A Russian court has found a photographer guilty of treason and jailed him for 16 years for allegedly sharing information about Soviet-era underground bunkers with an American journalist.
The court in the western city of Perm sentenced Grigory Skvortsov on Thursday after a closed-door trial, without giving more details on the charges. Skvortsov, who was arrested by Russian authorities in 2023, has denied any wrongdoing.
The court said Skvortsov would serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp.
It also published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage dressed in black as he listened to the verdict being read out.
In a December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled Russian lawyers, Skvortsov said he had passed on information that was either publicly available online or available to buy from the Russian author of a book about Soviet-era underground facilities for use in the event of a nuclear war.
Skvortsov did not name the US journalist he was working with in the interview with Pervy Otdel.
Since its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022, Russia has radically expanded its definition of what constitutes state secrets and has jailed academics, scientists and journalists it deems to have contravened the new rules.
Skvortsov, who specialises in architecture photography, has also spoken out publicly against Moscow’s military offensive on Ukraine. He has alleged that Federal Security Service (FSB) officers beat him during his arrest in November 2023 and said they tried to force him under duress to admit guilt to treason.
An online support group for Skvortsov said on Telegram after the verdict that “a miracle had not happened” and the photographer’s only hope of getting out of jail was to be exchanged as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights organisation Memorial has listed Skvortsov as among those subjected to criminal prosecution that is likely “politically motivated and marked by serious legal violations”.
Earlier this year, a Russian court sentenced four journalists to five and a half years in prison each after convicting them of “extremism” linked to their alleged work with an organisation founded by the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
