In the years preceding the war in eastern Ukraine, just a handful of people had been charged and jailed for high treason in Russia.

But with more than 20 cases of “crimes against the state” pursued in the last year alone, it seems spy mania has returned to levels last seen after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In January, air-traffic controller Pyotr Parpulov was given 12 years in a maximum security prison for allegedly divulging classified information while on holiday.

A judge ruled that the 60-year-old from Sochi had given away state secrets while abroad in 2010. Parpulov’s lawyers say there was no substantiating evidence and that all the information he shared was already in the public domain.

In 2015, after a high-profile treason case collapsed in court because of a lack of evidence, information emerged about similar accusations – against mothers, sailors, former directors of defence factories, employees of Russia’s military intelligence and police officers.

But details about the cases are scant: all charges under statute 275 of Russia’s criminal code are classified, and lawyers and human rights campaigners say the rise in treason cases signals the return of a worrying legal trend about which no information is available to the public.

According to statistics from the judiciary department of the supreme court, the number of sentences for high treason has tripled since 2014.

Soviet police officers standing in front of the KGB building, in November 1990. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images

The accused

Some of the recent cases appear, at least on the surface, to make sense. Among those sentenced is former police officer Roman Ushakov, who was given 15 years in a maximum security facility for allegedly giving CIA agents secret information for a reward of €37,000.

A 73-year-old former director of a Ukrainian factory, Yuri Soloshenko, was also sentenced to six years in 2015 for “spying on behalf of Ukraine”. He is said to have obtained secret components for the S-300 surface-to-air missile system intended “for the restoration of Ukraine’s air defence”, prosecutors said.

But others are more baffling. Physicist Valerii Selianin was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security prison for having supposedly given foreign citizens “consultation or other assistance” that was damaging to Russian state security. But even Selianin’s state-appointed defence lawyer said that the case had “neither the evidence, nor the events for a crime”.

Lawyers say this spike in treason cases does not point to an increase in foreign intelligence operations inside Russia. Rather, observers blame the broadening of the definition of treason to include the provision of “consultation services to representatives of [a] foreign state”.

Judging by what little is known of these cases, potential suspects no longer need access to state secrets – it’s enough just to be in contact with foreigners.

The secretive nature of the cases also makes them very difficult to defend, as lawyers are often denied access to the “state secrets” being debated – despite this information forming the core of the criminal charges.

Jailed Sochi resident Pyotr Parpulov, who was accused of giving away state secrets while on holiday. Photograph: Petr Parpulov family archive

The first spy wave

Russia’s first post-Soviet spike in treason cases started in the late 1990s, suggesting that spy mania increases in times of economic crises and local conflicts.

Lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin attributes the 1990s cases to an influx of new people into the security services who were unfamiliar with state secrecy practices.

Then came new personnel, who knew as much about these criteria as a pig knows about pineapples Mikhail Trepashkin

Trepashkin, a former KGB then FSB agent, was himself sentenced to four years in prison for “disclosing state secrets” and for the unlawful possession of munitions – that he says were planted.

“In the USSR, it was clearly established what was to be considered a state secret and what was treason: activity that inflicted or could inflict damage on the security of the state. And that damage had to be real,” Trepashkin says. “And there were criteria according to which such damage was assessed.

“Then came new personnel, who knew as much about these criteria as a pig knows about pineapples. They took the list of information that could cause damage if disclosed, and began to judge it purely mechanically,” he says.

Lawyer and former state prosecutorial investigator Andrei Grivtsov says “the norm became elastic”, allowing “virtually anything” to be interpreted as treason.

The blurring of what constituted concepts of enemy action and damage to state interests was evident in the most widely known cases of that era: those of the ecologist Aleksandr Nikitin, physicist Valentin Danilov, Academy of Sciences’ Institute scholar Igor Sutiagin and many others. They were convicted just the same, and most were given long sentences.

Now, ambiguity over what constitutes treason seems to be being harnessed once again. The FSB scored a serious institutional victory in 2012 when amendments to the statute removed the requirement of proving enmity or demonstrating that someone had actually inflicted damage against the state.

“Treason” can now describe consulting, financial, technical or material assistance to foreign organisations “if their activity is oriented against national security”.

“You won’t find a more ambiguous or fuzzy phrasing,” says lawyer Ivan Pavlov. “Treason could be understood to include simply helping another government.”

People stand on top of burnt-out armoured personal carrier near the city hall in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Ukraine

Ivan Pavlov has specialised in protecting the public’s right to access official information, and has defended citizens charged with disclosing state secrets.

It was Pavlov who, along with a group of journalists and rights activists, challenged a presidential decree on the classification of Defence Ministry reports of military losses in peacetime before the Russian supreme court in 2015.

The court upheld the decree, with the result that anyone trying to prove the participation of Russian armed forces in the conflict in eastern Ukraine by using data on casualties could be charged with treason.

We're isolating ourselves from the world, giving the impression we’re encircled by enemies Mikhail Trepashkin

The current search for spies, according to Pavlov, is connected exclusively to the events in Ukraine. “Like many of my colleagues, I am certain that the issue is the militarist rhetoric of the authorities. There are external enemies, and by the logic of the security services in such a complex time there must also be internal [enemies]. Article 275 is aimed at them,” the lawyer says.

Grivtsov says yet another reason for the increase in cases has been their exemption from review in jury trials. In 2008, the FSB ushered a law through the State Duma that prevented jury trials in cases relating to treason and espionage.

“Jury trials worked as a sort of filter,” Grivtsov says. “Investigators always treated them with greater responsibility, more meticulously gathering evidence. Now, though, investigators have no fear of classifying the actions of suspects under article 275, because they are sure that a professional judge – unlike jurors – will always be on the side of the prosecution.”

Lawyers don’t expect a decline in treason cases any time soon. “We’ve had a falling out not just with our distant – but with even our closest – neighbours,” says Trepashkin.

“Wrapping ourselves once more in a cocoon, we want to isolate ourselves from the outside world and give the impression that we’re encircled by enemies. It’s the ideal atmosphere for seeking out spies.”

A version of this article first appeared on Meduza.io