Alexey Soldatov, a Russian Internet pioneer and a founder of the first Internet provider in the country, has been sentenced to two years in a labour colony on the charges of "abuse of power" by a Russian court.
A terminally ill Soldatov has been detained by a court in Moscow and few Russians believe in the government charges against him.
Soldatov was accused of abuse of power when managing a pool of IP addresses by an organization in where he had no role, according to a report by Washington DC-based advocacy group Center for European Policy Analysis.
His family thinks that the decision by the court is essentially a death sentence.
Soldatov made his career in the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, a leading Soviet nuclear research facility during the period of the Cold War.
He was part of research on atomic weapons and many other defence projects as a nuclear physicist.
He was pivotal in creating the Relcom network, which connected Soviet research centres and established the Soviet Union's first link to the global internet in 1990.
During the 1991 KGB coup attempt, Relcom remained operational and played a role in bypassing traditional media control and connecting people both within the Soviet Union and globally.
Alexey Soldatov. Image Source: CEPA
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