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Frenchman Vinatier sentenced to three years in foreign agent case
Vinatier was found guilty of failing to perform his duties as a foreign agent and sentenced to three years in prison. In his final words, the Frenchman quoted a line from Pushkin's poem "If Life Deceives You."
Laurent Vinatier, a French citizen who was declared a foreign agent in Russia and charged with collecting data and failing to fulfill his duties in connection with this status, has been sentenced to three years in prison, the prosecutor's office reported. The case was heard in Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky Court.
Vinatier was found guilty under Part 3 of Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (evasion of duties established by the legislation of the Russian Federation with respect to foreign agents). The prosecutor's office sought 3 years and 3 months of imprisonment for him, TASS reports. The ruling has not yet entered into force.
In his closing remarks, Vinatier read a poem by poet Alexander Pushkin, "When Life Deceives," the agency reports.
"When I ended up in the pretrial detention center <...>, I learned Pushkin's poems. "The mind lives in the future <...> everything is immediate, everything will pass. He quoted a line from the work: "Whatever happens, it will be good."
Vinatier was arrested in Moscow on June 6. At the time of his arrest, he was an employee of the Swiss Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, which “is involved in most conflicts around the world and carries out mediation projects in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia and Asia.”
The Frenchman pleaded guilty to two charges: failure to perform duties as a foreign agent and collecting data on Russia's military activities. According to the FSB, in the latter case, during visits to Moscow, he contacted numerous political scientists, sociologists, economists, military experts and officials, collecting military and military-technical information. The French could then pass them on to foreign intelligence services, which would harm Russia's security, the ministry believes.
In addition, according to the investigation, Vinatier failed to fulfill his obligations to provide documents required for inclusion in the Register of Foreign Agents for several years. The Ministry of Justice included French citizens there in June 2024.