The Supreme Court of Russia said on August 2 that it had rejected an appeal filed by Ivan Safronov, a prominent former journalist, against his conviction in a high-profile treason case that highlighted the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and free speech.
Safronov has now exhausted all possibilities to appeal his conviction and sentence in Russia.
The Moscow City Court sentenced Safronov to 22 years in prison in September 2022 after finding him guilty of handing secret materials to foreign agents in a case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
Safronov has repeatedly denied accusations that he passed documents to Czech secret agent Martin Laris in 2017 about Russian arms sales in the Middle East. He also denies handing unspecified classified information to German secret agent Demuri Voronin.
The Russian investigative group Proyekt has concluded that high-treason charges against Safronov are "baseless."
The group said it studied the accusations by investigators and concluded that they had not found a single Russian official who could have handed Safronov any materials or information that could be defined as classified.
Furthermore, Proyekt said it also could not find any evidence proving that Czech journalist Laris and German political analyst Voronin had any links to the secret services of the two European Union countries.
Even if Laris and Voronin were secret-service agents, there is no proof that Safronov could be aware of that, Proyekt said, adding that investigators failed to prove that Safronov had received money from them, while the information mentioned by investigators as secret is publicly available online.
The 33-year-old journalist, who covered the defense industry for the newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti, is also a former adviser to the former head of Russia's space agency, Roskosmos.
Human rights organizations have issued statements demanding Safronov's release and expressing concern over an intensifying crackdown on dissent in Russia. The Russian human rights organization Memorial recognized him as a political prisoner.