The path is heavy - the reward is more

The story of a former FSB officer convicted of state treason

In June 2016, the former FSB officer Yevgeny Petrin was sentenced to 12 years in a maximum security colony for state treason. The Moscow City Court found him guilty of the transfer of secret information to the CIA; Petrin himself said that he performed the FSB task and worked "undercover." The process was closed, its participants were connected by non -disclosure subscription, and the materials were protected by the “secret” stamp - therefore, the press could not find out any details of the case. At the disposal of Medusa were new documents that were not yet known to the investigation and the court. In one of them, experts, at the conclusion of which the verdict is based, recognize the “unintentional fallacy” of their work; Another confirms that Petrin had an official legend from the FSB. Having studied new circumstances, Medusa tells the story of Evgeny Petrin.

Cosmodrome and Russian Orthodox Church

What is actually doing his younger brother, an engineer from the Irkutsk region Alexei Petrin only found out in 2014, when Evgeny Petrin, captain of the FSB, was detained by his own colleagues. “After his arrest, he was forced to tell his relatives about himself - in letters. We only knew that he first underwent military service on a contract at the Plesetsk cosmodrome, while he never called his position. And then, as we thought, he moved to Moscow to study at the Military Academy. In fact, it was an Academy of foreign intelligence, ”said Alexei Petrin“ Medusa ”.

In 2005, Evgeny Petrin graduated from the Law Institute of Irkutsk State University. A year later, he really began to serve in the space forces at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. Three years later, he entered military service in the Department of Military Counterintelligence of the FSB of Russia Department for Space Forces, and then to the Foreign Intelligence Academy. From the FSB, Evgeny Petrin quit in 2013, he was immediately accepted into the department of external church ties (ACCS) of the Moscow Patriarchate as an employee of the Secretariat on Inter-Board Relations.

“A year before [in 2012], Zhenya traveled to the Solovetsky Monastery, where he talked with one of the elders. The brother then wanted to become a monk. But the elder advised him to serve the Church and the Motherland in the world. “This path is more difficult, but the reward is more,” the elder told him then, ”said Alexei Petrin. According to him, Eugene “believed in the power of law and truth”, so he decided to get a legal education at school.

Now Alexei Petrin is trying to prove that his brother did not give secret information to the CIA agent. From the documents that the FSB was obtained by Eugene himself, it follows that this information was obviously false and aimed at misinformation. Medusa got acquainted with some of them, and they give an idea of ​​what Evgeny Petrin was generally detained and convicted. He calls his older brother almost every day; The letter that Alexei Petrin sent Medusa, they made together. “We discussed it in detail for several days,” says Alexey Petrin.

ROC, Ukraine and arrest

In the Association, Evgeny Petrin oversaw Russian-Ukrainian relations. “It was just before the Maidan, a lot of CIA agents worked in Ukraine. And the brother was able to find there the real threat of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia from the American special services, ”says Alexey Petrin. According to him, Eugene entered the Ukrainian businessman Daniel Bilak , who, according to his information, "contributed to the split of Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches, conducted anti -Russian activities in Ukraine and recruited people, including within the Russian departments."

According to Alexei Petrin, Deacon Nafan Musselly, a US citizen, cleric of the Synodal Znamensky Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in New York, who has been an assistant to a representative of the US Department of National Security at the Embassy in Moscow, has been helping Evgeny. Along with this, from 2012 to 2014, he had the blessing of Patriarch Kirill to serve in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the Russian capital.

“The brother repeatedly appealed to the special services so that the FSB investigative department would have a criminal case against Bilak, but each time he received a refusal,” says Petrin Sr.. According to him, neither in the Russian Orthodox Church, nor the FSB were interested in this - and “decided to discredit Eugene, to make him a traitor,” says Alexei Petrin.

In June 2014, Evgenia Petrin was detained on charges of treason. According to investigators, Petrin handed over to the CIA to the CIA secret data on colleagues from the FSB. What kind of data, to whom the information is transmitted, is unknown. It can only be supposed to say that it was Nafan Mousselli. According to lawyer Yevgeny Petrin Ivan Pavlov, the testimony from his client was “knocked out”. “They had no document in their hands that they could send for examination by the degree of secrecy - neither the record of a telephone conversation, nor fax, nor email. Therefore, the main evidence of guilt was the protocol of interrogation [Petrin himself], and experts analyzed it, ”Pavlov explained to Medusa.

In the winter of 2015, the Synodal Information Department said that Evgeny Petrin was not a clergyman, and the quality of his work "did not meet the requirements." The same statement stated that in the summer of 2014, even before the arrest, Evgeny Petrin filed a petition for dismissal of his own free will, and it was satisfied. According to Alexei Petrin, Eugene never wrote any statement-although the corresponding document is in the personnel and legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate. “We learned about this when our father went there with a request for support. He was refused him, referring to the fact that Zhenya was no longer their employee, ”said Alexei Petrin.

The case was considered by the Moscow City Court in closed mode (like any case of state treason). “The brother and his lawyers asked him to be judged as a military in the military tribunal, but they were refused,” says Alexey Petrin.

According to Alexei Petrin, the American priest Nafan Mousselli could have become almost a “key figure in the justification of his brother,” but he was never called to court. Medusa failed to contact Mousselli.

From the very beginning, Alexei Petrin was sure that his brother quit the FSB only in fact - in fact, he remained an agent, and the work in the Russian Orthodox Church was his official task. Allegedly “undercover” he collected information for the Russian special services. According to the lawyer Pavlov, all documents confirming that Petrin served in the FSB, and clarifying his status at the time of arrest, are stored in the FSB under the heading “secret”.

“This legend [work in the FSB under the cover of the Russian Orthodox Church] was needed in order to classify completely different information - that he is an employee of the foreign intelligence service - he naturally did not reveal it,” Alexei Petrin is sure.

The investigation and court information on the “official task” and “legend” Evgeny Petrin was ignored. It is unknown to whom exactly Evgeny Petrin transmitted those same “secret data” - in the verdict the addressee is “an unidentified representative of the US CIA in Moscow”. “At the hearing, the brother spoke about their communication with Mousselli. But the Moscow City Court, under the pressure of the investigation, refused to call this witness. The special services are well aware that this person is clean, and my brother did not give him anything illegal, ”says Alexey Petrin.

“Petrin’s connection with Mousselli was not included in the structure of the prosecution, despite the fact that this is almost the main point of this case, and he was intentionally missed,” Pavlov explains. - Significant circumstances of the case were left in the shade. And the court could not go beyond the charges. ”

In June 2016, the Moscow City Court found Evgeny Petrin to be guilty of the state treason in favor of the United States and sentenced to 12 years in a maximum security colony. The lawyer Pavlov calls this sentence a “compromise between the severity of the prosecution and its unprovenness”: “The prosecutor demanded a brutal punishment - 19 years in prison, and the Moscow City Court gave Eugene to a minimum - 12 years old, although if he was really to blame for what he was accused of, he should have been given to the full reel. The fact that the court chose the minimum term indicates that the prosecutions were bad. "

FSB and legend

In July 2016, after numerous requests, Alexei Petrin ensured that the FSB investigation department issued him written confirmation that the official legend of Evgeny Petrin really existed, agreed and approved properly (the document is at the disposal of Medusa). This means that in the Russian Orthodox Church, he still could work "undercover."

In August 2016, Alexei Petrin received an official explanation of the FSB experts (also at the disposal of Medusa)-they recognized the “unintentional fallacy” of their conclusions about the “reliability and secrecy” of information, for which Evgeny Petrin was condemned.

Experts, at the conclusion of which the sentence of Petrin was based, referred to their “inattention” and indicated the incompleteness of the data provided by him. “A document that they lacked to understand that the [transferred] information was not secret is Eugene’s official legend, it was not provided to them. The information looked plausible, it looked like a secret, but in fact it was about fictional employees and intelligence units of the FSB of the Russian Federation, ”explained Alexei Petrin.

In the second half of 2016, Evgeny Petrin tried to attract experts for negligence, but it turned out that they were not officials. “And for which my brother was condemned then, if the expert opinion was drawn up by anyone - not authorized and not officials. How can the mosgor court verification be based on such a conclusion? Nobody wants to answer this, ”his brother is indignant.

“The investigation led the FSB, experts from the FSB evaluated the data, the witnesses were also all of the FSB, in this case there was only a sentence - from the court, everything else was from the FSB,” says Pavlov.

Alexey Petrin said that he will soon have another document from the FSB, confirming that the information that was recognized as secret is actually fictitious. “The units that the brother allegedly informed the CIA about does not really exist,” said Medusa Alexei Petrin.

On May 1, 2017, relatives of Yevgeny Petrin submitted an application to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation on the resumption of the case due to new circumstances. On May 25, they were refused. At the same time, according to the lawyer Pavlov, the defense filed complaints with the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, which refers to "gross violations during the process." “The defense of Eugene himself was not acquainted with those secret acts, of the disclosure of which he was accused. In principle, we could not normally prepare for the process: we were deprived of the right to confidential communication, since the case materials were classified, we could not make their copies, and when they were held in our hands, there was always a convoy or investigator next to us, ”the lawyer said.

According to Alexei Petrin, his brother has long abandoned the idea of ​​exposing officials: "As a believer, he decided to simply achieve an excuse, without affecting those who, using his official position, acted against him." “In his business, he was not disappointed - this is evident from his letters. He hopes that in addition to unusual people, there are decent, patriotic and God -fearing people. This story did not force him to be disappointed either in the church, nor in God, or even in people, ”says Brother Eugene Petrin.

Sasha Sulim