The FSB opened at least 22 criminal cases under a relatively new article on violation of requirements for the protection of state secrets, Mediazona calculated . Cases were mainly brought against Russians who had visited Abkhazia, six of them were convicted.
Article 283.2 of the Criminal Code prohibits the exit from Russia of citizens who have or once had access to state secrets. Under it, in particular, fall under the engineers, employees of state enterprises and law enforcement agencies, as well as officials. They remain banned from leaving even after dismissal (for up to five years). The article provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment, but so far only fines have been imposed on it.
The person involved in the criminal case under this article was, for example, a design engineer from Novosibirsk, who, judging by the text of the verdict, participated in secret meetings, as well as in the development of a project for a “multi-purpose ship-ekranoplan of a new generation”. For a trip to Abkhazia, the court sentenced him to a fine of 250,000 rubles.
In the Krasnodar Territory, retired military man Valery Gayterov was fined 200,000 rubles for leaving for Abkhazia. Another case was opened in Sochi against Anna Tarkhanova, who worked at the Solovyov Scientific and Practical Psychoneurological Center in Moscow.
Mediazona also spoke with a Nizhny Novgorod programmer accused under this article. He went to Kazakhstan for three months, and when he returned, FSB officers came to his house and informed him that a case had been opened. He had access to the state secret while working at the VNIIEF nuclear center, from where he quit three years ago.