Ivan Safronov: 22 Years in Prison. The Persecution of a Journalist

Ivan Safronov is one of the best-known Russian journalists imprisoned in a case linked to his professional work. He has been behind bars since July 7, 2020, and is serving a 22-year sentence in a strict-regime penal colony. The Political Prisoners Support project of Memorial recognizes Safronov as a political prisoner. In May 2026, Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience and said he had been deprived of his liberty for his journalism and for exercising his right to freedom of expression. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders also consider his prosecution connected to his profession.

Updated: October 3, 2026.

The case of Ivan Safronov has now lasted more than six years. During that time, the journalist spent two years in Moscow’s Lefortovo pretrial detention center, went through a closed trial, received a 22-year sentence, lost his appeal and cassation challenge, and was transferred to Krasnoyarsk Krai. Several of his lawyers faced criminal prosecution or were forced to leave Russia. Safronov himself has never admitted guilt.

Russian authorities classified his actions as treason. Human rights groups and international press-freedom organizations reached the opposite conclusion about the nature of his prosecution: they link the case to Safronov’s professional work and to violations of his right to a fair trial. For FACTUM, this is a story about the persecution of a journalist — how the case developed, what happened to Safronov and his defense team, and why human rights organizations regard him as a political prisoner.

This article is part of FACTUM’s Political Persecution → Journalists section.

A military correspondent

Ivan Safronov was born in Moscow on May 18, 1990. He graduated from the Higher School of Economics with a degree in journalism and spent more than a decade working in Russia’s business press.

At Kommersant, Safronov specialized in the military, the defense industry, the space sector, and Russia’s military-technical cooperation with other countries. It is a field in which much of the information is classified, official statements are often incomplete, and a reporter’s work inevitably depends on conversations with sources, experts, and people inside government institutions.

By the time of his arrest, Safronov was one of Russia’s best-known journalists covering defense. He was part of the Kremlin press pool, reported on the Defense Ministry and defense manufacturers, and wrote about arms deliveries, military contracts, accidents, and problems in the space industry.

In 2019, Safronov left Kommersant together with editor Maksim Ivanov after a dispute over an article about the possible resignation of Federation Council chair Valentina Matviyenko. After they were dismissed, the newspaper’s entire politics desk announced that it was leaving. More than one hundred employees of the publishing house signed a statement describing what had happened as pressure on journalists.

After Kommersant, Safronov worked as a special correspondent for Vedomosti and continued covering the military and defense industry. In May 2020, he joined Roscosmos as an adviser on information policy to its director general, Dmitry Rogozin.

He held that job for less than two months.

July 7, 2020

On the morning of July 7, 2020, officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, detained Ivan Safronov near his home in Moscow. That same day, the Lefortovsky District Court ordered him held in pretrial detention.

The FSB charged the journalist under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers treason. The official version accused him of passing information constituting a state secret to people whom Russian security services linked to foreign intelligence agencies. The case later came to include two episodes — Safronov’s contacts with Czech journalist and analyst Martin Larisch and with political analyst Demuri Voronin.

Safronov denied the accusation. He said he had been engaged in journalism and analytical work and had not passed state secrets to foreign intelligence services.

Almost immediately after his arrest, Roscosmos said that the criminal case was unrelated to Safronov’s work at the state corporation. Roscosmos later clarified that he had not had access to state secrets there and that the events alleged against him concerned an earlier period.

In other words, the criminal case was not about his brief period as a Roscosmos official. It concerned the years when Safronov was working as a journalist.

Journalists rallied to his defense

Safronov’s arrest triggered a broad solidarity campaign. Colleagues from Kommersant and Vedomosti, journalists from the Kremlin press pool, independent newsrooms, and professional associations spoke out in his support.

Kommersant’s editorial staff said it regarded Ivan Safronov as a Russian patriot and did not believe the treason accusation. Journalists stressed that the work of a military correspondent necessarily involves gathering information, including information that government agencies would prefer not to make public.

On July 13, 2020, journalists held solo pickets outside the Lefortovo detention center in support of Safronov. Police detained reporters who had come to support their colleague. The #FreeSafronov campaign continued in the years that followed.

For human rights advocates, that response became an important part of the case’s context: the prosecution was seen by the professional community not as an ordinary espionage case, but as a threat to journalism involving sensitive information.

Two years in Lefortovo

Safronov spent more than two years in pretrial detention before sentencing. His detention was repeatedly extended throughout that period.

According to Memorial, Safronov was denied family visits while held in Lefortovo. Beginning in August 2021, authorities started confiscating his correspondence. His defense repeatedly reported restrictions on access to case materials and other problems stemming from the secrecy regime.

Safronov was offered a substantially shorter sentence in exchange for admitting guilt. In a letter after the verdict, he said that during the trial he had been offered a sentence of roughly 12 years if he pleaded guilty, but he refused.

His position did not change from the moment of his arrest: there had been no intelligence activity, he said — only journalism.

Pressure on the defense

What happened to Safronov’s lawyers became a separate part of the story.

In April 2021, lawyer Ivan Pavlov, one of Safronov’s key defense attorneys, was detained. Pavlov was accused of disclosing information from a preliminary investigation in a case directly connected to his defense of Safronov. Pavlov later left Russia.

Lawyer Evgeny Smirnov also left Russia. Another member of the defense team, Dmitry Talantov, was detained in the summer of 2022 in a separate case over social-media posts about the war and was later sentenced to a lengthy prison term.

By the end of Safronov’s trial, Proekt noted, of the seven lawyers who had taken part in his defense, one was in pretrial detention, two were abroad, two had left the case, and only two could continue representing the journalist in court.

In 2026, Amnesty International separately cited the reprisals against Safronov’s lawyers as part of the broader pattern of pressure surrounding his case.

What journalists found in the prosecution materials

In August 2022, shortly before the verdict, the investigative outlet Proekt obtained the indictment and seven files that investigators alleged contained state secrets.

The outlet compared the information in those files with open sources. Proekt concluded that in almost every instance the information fully matched data that had already been published; in one additional instance, the match was close. Among the sources where similar information had appeared before Safronov prepared the materials, journalists found Reuters reports, specialized military publications, public documents, and even court decisions.

Memorial relies on this analysis in its decision recognizing Safronov as a political prisoner. The rights group argues that Safronov’s cooperation with his foreign acquaintances was journalistic and analytical in nature rather than intelligence activity.

Memorial also notes that investigators did not publicly present evidence linking Larisch and Voronin to foreign intelligence services beyond reports prepared by Russian security agencies, and that years of surveillance of Safronov did not produce evidence of espionage that was shown to the public.

This is not FACTUM’s independent legal characterization. These are among the arguments on which the Political Prisoners Support project of Memorial bases its recognition of Safronov as a political prisoner.

A closed trial

Safronov’s trial was held behind closed doors. Journalists and members of the public could not attend the main hearings, examine the prosecution materials, or observe witness questioning.

For human rights advocates, the secrecy of the proceedings became one of the central problems in the case. Memorial argues that Russian treason cases are systematically removed from public scrutiny through references to state secrets. As a result, it becomes impossible to independently assess the basis of the accusation, while the defense’s ability to work is sharply restricted.

Safronov refused to plead guilty or enter a deal with investigators. In his final statement, he again said that he had not passed secret information and that his work had consisted of gathering and analyzing information as a journalist.

Twenty-two years

On September 5, 2022, the Moscow City Court sentenced Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a strict-regime penal colony. He was also fined 500,000 rubles and sentenced to two years of restricted freedom after his release.

It was one of the harshest sentences imposed on a Russian journalist in modern history.

On December 7, 2022, the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction upheld the verdict.

On August 2, 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court rejected Safronov’s cassation appeal. The 22-year sentence remained in force.

Safronov has not admitted guilt at any stage of the case.

Memorial: political prisoner

The Political Prisoners Support project of Memorial includes Ivan Safronov on its list of contemporary political prisoners.

The organization cites several grounds for that assessment: the political context of Russian treason prosecutions, the connection between the criminal case and Safronov’s journalism, the lack of convincing public evidence of espionage, the findings of journalists who analyzed materials from the case, the closed trial, and violations of the right to defense.

Memorial’s current profile states that Safronov’s imprisonment is based on fabricated evidence in the absence of a crime and constitutes an attack on freedom of expression and the dissemination of information.

According to Memorial, Safronov has been deprived of his liberty since July 7, 2020.

Amnesty International: prisoner of conscience

On May 15, 2026, Amnesty International declared Ivan Safronov a prisoner of conscience.

The organization said that Russian authorities had failed to present convincing evidence of treason, that the proceedings had been unfair and conducted behind closed doors, and that, in Amnesty’s assessment, the 22-year sentence was motivated by a desire to punish the journalist for his professional work.

Amnesty stated its position even more directly: in the organization’s assessment, Safronov is imprisoned solely for his journalism and for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

The organization calls for his immediate and unconditional release and for his conviction to be quashed.

CPJ and RSF: a press-freedom case

The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Safronov in its database of imprisoned journalists. CPJ links his detention to his journalism and, after his conviction, called for his immediate release.

Reporters Without Borders also regards the accusation as unfounded and links the 22-year sentence to Safronov’s professional activity. After the verdict, RSF said that the inconsistencies in the prosecution case showed that Safronov was being punished for work he had performed as a journalist.

Safronov’s case has therefore received a consistent human-rights and professional assessment far beyond Russia: political prisoner according to Memorial, prisoner of conscience according to Amnesty International, and a journalist prosecuted in connection with his work according to CPJ and RSF.

A penal colony in Krasnoyarsk

After the verdict entered into force, Safronov was transferred to Krasnoyarsk Krai.

He was initially held at Penal Colony No. 7 in the village of Areyskoye. In 2024, Safronov wrote in a letter that he had been transferred to Correctional Colony No. 17 in Krasnoyarsk.

As of October 3, 2026, Memorial’s current profile still lists his place of detention as IK-17 of the Federal Penitentiary Service for Krasnoyarsk Krai.

Mailing address:
660111, г. Красноярск, ул. Кразовская, д. 12,
ФКУ ИК-17 ГУФСИН России по Красноярскому краю,
Сафронов Иван Иванович, 1990 г. р.

Memorial also states that electronic letters can be sent through the ZT service.

More than six years behind bars

By October 2026, Ivan Safronov had been imprisoned for more than six years.

Throughout that period, the state has consistently presented his case as a treason prosecution. Major human rights and press-freedom organizations frame the nature of the case differently. Memorial considers Safronov a political prisoner. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience. CPJ and RSF say the prosecution is connected to his journalism.

That assessment is based on more than Safronov’s profession. Rights groups point to the content of case materials that became public, the closed proceedings, pressure on the defense, the exceptionally broad use of the treason statute, and the absence of convincing public evidence that the journalist engaged in intelligence activity.

For FACTUM’s Political Persecution → Journalists section, Safronov’s case is one of the central stories. It shows how far the criminal prosecution of a journalist covering the military, defense, and national security can go: from professional contacts and analytical writing to a treason charge and a 22-year strict-regime sentence.