Journalist Ivan Safronov, sentenced to 22 years in a maximum security colony in a treason case, was returned to IK-7 near Krasnoyarsk

Former Kommersant and Vedomosti correspondent Ivan Safronov, convicted in a treason case, was returned to correctional colony No. 7 in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, from where he was taken two weeks ago. This was reported by the First Department.

On September 13, the authors of a telegram channel in support of the journalist wrote that Safronov’s relatives, in response to letters, received notifications that their addressee had “left for another institution.” This week, on September 26, the correspondent was found in a tuberculosis hospital in Krasnoyarsk.

"Hi all! As you already know, I left IK-7 - and for a not very clear reason, I am waiting for assignment to a new colony, being in the regional tuberculosis hospital, known as KTB-1. Don’t worry, I’m fine, and so is my health!” Safronov wrote about this.

It is unknown why the journalist was first taken from IK-7 and then returned back. in a colony near Krasnoyarsk Safronov has been since February 2023. Before this, since July 2020, he was kept in the Moscow Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

In the publications Vedomosti and Kommersant, Safronov wrote about the Russian defense industry. In September 2022, he was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum security colony and a fine of half a million rubles in the case of high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, in 2017 the journalist was recruited by his friend Martin Larisch, after which he began collaborating with Czech intelligence and transmitting to it “information about military-technical cooperation between Russia and a Middle Eastern African state.”