Russia jails photographer for 16 years

27/6/2025 6:25

A Russian court said on Thursday it

had found a photographer, Grigory Skvortsov, guilty of treason

and jailed him for 16 years after Skvortsov said he had passed

detailed information about once secret Soviet-era bunkers to a

U.S. journalist.



Skvortsov, who was arrested in 2023, denied wrongdoing. In a

December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled

Russian lawyers, he said he had passed on information that was

either publicly available online or available to purchase from

the Russian author of a book about Soviet underground facilities

for use in the event of a nuclear war.



He did not name the U.S. journalist in the interview with

Pervy Otdel, which the Russian authorities have in turn

designated a "foreign agent" - a label which carries negative

Soviet-era connotations and is designed to limit their

activities and influence.



A court in Perm said in a statement that Skvortsov would

serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp

and that his treason had been fully proven in a trial it said

had been held behind closed doors.



It published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage

dressed in black looking calm as he listened to the verdict

being read out.



Russia radically expanded its definition of what constitutes

a state secret after it sent tens of thousands of troops into

Ukraine in 2022 and has since jailed academics, scientists and

journalists it deems to have illegally shared secrets.



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.