Russian Opposition Leader Jailed 7 Years For Anti-War
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- Maxim Kruglov, 39, deputy leader of the Yabloko party and former Moscow city lawmaker, was convicted Wednesday of spreading lies about the Russian army and sentenced to seven years.
- Kruglov was arrested in October and charged over two Telegram posts from 2022 — one citing UN data on conflict deaths and another referencing events in Bucha, where Ukraine and its allies say Russian forces killed civilians and Moscow claims the incident was staged.
- Kruglov told the court the verdict amounted to "a ban on dissent," saying political disagreement was being treated as "tantamount to hatred," and rejected prosecutors' claim that his posts were motivated by political hatred.
- The Kremlin says strict censorship laws are needed to keep Russia united during what it calls an existential confrontation with the West, with the war in its fifth year and Ukrainian drone attacks increasingly disrupting life inside Russia.
- The sentence comes just over two months before Russia's September State Duma election, where Yabloko holds no national seats but contests regional ones and uses the ballot as a platform for anti-war views.
- Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov condemned the verdict as unjust outside court, telling voters they faced a choice: back Yabloko and say "no" to the current course, or vote for any other party and endorse it.
- State pollster VTsIOM found 6.3% support for parties outside parliament, including Yabloko, with more than two-thirds backing pro-Kremlin parties like United Russia.
Why it matters: With parliamentary elections two months away, the Kremlin is using wartime censorship laws to neutralize the only Russian party explicitly opposing the war — shrinking the already narrow 6.3% space for parliamentary dissent and showing that factual references to documented events like Bucha now carry criminal liability for opposition politicians.
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