A district court in the Russian city of Perm has sentenced photographer and musician Grigory Skvortsov to 16 years in prison on charges of treason, the Russian edition of the BBC reports. The prosecutor's office had demanded a sentence of 18 years, BTA reports.
The reason for the criminal prosecution is the fact that Skvortsov gave an American journalist a book about Soviet bunkers - a publication that is freely available online and has not been declared secret.
Information about the sentence was distributed by a group of his supporters.
The book, titled “Soviet 'secret bunkers': urban special fortifications from the 1930s to the 1960s“, was written by historians Dmitry Yurkov and Sergey Poletaev. The authors used declassified archives, including documents about sites such as “Metro-2“ - the unofficial name of an underground transport system in Moscow used for military purposes. The publication is not banned, and the book's website states that although the initial print run is out of print, copies can still be found online. Positive reviews were also published by pro-government media outlets such as “Rossiyskaya Gazeta“ and “Komsomolskaya Pravda“.
Grigory Skvortsov is well-known in Perm as a photographer specializing in industrial and architectural photography. He is also the founder of the industrial music group “Yagat“, which holds concerts in mines, abandoned construction sites and factories.
Skvortsov denies his guilt and claims that he never had access to classified information or committed any malicious acts. According to him, the materials he gave to the journalist were completely public.