army punishable by as much as 15 years.
Safronov, who allegedly committed the offenses while working for the Kommersant newspaper, was an aide to the head of Russia’s state space agency when he was detained in July 2020. He told the court in a final speech that he rejects accusations of spying for the Czech Republic and Germany, never passed on any state secrets and published all the information he collected.
The former reporter has been in pre-trial detention for more than two years, deprived of the right to see his relatives or even call his mother, according to lawyers. The trial against him aims to intimidate other journalists, said Smirnov. The European Union ahead of the verdict called on Russia to drop the charges against Safronov and free him.
Safronov decided to become a journalist after the death of his father, a military journalist, who died in 2007. Safronov’s father was investigating the secret deliveries of Russian aircraft and anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran through Belarus, but the article was not published, since Safronov’s father fell out of the window from his apartment building in a death ruled to be accidental.
