A Russian court on the same day sentenced a Russian expert who passed secret information to China to eight years in prison for “treason,” Reuters reported on Feb. 25.
Vladimir Vasiliev, 52, was reportedly arrested in August 2019 in the Zabaykalsky region, located in Russia’s eastern Siberia adjacent to China and Mongolia. Vasiliev subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges, but the trial was held behind closed doors due to the sensitive information involved in the case. Local Russian media, which was the first to reveal the news, could not be provided with further details.
Russia, facing concerted Western sanctions against Crimea, has so far punished a number of Russians with treason charges for their involvement in leaks to China, despite a push to develop close diplomatic ties with China since 2014.
Russian state prosecutors last year charged Valery Mityko, president of the Arctic Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, with leaking state secrets to China; another Russian science and technology expert was also arrested in Siberia last October on charges of allegedly passing technical information to the Chinese.
Recent Comments