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Russia Charges Former Journalist with Treason

Charles Maynes

   MOSCOW - A former Russian journalist currently employed by the
   country's'¯space agency has been arrested and charged with state
   treason for passing secrets to the West -- punishment, his supporters
   argue, for his past coverage of sensitive Russian military and
   political affairs.'¯'¯

   IvanSafronov,30, spent much of the past decade was a military analyst
   and reporter for Kommersant and Vedomosti, two vaunted national
   newspapers that have seen their independence increasingly clipped and
   key staff shakeups amid a wider curtailing of media freedoms in
   Russia.'¯

   Video released by Russia's Federal Security Service, FSB, showed the
   former journalist quickly being detained by agents as he approached his
   car outside his home in Moscow on Wednesday morning.'¯

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