Cases of treason and espionage are coming to light in Russia since the conflict in Ukraine started.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Maksim Kolker’s phone rang at 6 a.m. and he was told on the other end that his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. Not long ago, he took his father, the eminent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolkar, to his local health facility in Novosibirsk after his complex pancreatic cancer suddenly worsened.

The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept calling until his father called to confirm the terrible news. The elder Kolkar is accused of treason, found out by the nearest mob, investigated against the law and tried in complete secrecy in Russia and given a long prison sentence.

cases of treason were uncommon Russia Within a maximum of 30 years, with a handful each year. However because 2022 invasion of ukraineThose coupled with espionage charges are skyrocketing, Trap voters and foreigners alikeWithout reference to his politics.

This has drawn comparisons to screen trials under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the thirties.

more modern victim length From Kremlin critics and far-right journalists to experienced scientists Running along international locations that Moscow considers enjoyable.

These circumstances arise from a crackdown on dissent under President Vladimir Putin that has reached extraordinary levels. Their investigations are conducted almost entirely through the powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, with specific allegations and evidence not always visible.

The accused are constantly kept in strict isolation Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prisonTried behind closed doors, and almost always resulted in convictions with long prison sentences.

In 2022, Putin instructed security products and services to “resolutely suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.”

First Segment, a rights group that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a section of the security provider, counted more than 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He further said that there would surely be 100 more that no one knows about.

Smirnov said that the longer the conflict continues, the more traitors the government needs to round up.

Cases of treason began to rise after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the eastern part of the country and severed ties with the West for the first generation since the Cold War. took.

two years ago, High definition of treason expanded This involves providing vaguely stated “assistance” to foreign international locations or organizations, effectively prosecuting anyone associated with the foreigners.

The march followed anti-government protests in Moscow in 2011–12, which authorities claimed were instigated by the West. Those changes to the law were heavily criticized by rights advocates, including those from the Presidential Human Rights Council.

Faced with that complaint on ERA, Putin promised to consider the amended law and that yes “there should be no blanket interpretation of what high treason is.”

And yet, exactly that started happening.

In 2015, the government arrested Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven in the western suburb of Smolensk, on charges of treason under a new, expanded definition of the crime.

He was accused of contacting the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in 2014 to warn officials there that he thought Russia was sending troops to eastern Ukraine, where a separatist insurgency against Kiev was spreading.

The case attracted nationwide attention and sparked outrage among the crowd. Russia denied at the time that its troops were involved in eastern Ukraine, and many said the case against Davydova contradicts that story. The charges against him were eventually dropped,

That end result was an extraordinary exception to the growing number of treason and espionage cases in the following years, which resulted in consecutive convictions and prison sentences.

Paul Whalen, a United States company security executive who went to Moscow to wait for a wedding Arrested and convicted of espionage in 2018 Sentenced to the nearest two years, and 16 years in prison. He denied the cost.

Roscosmos length company associate and former military affairs journalist Ivan Safronov was convicted of treason in 2022 and sentenced to 22 years in prison, His prosecution was largely believed to be retaliation for his reporting exposing military incidents and questionable finger-pointing.

His fiancee and fellow reporter Ksenia Mironova told the AP, “This is a very good warning to him that journalists should not write anything about the defense sector.”

The FSB later turned to scientists who learned about aerodynamics, hypersonics, and alternative weapons that are old in gun manufacturing.

Such arrests increased after 2018, when Putin in his annual State-of-the-Nation address promoted new and unique hypersonic guns that Russia was building, according to lawyer Smirnov.

In his view, this was the Security Products and Services approach to reveal to the Kremlin that Russian medical progress, especially chronic progress in making guns, is so civilized that “all the foreign intelligence services in the world are behind it.”

He emphasized that all the scientists arrested were civilians, and “they practically never go after military scientists.”

Most scientists denied the costs. His families and colleagues insisted that he was framed over something as benign as lecturing abroad or working with foreign scientists on joint initiatives.

Kolkar, the son of a detained Novosibirsk physicist, noted that once the FSB searched his father’s apartment, they found several of his lectures given in China.

The elder Kolker, who studied luminous waves, gave demonstrations that were acknowledged for importance abroad and were also found in Russia, and “any student could understand that he could reveal nothing (secret) in them.” Wasn’t doing it,” noted Maxim Kolker.

However, FSB officers pulled the 54-year-old physicist from his hospital bed in 2022 and took him to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, his son said.

The ailing scientist called his people by airplane to mention Adios, knowing he was unlikely to survive to tell the prison tale, the son said. Within days, Mob received a telegram informing him that he had died in a health facility.

The alternative conditions were indistinguishable. Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old Moscow physicist who focused on aerodynamics, used to be Convicted of treason in 2023, His state-run research institute was carrying on a global project of a hypersonic civil aircraft, and his employer requested him to backup with studies on the project.

Smirnov of the First Segment team, who was enthusiastic about their safety, says that the study was checked before being sent abroad and did not contain situational secrets.

Golubkin’s daughter Lyudmila said the 2021 arrest came as a shock.

“He is not guilty of anything,” she said. His 12-year sentence was upheld despite appeals, and his mob now hopes he will be exonerated on parole.

Alternative scientists working on hypersonics, an area with notable programs for missile manufacturing, were also recently arrested on treason charges. One of them, 77-year-old Anatoly Maslov, was convicted in May and sentenced to fourteen years in prison.

The Institute of Theoretical and Carried-out Mechanics in Novosibirsk wrote a letter supporting Maslov and the two alternative physicists “giving presentations at international seminars and conferences, publishing articles in high-ranking journals (and) participation in international scientific projects.” Were implicated in the case. The letter noted that such actions are “an essential component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity” in Russia and elsewhere.

Two alternative contemporary high-profile cases involved a prominent opposition meat presser and a journalist.

Vladimir Kara-MurzaA journalist turned activist was charged with treason in 2022 after he gave speeches in the West that were critical of Russia. Surviving despite attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, with his community fearful of his worsening condition.

In his closing remarks at the trial, Kara-Murza pointed to the United States’ dark legacy of prosecution, declaring that the country goes “back to the 1930s.”

The Wall Boulevard Magazine Ivan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 The first American reporter to be detained on Cold War-like charges of espionage. Gershkovich, Joe trial started in juneDenies the charges, and US authorities have declared him wrongfully detained.

Russians were reportedly charged with treason – or less-serious charges of “preparing treason” – for donating money to Ukrainian charities or groups fighting alongside Kiev’s forces, setting fire to military recruitment offices in Russia, or Even for the tasks involved. Personal telephone conversations with friends in Ukraine about relocating to Ukraine.

Ksenia Khavana, 33, was arrested In February he was charged with treason in Yekaterinburg, accused of collecting cash for the Ukrainian military. The twins had returned from Los Angeles to seek advice from the Russian-American citizen crowd, and the first segment mentioned the costs arising from a $51 donation to a US-based capital fund that is helping Ukraine.

there are many elements Inducing the government to prosecute additional treason casesMaven says.

One is that it sends a clear message that unwritten laws have changed, and that meetings in a foreign country or working with foreign friends are no longer something scientists, an investigative journalist and security expert should do. Andrei Soldatov says. Products and Services.

He says that it is also easier to get resources like surveillance or wiretaps allocated from the higher government in case of treason.

According to Smirnov, the increase in prosecutions occurred when the FSB allowed its regional branches to pursue certain types of treason charges in 2022, and officers in those branches wanted to curry favor with their superiors in order to advance their careers.

Above all, Soldatov noted, is the FSB’s authentic and persistent reliance on “regime fragility” in an era of political turmoil – both from cluster protests, such as in 2011–12, or now during the conflict with Ukraine. .

“They honestly believe it might break,” he said, “even though it actually doesn’t.”

Mironova, the fiancee of jailed journalist Safronov, echoed the same sentiment.

FSB investigators, he said, believe they are capturing “traitors” and “enemies of the motherland,” even though they know they have no evidence against them.