French researcher Laurent Vinatier attends court in Moscow, Russia, 14 October 2024. Photo: EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
Russia has freed a French political scientist serving a three-year prison sentence for violating Moscow’s foreign agent laws in exchange for a Russian basketball player in custody in France, TASS reported on Thursday, quoting the Federal Security Service.
Laurent Vinatier, 49, was pardoned by Vladimir Putin, according to state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. The pardon was announced after France freed Russian basketball player Daniil Kasatkin from custody. Kasatkin’s lawyer Frédéric Bélot told RIA that Kasatkin had flown back to Moscow on Thursday.
Vinatier was sentenced to three years in prison in October 2024 after being found guilty of gathering military information without first registering as a “foreign agent”. He was subsequently charged with espionage while already in prison.
A researcher on Russia and the former Soviet Union, Vinatier was first detained in Moscow on 7 June 2024, and pleaded guilty to the charges against him on the same day. In an effort to receive a lighter sentence, his case was tried under a special protocol that did not require evidence to be presented in court, according to Medizona.
A fluent Russian speaker with a doctorate in military conflicts in the former Soviet Union from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, Vinatier had worked at the Switzerland-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue as an adviser on its Eurasia/Russia Programme since 2014.
Kasatkin, who was detained in June at the request of the US authorities, was suspected of participating in a hacker group that used ransomware to attack approximately 900 companies, including two federal agencies, according to Le Monde. Kasatkin studied in the US from 2016 to 2019 and played in Russia professionally from 2021, though his team, MBA-MAI, announced his departure in July.
