Week-ending 10 July 2020
Svetlana Prokopyeva: “It’s starting to look like a war between the security services and journalists, as if they are in one country and journalists are in another and so they are seen as enemies the security services feel they have to fight with. It feels like a real danger.”
Source:
What a Growing List of ‘Instructional’ Court Cases in Russia Have in Common
On Tuesday, the day after journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva escaped prison time for writing a column, she spent the morning walking around her home city of Pskov in northwestern Russia, enjoying her newfound freedom.
When she returned to her apartment in the early afternoon, the 40-year-old sat down to read and reply to the messages of support filling her inboxes. But as soon as she went on the internet, she was quickly brought back to reality. A fellow journalist had been detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) for what appeared to be similar reasons. In Prokopyeva’s view, Russia’s security services were sending a message.
“It’s starting to look like a war between the security services and journalists, as if they are in one country and journalists are in another and so they are seen as enemies the security services feel they have to fight with,” Prokopyeva told The Moscow Times by phone Tuesday. “It feels like a real danger.”
Prokopyeva was referring to the case of Ivan Safronov, a former defense reporter who recently started working as an aide to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos. On Tuesday, Safronov was charged with treason. He faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly passing state secrets to Czech security services during his time as a journalist. […]
Source: The Moscow Times, 8 July 2020
