Who are the three men who are being charged with treason?
Two of those charged, who have been identified as Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, were former employees of Russia's FSB intelligence agency and had been employed as cyber-security experts. The third has been identified as Ruslan Stoyanov, who was an executive at the anti-virus software firm Kaspersky. The identities of the three men were released to the public by their lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, who is said to be working for one of the men.
All three have been accused and charged with working with interests to help United States intelligence.
While there has been some speculation that their involvement could have been connected to controversy concerning hacking during the U.S. election, the Kremlin has come out to deny this claim. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman of Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has also denied the allegations in a released statement, also denying Russian involvement with hacking entirely.
According to reports, there have been other recent arrests concerning similar charges, but involving different individuals. A former journalist and civilian, Vladimir Anikeev, has also been arrested.
Various claims are being made, with little revealed
Due to the legal proceedings involved with a treason case, much of the details concerning the charges have been concealed from public knowledge.
It is likely that the identities of the three men would be unknown to the media had it not been for the lawyer's statement. According to Russian reports, Mikhailov had been detained while wearing a bag over his head, likely to conceal his identity.
That said, various anonymous sources have made various claims over the arrests.
According to a released statement from the BBC, there is even speculation that the hackers may have even committed voting fraud within the United States. Some of the claims, however, suggest that the arrests concerned more domestic issues, and that the connection to the United States may have been taken out of context. In on example, one such anonymous claim linked the three men to the hacking group Shaltai Boltai, which refers to the fairy-tale character of “Humpty Dumpty,” that is known to publicly publish the e-mail archives of various Russian government officials. Anikeev was also believed to have been attached to the hacking group in the anonymous claims.
