
25 July 2020

Hi! This is Elya Pakhomova, Head of Media and Press Secretary at Team 29.
As promised, we launched a new series of our Little Terror podcast, which we’ve called ‘On treason’. It consists of the stories of Team 29 clients who have been charged under Article 275, High Treason.
The first episode is about the case of Viktor Kudryavtsev, a 76-year-old scientist from TsNIIMash (the Central Research Institute of Machine Building), who was charged with spying for Belgium and spent a year in Lefortovo remand centre – with multiple chronic diseases. The lawyers Ivan Pavlov and Yevgeny Smirov only managed to have the restrictive measures reduced after Kudryavtsev was diagnosed in the remand centre with diabetes and cancer.
In this episode, we spoke to the scientist’s son, Yaroslav Kudryavtsev, and reported on how Kudryavtsev is feeling at the moment, who has supported the scientist, and who wrote of him that he had a ‘childlike candour’. We also addressed why the scientist hasn’t been let out of Lefortovo and what it all has to do with spam mail. You can listen to the latest episode of the Team 29 podcast on the usual platforms: Simplecast, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Yandex.Music, and VK.
In a new feature on the T29 website, ‘Per courtroom ad astra: how careers are made out of cases of national importance’, we tried to work out how such cases are tied to the careers of Russian securocrats.
Also this week, in a new video from Team 29, friends and colleagues of Professor Valery Mit’ko expressed their support for him, friends and colleagues of Ivan Safonov told us what he is like as a person, and Team 29 lawyer Valery Vetoshkin explained how and why Russians identified as having coronavirus are being tracked.
More interesting news can be found on Team 29’s social media pages. Subscribe and stay informed, on Facebook, VK, Telegram, and Instagram.
Stick with Team 29 and take care!
Elya
Translated by Lindsay Munford