The persecution of the press who criticize the power has increased in recent years, but the invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated it
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s struggle against the independent press is already taking on a brutal undertone. The judiciary under his supervision, the courts formally expected to act in accordance with the law, on Monday revoked the license of the fortnightly “Nóvaya Gazeta,” where murdered reporter Anna Politkóvskaya wrote and whose director, Dmitri Murátov, wrote. the award was awarded. Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. At the same time, expert defense journalist Iván Safronov was sentenced by the Moscow Municipal Court to 22 years in prison under a strict regime for two crimes of “high treason”.
Safronov, 32, will also have to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles (more than 8,300 euros) and, once he has served his sentence, his movements within Russia will be restricted for two years. The charge of “high treason” was filed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) citing two different episodes: In 2015, Safronov passed information about the troops to political scientist Demuri Voronin, who is of Russian and German nationality. in Syria; and in 2017, through his friend, Czech Martin Larysh, he gave classified information to the secret services of the Czech Republic.
But the Russian journalist denies it and declared himself innocent from the start. His lawyers claim that even witnesses to the prosecution confirmed during interrogations that there was no treason and that Safronov never had access to state secrets. His investigative work was purely journalistic. The lawyer Evgueni Smirnov has assured that the prosecutor suggested Elvira Zotchik that the sentence would be only 12 years if he pleaded guilty, but Safrónov rejected the proposal, insisting on his innocence and stressed in his last word at the end of the trial that the persecution he faces is due to his work as a journalist, not to any kind of treason or espionage.
“If you believe what the Public Prosecution Service is claiming, at an unknown time, on an unspecified date, I received something secret from some unidentified people. They searched for these mythical bearers of secrets, but did not find them. Why? I have an answer: because there are no people from whom I have never been able to find out anything secret,” the journalist said as the hearing ended.
Voronin acquitted Safronov, while the publication “Proyekt”, after studying the documents of the case, came to the conclusion that most of the supposedly secret information covered by the journalist and sent to the West is available on the Internet. . British chain BBC believes the article he wrote detailing the contents of a contract to supply Russian warplanes to Egypt could be the real reason behind the prosecution against him.
He was arrested in Moscow on July 7, 2020 by FSB agents. He then worked as an advisor to Roskosmos, the Russian space agency. The FSB then assured that, under instructions from a NATO special department, Safrónov “collected information on military-technical cooperation, arms sales, defense and security in Russia and passed it on to his Alliance contact.”
Since his arrest, the journalist has not been allowed to see his relatives for nearly two years and has not called his mother on her birthday. Two of his lawyers, Ivan Pavlov and Evgueni Smirnov, were pressured to leave Russia, and another, Dmitri Talantov, was arrested and charged in a case of “forgeries” related to the Russian military, the publication said. Pavlov said after the arrest that the nature of the closed-door trial, according to state secrets, “will facilitate the falsification of evidence because there is no transparency.”
Safrónov wrote for the prestigious newspaper “Kommersant” for 10 years, where he left after the scandal formed by an article in which he assured that the President of the Federation Council (Upper House of the Russian Parliament), Valentina Matviyenko, would be disgraced and fired . In 2019, he had published material that sparked controversy over the contract for the sale to Egypt of 20 Sukhoi-35 fighter jets. Later he went to work at ‘Védomosti’, but in May 2020, after being appointed as the new director of the newspaper, Andrei Shmárov, he went to ‘Roskosmos’.
Safronov’s father, with the same last name and also called Ivan, was also a military journalist and columnist for Kommersant. He died on March 2, 2007 after falling from the fifth floor of the building where he lived, even though his apartment was on the third floor. There was speculation about his possible murder, but in the end Russian justice ruled that it was suicide.
On the other hand, the Moscow court on Monday recognized Basmanni as “invalid the registration certificate of the paper version of ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’.” The persecution of the press who criticize the power has increased in recent years, but the invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated it. Numerous websites of various publications have been blocked and a large number of Russian journalists have had to leave the country.
The court’s ruling against ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’ was a result of the complaint filed in late July by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor, which alleged that the editorial board’s statutes are missing when re-registering with the administration. In two other separate complaints, also filed in July, Roskomnadzor requested that the digital edition and a new magazine from the same publisher be revoked. These demands will be examined by the Russian judiciary in September. ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’ has not appeared since the end of March. Management suspended publication on the internet and in print for fear of reprisals against journalists over the newspaper’s critical position regarding Russia’s offensive against Ukraine.
Since its founding in 1993, six journalists and employees of the biweekly magazine have been murdered, including Politkóvskaya. The editors of ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’ have published a letter of support for Safronov.
Source: La Verdad
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