A Russian court said on Thursday it
had found a photographer, Grigory Skvortsov, guilty of treason
and jailed him for 16 years after Skvortsov said he had passed
detailed information about once secret Soviet-era bunkers to a
U.S. journalist.
Skvortsov, who was arrested in 2023, denied wrongdoing. In a
December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled
Russian lawyers, he said he had passed on information that was
either publicly available online or available to purchase from
the Russian author of a book about Soviet underground facilities
for use in the event of a nuclear war.
He did not name the U.S. journalist in the interview with
Pervy Otdel, which the Russian authorities have in turn
designated a “foreign agent” – a label which carries negative
Soviet-era connotations and is designed to limit their
activities and influence.
A court in Perm said in a statement that Skvortsov would
serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp
and that his treason had been fully proven in a trial it said
had been held behind closed doors.
It published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage
dressed in black looking calm as he listened to the verdict
being read out.
Russia radically expanded its definition of what constitutes
a state secret after it sent tens of thousands of troops into
Ukraine in 2022 and has since jailed academics, scientists and
journalists it deems to have illegally shared secrets.
An online support group for Skvortsov said on Telegram after
the verdict that “a miracle had not happened” and the
photographer’s only hope of getting out of jail was to be
exchanged as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Russian court said on Thursday ithad found a photographer, Grigory Skvortsov, guilty of treasonand jailed him for 16 years after Skvortsov said he had passeddetailed information about once secret Soviet-era bunkers to aU.S. journalist.Skvortsov, who was arrested in 2023, denied wrongdoing. In aDecember 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiledRussian lawyers, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n