Russia has been accused of treason and espionage since Ukraine war began: NPR

TALLINN, Estonia — 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. On a date earlier, he had taken his father, the prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolkar, to the medical institution in his native 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 was accused of treason, then the community learned that he was investigated in Russia against the law and tried in complete secrecy and given a long prison sentence.

Treason cases were uncommon in Russia over the past 30 years, with some occurring once a year. However, since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, their numbers have skyrocketed, with espionage prosecutions targeting voters and foreigners in a variety of ways, without reference to their politics.

This has drawn comparisons to screen trials under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.

The new victims range from Kremlin critics and isolated journalists to experienced scientists working with countries Moscow considers friendly.

The cases come as a crackdown on dissent has reached unprecedented levels under President Vladimir Putin. Their investigations are conducted almost entirely through the powerful Federal Security Agency, or FSB, with specific allegations and evidence not always clear.

In Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison the accused are constantly held in strict isolation, tried for murder behind closed doors, and almost all the time convict with long prison sentences.

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

The First Branch, a rights team that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a category of security provider, counted more than 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He further said that there were almost certainly 100 others that no one knows about.

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

Treason cases began to rise around 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the eastern part of the country and disengaged with the West at the first pace since the Cold War. .

Two years ago, the prison definition of treason was expanded to include vaguely defined “assistance” provided to international countries or organizations, allowing anyone associated with foreigners to be successfully prosecuted.

The crackdown 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 the motion, Putin promised to consider the revised regulation and of course “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 region of Smolensk, on charges of treason under the latest, 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 generated family outrage. Russia denies that its troops were involved in eastern Ukraine, and many pointed out that the case against Davydova contradicts that narrative. Eventually the charges against him were dropped.

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

Paul Whelan, a United States corporate security officer who was in Moscow for a wedding, was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage two years later, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He refused to take the fees.

Ivan Safronov, a Roscosmos field company assistant and former military affairs journalist, was convicted of treason in 2022 and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His prosecution was widely understood to be in retaliation for his reporting exposing military incidents and shady dealings.

His fiancee and fellow journalist 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 additionally turned to the closest scientists who know about aerodynamics, hypersonics, and other topics that may be outdated in gun manufacturing.

According to lawyer Smirnov, such arrests increased around 2018, when Putin in his annual state-level speech publicized fresh and distinctive hypersonic guns that Russia was developing.

In his view, this was the approach of security services and products to reveal to the Kremlin that Russian medical progress, especially the old progress in making guns, is so worthy that “all the foreign intelligence services of 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 fees. Their families and colleagues insisted that they were framed over something as benign as lecturing in another country or working with international scientists on joint initiatives.

Kolkar, the son of a detained Novosibirsk physicist, said that after the FSB searched his father’s apartment, he saw many of his old performances at lectures he gave in China.

The elder Kolker, who studied luminous waves, gave demonstrations which were approved for value in another country and were also found in Russia, and “any student could understand that he could find anything (secret) in them.” Was not revealing,” Maxim Kolker said.

However, his son said that FSB officers picked up the 54-year-old physicist from his mattress at his medical institution in 2022 and took him to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.

The ailing scientist called his family by airplane to say goodbye, realizing he was unlikely to remain in prison, the son said. Within days, the community received a telegram informing them that he had died in a medical institution.

Other examples were similar. Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old Moscow physicist who specializes in aerodynamics, was convicted of treason in 2023. His state-run research institute was working on a global project of a hypersonic civil aircraft, and he was requested through his employer to support stories in the challenge.

Smirnov of the First Branch team, who was concerned with his security, says that the reports were checked before being sent abroad and did not contain status secrets.

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

“He’s not guilty of anything,” he said. His 12-year sentence was upheld despite appeals, and his community now hopes he will be granted parole.

Alternative scientists working on hypersonics, an area with influential programs for missile development, were also arrested on treason charges in recent days. 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 two alternative physicists who “make presentations at international seminars and conferences, publish articles in high-ranking journals (and) participate in international scientific projects.” Were responsible for. Such actions, the letter says, are “an essential component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity” in Russia and elsewhere.

Two relatively recent high-profile examples concern a prominent opposition meat presser and a journalist.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist turned activist, was charged with treason in 2022 after giving a speech critical of Russia in the West. He later believed that there were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017, but Kara-Murza was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, whereupon his community feared his worsening condition.

In his later remarks at the trial, Kara-Murza pointed to the United States’ dark legacy of prosecution, saying that the country has long since “gone back to the 1930s.”

Ivan Gershkovich of Wall Boulevard Magazine was arrested on espionage charges in 2023, the first American reporter detained on Cold War-related charges. Gershkovich, who went on trial in June, has denied 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 military, setting fire to military enrollment offices in Russia, or Even for functions including non-public. Telephone conversation with his friends in Ukraine about relocating there.

Ksenia Khavana, 33, was arrested in Yekaterinburg in February on treason charges, accused of collecting money for the Ukrainian military. The twins had returned from Los Angeles to speak with the Russian-American civic community, and First Branch said the fee was derived from a $51 donation to a US-based fund that is helping Ukraine.

Professionals say several elements are pushing the government to prosecute more treason cases.

One is that it sends an unambiguous message that the unwritten rules have been modified, and that meetings in another country or painting with international friends is not something scientists can do without an investigative journalist and security services. Says expert Andrei Soldatov. product.

He says it is also easier to approach upper echelons of government to allocate resources such as surveillance or wiretaps in cases of treason.

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

Above all, Soldatov said, is the FSB’s authentic and common belief about “the fragility of the regime” in the face of political upheaval – both through accumulated protests, such as in 2011–12, or now through the conflict with Ukraine. From. ,

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

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

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