The Russian Prosecutor’s Office has requested this Tuesday a sentence of 24 years in prison against the journalist and adviser to the space corporation Roscosmos Ivan Safronov for allegedly having committed high treason and espionage after leaking information about Russia.
“The representative of the State Prosecutor’s Office demanded that Safronov be found guilty of treason and sentenced to 24 years in prison in a strict regime colony,” said the Moscow court where the case is being judged, as reported by the TASS news agency.
According to the investigation, between 2015 and 2019, Safronov “discovered” and “collected” top-secret information about Russia’s military-technical collaboration with the rest of its partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as well as with other countries of Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.
Safronov was arrested on July 7, 2020 and placed under arrest by court decision. The Prosecutor’s Office considers that Safronov would have collaborated since 2012 with the secret services of the Czech Republic, through which he allegedly provided the United States with information regarding technical and military cooperation between Russia and African countries.
The Prosecutor’s Office also narrated another episode in which the journalist delivered information on the Russian Armed Forces in Syria in December 2015 to the political scientist Demuri Voronin, who transferred it to the representatives of the University of Zurich and the German Federal Intelligence Service.
Before being hired by Roscosmos, he worked for the newspapers ‘Kommersant’ and ‘Vedomosti’, where he wrote mainly on military and space-related topics. From Roscosmos they assured that the case is not related to his work in the company, where he has been working since May 2020.
‘Kommersant’ branded at the time the accusations against his former editor as absurd, while the newspaper ‘Vedomosti’ underlined that “he is a patriot of his country” and called for these accusations that weighed on the journalist “in an impartial manner” to be clarified and in strict compliance with the law.
Source: Europa Press
