JOURNALIST OR RUSSIAN SPY? THE STRANGE CASE OF PABLO GONZÁLEZ

while reporting on Russia's covert operation to annex Crimea, I spotted a familiar figure. With his muscular build and shiny shaved head, Pablo González was easy to recognise from afar.

- Shaun Walker

I had first met González, a freelance journalist from the Basque Country, on a training course for reporters who work in conflict zones. Now we had run into each other in a place that was threatening to turn into one.

González was with a Ukrainian journalist, who had contacts at the besieged military base I was on my way to scope out. He arranged for the three of us to slip inside, where we found a detachment of Ukrainian marines on edge. Outside, an angry crowd of locals was yelling pro-Russian slogans, but these people were just cover for the Russian army, the marines said. They were expecting an imminent visit from a Russian general, and agreed that we could leave a Dictaphone on the base, for them to covertly record the conversation.

Some time later, I received audio of the emotional encounter that followed, in which a man identifying himself as a senior general in the Russian army gave the marines an ultimatum to surrender, prompting furious protests. The recording was hard evidence that Vladimir Putin's denials of Moscow's coordinating role in Crimea were nonsense. It felt like listening to a piece of history unfold in real time.

I was grateful to González for helping me get the story, but after that day I never saw him again.

Eight years later, in the early hours of 28 February 2022, González was arrested in the Polish city of Przemyśl. It was a few days after the start of the latest and most brutal episode in Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the first moments of which we had witnessed back on the Crimean base. A terse statement from Polish authorities said that González was suspected of "participation in the activities of a foreign intelligence service". They claimed he was an agent of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. He faced up to 10 years in prison.