RSF Condemns Russia For Jailing YouTube Blogger Over State Secret Sharing

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the five-year jail sentence for Russian YouTube blogger Andrei Pyzh on charges of obtaining and sharing state secrets and demanded his immediate release

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 29th December, 2021) Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the five-year jail sentence for Russian YouTube blogger Andrei Pyzh on charges of obtaining and sharing state secrets and demanded his immediate release.

In October, Pyzh, a blogger with dual Russian and Ukrainian citizenship famous for sharing videos of exploring abandoned urban infrastructure on his 800,000-subscriber channel, was found guilty of illegally obtaining information constituting a state secret and crossing the Ukrainian border with the intent to disseminate this information abroad.

"The lack of transparency in this case, the denial of Andrei Pyzh's rights to a legal defense and fair trial, and the background of heightened tension with Ukraine cast serious doubts on his conviction in connection with his journalistic activities," Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said in a statement.

RSF stressed that Russian authorities did not clarify what kind of secret information was obtained by Pyzh, and linked the prosecution to his report on the Olenegorsk radar station in the Murmansk region, a military project officially operational and well-funded, but in fact almost destroyed.

"Pyzh's report exposed a large-scale case of misappropriation of military funding, a subject that journalists are now banned from covering on the grounds that it could 'undermine the security of Russia'," the statement said.

The NGO further demanded the blogger's immediate release.