Putin pardons woman convicted of treason for text messages
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday pardoned a woman convicted of treason last year for sending text messages about military movements near Georgia’s breakaway republic.
The Kremlin published Putin’s decree on Tuesday to pardon 46-year-old Oksana Sevastidi on humanitarian grounds.
The shopkeeper from the Black Sea resort of Sochi was sentenced to seven years in prison in March 2016 for sending two text messages to a friend in Georgia in 2008 about Russian military movements near the breakaway republic of Abkhazia, several months before Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over Abkhazia and another breakaway region. Sochi is several kilometres (miles) away from the Russian-Georgian border.
Sevastidi’s conviction came amid a spike in treason convictions in recent years of Russians who seemingly weren’t in a position to obtain any top-secret information. They included a mother of seven, a Sochi traffic controller, a Black Sea Fleet sailor, a Siberian police major, a Russian Orthodox Church employee, a Moscow university lecturer and a retired nuclear scientist.