Ivan Safronov, a 32-year-old journalist who worked for the newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti, was sentenced in September to 22 years in prison, following over two years of detention in the notorious Lefortovo detention center. The case was particularly shocking and the verdict egregious because Safronov was accused of espionage, of leaking “secrets” to the West that were not secrets at all, but information publicly available to anyone with access to the internet.
Safronov had repeatedly refused to make a deal with the investigation, and his defense team faced unprecedented pressure. His lead lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, had to leave the country after he too was subjected to a criminal investigation. Safronov’s final statement in court, the so-called “last word,” was published in full by BBC Russian Service. We are publishing an abridged translation:
For half a year, we have been hearing the criminal case against me, which accuses me of espionage benefitting NATO countries: the Czech Republic and Germany. I have been held in the Lefortovo detention center for over two years. The preliminary investigation took almost as long. Before that, I was under surveillance by the Russian security services for six years. First, field officers, and then investigators, sought ways to characterize my journalism so it would be subject to an article of the Criminal Code that carries up to 20 years in prison. Rather than get to the bottom of the situation, investigators tried to fit the life I was living and work I was doing within the criteria of espionage.
Having examined what the investigation has accused me of, I can unequivocally state that my criminal prosecution is directly tied to my journalistic work. For several years, my telephone conversations were tapped and recorded. I was under surveillance. My flat is full of bugging equipment. An FSB agent was assigned to me. And for what? My telephone conversations with people from the defense industry, the government, and other structures are branded as attempts to gain information. But this is absurd: my articles on the topics discussed were published in Kommersant and Vedomosti.
There is not one word in the case about anybody handing me state secrets. There is not one word in the case regarding me holding any secret documents in my hands. Because I not only never handled them, I never saw them.
I have never been authorized to access classified information, that is a fact. An axiom. Not a single witness questioned in the courtroom, including “secret witnesses” and “possessors of secrets” has said anything about me that would confirm the allegation of my so-called “spying.” Because there was no spying, there was journalism.
(...)
If you believe the prosecution’s story, then at some unspecified time on some unspecified date, I found out some secret information from some unspecified people. These mythical people have been searched for but nobody was found. Why? I have the answer: because there is nobody that I have ever gotten secret information from.
There is not a single possessor of secrets on planet Earth who told me something that he was not authorized to reveal. These people could only have emerged under one circumstance: if I had agreed to work with the investigation and falsely implicate people. However, I cannot admit guilt where there is none. And falsely implicating people goes directly against my upbringing and the life principles that were instilled in me by my parents and family.
Of course, I am no angel. I have made mistakes. I have said things when I should have kept my mouth shut. I made promises and didn’t always deliver quickly enough. But I have lived my life honestly. I have not done anything to justify a lengthy prison sentence. I have not killed anybody. I have not robbed anybody. I have not lied to anybody. I have not betrayed anybody.
To say that I have damaged Russia’s defense is a lie. Not one expert statement says a word about damage inflicted by me writing something at the request of two foreigners. And whoever claims that I had the goal of harming my Motherland simply does not know me at all.
I have never planned to leave the country – because I love it. And I don’t see myself in any other place. I was born here, I studied here, I lived and loved, and I intend to keep doing this while my heart is still beating. This is my land, this is where my ancestors are buried. And I hope that my children will be born here.
I am not sorry for anything. Nothing that I wrote over my wonderful decade-long journalism career has been aimed at undermining the country’s constitutional foundation; that is evident to even those who already consider me an “enemy of the state.”
Esteemed judge! You are about to retire to your chambers to decide my verdict. My defense and I have demonstrated irrefutable evidence of my innocence of state treason by espionage. The investigators have gone out of their way to mar my name and ruin my reputation, but it has been impossible to do what they intended, because that would require admitting, for the first time in history, that what was being prosecuted was a thought crime.
To pronounce me guilty would mean subscribing to the idea that I spied on of my own thoughts. To pronounce me guilty would mean implying that writing articles using open public sources is a crime. To pronounce me guilty would mean recognizing that journalism is a crime in Russia. I will never agree to this. You are about to rule on the state of journalism in our country in the future.
The term demanded by the prosecution is monstrous not only in its absurdity but also in its consequences – not just for me, but for the image of the country. The whole world will see that you want to imprison a journalist for writing stories. A guilty verdict would effectively end the discussion on freedom of speech for a long time, if not forever, because there would be neither freedom nor speech left.
If fate destines me to fulfill a prison term, I will serve this time with honor and dignity. However, there has never been any crime in my actions. I insist on my innocence and demand full acquittal.
When, in September, President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many expected it to be just that: a call-up of young men who already had training or who had previously served. But, of course, the announcement was a lie. Across Russia, the government has mobilized public servants to hand out call-up letters on a massive scale. Reports have trickled in that, in some villages, as many as a quarter of the entire male population was rounded up, some pulled out of their beds at night and not given a chance to pack a bag.
Russian regions with large ethnically non-Russian populations have reportedly been disproportionately affected by the mobilization. Opposition activists in Buryatia, Yakutia, the Caucasus, and other parts of the country decried what some called “ethnic cleansing,” pointing out only a tiny percentage of the population in large Russian-dominated cities were being mobilized, while most were being drawn from “ethnic” villages.
The following signs of resistance appeared soon after the mobilization.
In our Republic, the infrastructure between villages is very bad. Let’s use this. If they are coming to collect people, you need to wash away the road, break the bridge, take down trees… So that nobody can reach the village.
There are large distances between Yakut villages, this can be used. Shoot through the tires of transport that is coming to collect you. The transport won’t reach its destination. Shoot from the forest, nobody will find you.
Damage the transport. You may have one or two buses in the whole village. Damage them, so that they don’t have anything to ship out the mobilized in.
If you’re in a northern village and a helicopter is coming to do the pickup, break it. Leave it without fuel, shoot through the gas tank, break the blades, anything.
If they manage to get into the village to get the men, all men up to 60 should hurry off to go hunting. They can go look for armed men in the forest.
If you don’t do this, by the end of the war, Sakha Republic won’t have men or youth left!
Since the start of this bloody war, ethnic minorities who live in Russia have suffered the most. The Buryat Mongols, Tuva Mongols and Kalmyk Mongols have suffered a lot. They have been used as nothing more than cannon fodder. Hundreds of them are wounded, thousands of them have been killed. We the Mongols will meet you with open arms and hearts as well.
t.me/new_tuva
In recent days, news is spreading all over the internet about the massive mobilization in Buryatia and Yakutia. And in Tuva? It’s exactly the same, only the Tuvans are silent! They are shipping away 100 people from one village. They massively distribute call-up notices and trick people into showing up at the military office. They are calling up men who never served, fathers with more than three children, people with disabilities. Students are being brainwashed at Tuva State University.
The republic is going through mass mobilization, with the goal of shipping as many people as possible to kill and be killed. Since February, we are record holders for the number of killed soldiers per capita. Over 100 children have been orphaned.
And what lies ahead? Hundreds and thousands of deaths. Broken lives and spirits, broken families, traumatized children, even more dire poverty and debt. This is what the Russian government has prepared for us. Eat up dear Tuvans and don’t choke. Go kill people on their own land and die there. We don’t need you, we can spare you.
Our people are being used in somebody else’s war as cannon fodder. In hope that this weakens us further, that we become even more docile. To continue exterminating us.
Countrymen, wake up! Save yourselves, save your loved ones, help others! Don’t participate in this bloodbath. Don’t go to die for Russia’s Nazi peace!
We have to support Tuva, to help it prosper. To bring up our children among our Sayan mountains. To tell them bedtime stories about the great Yenisei River. To be alive and to be happy. In spite of the Nazi government.
https://bit.ly/rl22fall-cherkess
Last night, President Putin issued a decree about general mobilization. I would like to address all Circassians: this is not our war. Russia doesn’t have a single ethnic group that would need this war. Including Russians. The only people that need this war are Putin and his team, who have robbed this country. Our people are not so numerous that we can sacrifice our youth in such a pointless manner. Genocide is once again coming back to our homeland. I would like to tell the parents: protect your children. People that are older, take care of yourself. We should not be a part of this delusion. I would like to tell the Head of the Republic, Kazbek Kokov, and his assistants: if our youth is called up during mobilization, a lot of blood will be spilled. Don’t expect this blood to be spilled and forgotten, that nobody will be held responsible. If you escape responsibility from the people, then you will not escape responsibility from God. It would be better if you protected your people. I will end on this note. I call on everyone to unite and defend their homeland and their youth. May God have mercy on us.
Gorbachev? They say he gave us freedom.
Well, I don’t know. I had criminal probes launched against me under Gorbachev. My future husband at the time was working non-stop. They used tanks against people in Vilnius, and battered them with sapper’s blades in Tbilisi – under Gorbachev. He gave away the entire “socialist camp” without bloodshed: but what was he to do with oil at $7 a barrel? He allowed some sort of private business? Again, what was he to do if there was nothing to eat and wear in the country?
He wanted to preserve the USSR. There was no strategy for dissolving it sensibly, no risk analysis on areas of tension. Or any evidence of strategic and systematic thinking. “Perestroika” was poorly conceptualized, and I don’t recall any effort to find a new stability. It was reactionary. It was avoidance of extremes. He was a typical regional party secretary. And not from the center, but from a rural area.
He allowed us to publish books – for that of course, a big thanks. He didn’t imprison people for words, that’s even better. He freed the remaining political prisoners, and seemingly without being forced to. He didn’t like to torture people. The best thing about him was what he wasn’t. He wasn’t obsessed with power and ideas. He wasn’t an executioner. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t a thief or a pillager. He wasn’t a bastard. He wasn’t a nasty reptilian. For our parts, that is not bad and even unique. He loved his wife. He spoke oddly.
I don’t know what he thought about the recent events, I didn’t pay attention. Perhaps when the West, amazed by its good fortune, dubbed him vanquisher of totalitarianism, he himself started believing it had all been for democracy and peace. And that’s nice.
– Writer and psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya https://bit.ly/rl22fall-gorby
☙ ❧
Gorbachev is the rare politician that simultaneously deserves to be tried at the Hague and receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Because few world politicians have done as much evil as he has. But paradoxically, few have done as much good for this world as he.
He bloodily quashed freedom movements while, at the same time, he saved us from a major bloodletting as the Soviet Union was falling apart. Yes, he preserved one-party political authoritarianism up until the country’s finish. But he was a representative of the Communist Party’s most humane wing. He was the most peculiar of dictators. The most peculiar pacifist. There probably won’t be another like him in history.
Without a doubt, people loved him at the beginning of his path. For openness. For perestroika. For glasnost. And yes, without a doubt people did not like him toward the end. For the bloody break-up of demonstrations. For the loss of people’s savings. For the country’s poverty and lack of reforms. For a reluctance to return people’s freedom of choice. In recent years, he has certainly looked better in the context of the politicians that have ruled Russia over this period. With his love for his wife. His kindness. His modesty. His philanthropy. Gorbachev is part of our common history.
It so happened that I personally did everything I could to help him get through the putsch alive. And I came to the House of Parliament, among other reasons, in support of his freedom. But I, along with millions of others, also did what I could to see that he would no longer be in power, so that we could have our own freedom.
– Oleg Kozyrev, screenwriter and former political activist https://bit.ly/rl22fall-kozyrev
Mikhail Gorbachev lived a long, happy, dramatic, and tragic life. I have two personal stories connected with him.
As we know, Gorbachev freed all Soviet political prisoners in 1987, so in late June 1987, my parents Zoya Krakhmalnikova and Felix Svetov returned to Moscow from their banishment in Altai, where they still had a few years left on their sentence.
Gorbachev freed the political prisoners after speaking with Andrei Sakharov at the end of December 1986. He called Sakharov in Gorky, where he had been sent, and told him he could return. Sakharov said that his friend Anatoly Marchenko died in the camps from a hunger strike he started for freedom of political prisoners, and that he, Sakharov, would only return if Gorbachev freed them all.
And that’s what happened.
Gorbachev issued a decree and pardoned all political prisoners. So, my mother called me from Ust-Koksa, a village in Gorny Altai, and told me that they had been summoned to the local police station and read Gorbachev’s pardon.
The second story is more recent.
In December 2007, in the Supreme Court, I heard the statement of Vasily Alexanyan, the lawyer for the Yukos oil company. He said that he, a terminally ill man, was being pressured in prison into giving testimony against Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, and others, that he was being blackmailed and told that otherwise he would not receive treatment. I wrote an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, asking him to appeal to Vladimir Putin to free Alexanyan and have him admitted to a civilian hospital. I know that my letter was given to Gorbachev. And he did call somebody, perhaps Surkov, perhaps somebody else.
"Back then, there was great support in society for Alexanyan. Khodorkovsky was on a hunger strike in prison, famous people wrote letters to the court, he was supported by the European Court of Human Rights. But I believe that Gorbachev’s role was also important. Alexanyan was transferred from the Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, where he was being killed, to the Vorobyov Hospital. Among other illnesses, I believe he had leukemia. Then he was completely freed on some exorbitant bail, and he lived a free man another year or year and a half.
These are my personal stories about Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
– Zoya Svetova, journalist and human rights activist https://bit.ly/rl22fall-zoya
As there are no dissenting voices among highly-ranked Russian officials, any opposition to Russia’s Ukraine War sounds like a brave rallying cry.
Dozens of the country’s municipal deputies – elected officials with responsibilities similar to city council members, though very little power – have spoken out, calling on Vladimir Putin to step down. The following statement has been signed by over 70 deputies. Many were subsequently fined for disparaging Russia’s armed forces.
“We, municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President Vladimir Putin are harming Russia’s future and its citizens. We demand Vladimir Putin’s resignation from his post as Russian president.”
Alla Pugacheva, arguably Russia’s best-known pop singer and a household name since the 1980s, spoke out against the war in Ukraine after her husband, stand-up comedian and television personality Maxim Galkin, was branded a “foreign agent” over his antiwar statements on social media.
Appeal to the Russian Ministry of Justice:
“I ask to be added to the ranks of foreign agents of my beloved country, because I am in full solidarity with my husband, an honest, honorable and sincere man, a real, uncorrupted patriot of Russia who wants his homeland to enjoy prospersity, a peaceful life, and freedom of speech, and for our boys to stop dying for illusory goals that have turned our country into a pariah and made the lives of our citizens harder.”
In this magazine's summer issue, we included a story about Tatyana Savinkina, a retired woman living in Karelia who spoke out against the war. Russian authorities have now opened a criminal probe against Savinkina, alleging that she has “disparaged” the Russian army. Police conducted a search of her house in September, and the crime she is charged could lead to up to three years in prison. Savinkina, who is 77 years old, has already paid several fines after her neighbors reported on her.
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