News
Ivan Safronov, a former journalist for the newspaper Kommersant and former advisor to the head of Russia's space corporation Roscosmos, has been sentenced to 22 years in a maximum-security penal colony after being found guilty of high treason for allegedly “passing classified information” about the Russian Armed Forces to foreign spies.
According to an indictment published in August by the independent investigative outlet Proekt, the case against Safronov rests entirely on conjecture: none of the witnesses cited by investigators had knowledge of the journalist’s alleged crimes, and nearly all of the information he is accused of passing on as “state secrets” was already publicly available online.
Safronov was arrested in July 2020. The FSB claims that in 2017 he handed classified data to Czech intelligence working under U.S. direction. The information allegedly concerned Russia’s military and technical cooperation in Africa and the activities of its armed forces in the Middle East.
According to the investigation, Safronov allegedly obtained the classified information from officials who had access to it. Proekt notes, however, that the testimony of six government officials contained in the case file does not corroborate this version: none of them admitted to passing any classified information to the journalist. Only the former head of the United Rocket and Space Corporation, Yuri Vlasov, suggested that Safronov might have visited his office and “might have seen some documents” on his desk. He did not provide any evidence.
Perviy Otdel reported that the court refused to adduce Proekt's investigation and the documents relating to the interrogation of the witnesses who confirmed Safronov's innocence.
During a break in the August 30 hearing, the prosecutor Elvira Zotchik suggested that Safronov plead guilty in exchange for a term of 12 years in prison. The journalist rejected the deal.