At the same time, the press secretary of the President of Russia refused to give a further assessment of what happened to Safronov, Kommersant notes.
“This is a court verdict , and I have no right to comment on it in any way. Yes, we can state that this is a very harsh sentence, I have nothing more to say on this topic, ”Peskov said on the RBC TV channel.
According to Peskov, President Putin knows about what happened from the media.
Recall that on September 5, the Moscow City Court convicted the adviser to the head of Roskosmos, the former correspondent of Kommersant and Vedomosti, Ivan Safronov in the case of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The journalist was sentenced to 22 years in a strict regime colony and a fine of half a million rubles.
The media report that this is the most severe sentence ever handed down under a similar article. For example, former GRU officer Sergei Skripal was sentenced under this article to only 13 years in prison. Representatives of the FSB, who have been following Safronov since 2014 , said that he allegedly sold state secrets to foreign intelligence.
However, the defense objected that the intelligence officers artificially brought Safronov under the “needed” article of the Criminal Code: in fact, Safronov never had any access to state secrets, he received all the information from open sources, and received the sentence for journalism. These arguments of the defense were confirmed in court. Safronov also pleaded not guilty, warning that being convicted of a crime for legal journalistic work could put an end to the continued existence of all investigative journalism in Russia. However, the trial, which was held in a mode closed from the media, adopted an accusatory bias.