Pablo González Yagüe

Pablo González Yagüe (born as Pavel Rubtsov; born 28 April 1982) is a Spanish journalist. He has worked as an independent journalist for different mediums, specialising in Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet countries. He has covered various conflicts like the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the War in Donbas (2014-2022) and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On February 27, 2022, González was arrested by Polish authorities near the border with Ukraine, and was later accused of being a Russian spy.

Biography
Pablo González Yagüe is grandson of a Spanish child evacuated to Russia by the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He was born in Moscow in 1982, with the name of Pavel Rubtsov. He lived in the Soviet Union until the age of nine, when his mother divorced his father and moved to the Basque Country, where the mother changed the name of his son to Pablo González Yagüe in the Civil Register Spanish. They resided in Bilbao and in Catalonia.

He graduated with a degree in Slavic philology and master of strategic studies and international security. As a journalist has worked with publications like La Sexta, Público and Gara.

Detention in Poland
According to Polish authorities, Pablo González was detained in the border city of Przemyśl on the night of the 27 to 28 February under the indictment of participating in activities of foreign intelligence against Poland and accused of being an agent of the Central Department of Russian Intelligence, taking advantage of his being a journalist to travel around European countries and obtain information. This charge can carry a sentence of up to 10 years of prison according to the Penal Code of Poland. No evidence has been released publicly to support these allegations.

Since his arrest, Polish authorities have enforced a state of incomunicado, without being able to communicate with his lawyer Gonzalo Boye, nor with his family, which generated criticisms of journalists and Spanish politicians to the Polish authorities and to the Foreign office of Spain.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement on 4 March in which it expressed concern about the arrest of Pablo González and requested to the Polish authorities that provided him suitable access to juridical representation and to a just and transparent procedure.

On September 13, 2022, after 200 days detained, he brought a case about his conditions of imprisonment in front of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, as a violation of the European Convention on Human rights.

On November 22, it informed that his wife could visit him in the prison of Radom where he is being detained. On November 24, the Polish justice announced that it was prolonging his imprisonment for three months more, without making public any evidence against him.