Grigory Skvortsov, who denies wrongdoing in sharing details of the bunkers, will serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison.A Russian court has found a photographer guilty of treason and jailed him for 16 years for allegedly sharing information about Soviet-era underground bunkers with an American journalist.
The court in the western city of Perm sentenced Grigory Skvortsov on Thursday after a closed-door trial, without giving more details on the charges. Skvortsov, who was arrested by Russian authorities in 2023, has denied any wrongdoing.
The court said Skvortsov would serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp.
It also published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage dressed in black as he listened to the verdict being read out.
In a December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled Russian lawyers, Skvortsov said he had passed on information that was either publicly available online or available to buy from the Russian author of a book about Soviet-era underground facilities for use in the event of a nuclear war.
Skvortsov did not name the US journalist he was working with in the interview with Pervy Otdel.
Since its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022, Russia has radically expanded its definition of what constitutes state secrets and has jailed academics, scientists and journalists it deems to have contravened the new rules.
Skvortsov, who specialises in architectur …