Case of Russian journalist Safronov sent to court | News from Germany about Russia | DW

The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation sent the case of journalist Ivan Safronov to the Moscow City Court for consideration on the merits. The department approved the indictment in the case of treason, Interfax cites on Saturday, March 5, a message from the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The department clarified that Safronov is accused “of committing two crimes under Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.” “The investigation established and documented the facts of a long period, during 2015-2019, of finding out and collecting secret and top secret information by Safronov, including in relation to Russia’s military-technical cooperation with the states that are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as well as countries Middle East, Africa and the Balkan Peninsula,” a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

According to these data, the journalist “systematically passed” the collected information to the special services of foreign states, “realizing that this information could be used by the states – members of the NATO bloc against the security of the Russian Federation.”

The case of Ivan Safronov

Former journalist of Kommersant and Vedomosti, adviser to the head of Roscosmos, Ivan Safronov, was detained on July 7, 2020 on charges of treason. The state corporation said that the detention was not connected with his current work and he had no access to state secrets. Meanwhile, the Federal Security Service (FSB) claims that in 2012 Safronov was recruited by Czech intelligence, and in 2017 he handed over some secret data to the Czech special services.

In November 2021, a new charge appeared in the Safronov case. According to investigators, in December 2015, the journalist gave political scientist Demuri Voronin some information about the activities of the Russian Armed Forces in Syria, which he, in turn, sent to representatives of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The FSB believes that “the transmitted information could be used to analyze the actions of Russian troops in Syria” and that Safronov received $248 from Voronin for this information.

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