NOVO-OGARYOVO, December 10. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected attempts to bring high treason charges for the transfer of public domain data abroad as complete nonsense and a tragicomedy.
Journalist Yekaterina Vinokurova who participated in a meeting of the Russian leader with members of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights on Thursday remarked that the notion of high treason and the relevant article of the Criminal Code needed to be finalized because it currently embraced information that could be found in open sources.
Responding to her remark, Putin stressed that high treason is a serious crime that constitutes the betrayal of one’s own people. Traitors must always face severe punishment for all that they do, he said.
"The use of public domain information that is no longer secret due to the fact of its publication is a different story, and, in this case, this is complete nonsense," the Russian president said. A person "who uses widely accessible information cannot be held liable for its theft and transfer to anyone whoever this may be." This is nonsense, of course. I will necessarily pay attention to this," Putin said.
"If you have found it somewhere, this is a tragicomedy. But this must not be allowed," Putin said.
Commenting on the comic example about aiding a grandmother who may be a CIA agent, Putin remarked: "You understand that this does not happen." "Moreover, I have not seen our grandmothers spying," he added.
"All of our grandmothers are patriotically minded and all of them fought against the enemy during the Great Patriotic War and worked on the home front without sparing their life and health and so let us not cite examples relative to our grandmothers. We are proud of our grandmothers and grandfathers," Putin said.
The Russian president said at the same time that in general the right issue was raised and promised to pay attention to it.