The deputy leader of Russia’s Yabloko opposition party was on Wednesday sentenced to seven years in prison over social media posts he made criticising the war in Ukraine.

Maxim Kruglov, a former Moscow city councillor, was arrested last October on suspicion of spreading “false information” about the Russian army.

The charges related to two posts he made in April 2022, one condemning the Ukraine war’s civilian toll and the other the Russian army’s actions in Bucha — a suburb of Kyiv where hundreds of civilians were found executed after Russian forces retreated from the area.

A judge at Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court sentenced him to “seven years of imprisonment, to be served in a general-regime penal colony,” Russia’s state RIA news agency reported.

Kruglov rejected the charges, saying that his posts simply called for an investigation into what happened, the independent Mediazona news outlet reported.

Kruglov, 39, is one of several senior Yabloko figures to face charges since last year.

Authorities placed the head of the party’s Pskov branch — Lev Shlosberg — under house arrest last June, and last December fined party chair Nikolai Rybakov for publishing a photo of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny on social media.

Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in 2024, is labelled an “extremist” in Russia and anyone who mentions him or his banned Anti-Corruption Foundation are subject to prosecution.

Yabloko is one of Russia’s oldest opposition parties.

It garnered millions of votes in parliamentary elections in the 1990s and early 2000s, but since 2007 has failed to pick up any seats in the State Duma — Russia’s lower house.

The party says it has faced continuous, bureaucratic restrictions designed to prevent its candidates from running.

Since launching its Ukraine offensive in 2022, Russia has orchestrated a crackdown on dissent reminiscent of the Soviet-era, fining or jailing anyone who speaks out against the war.

AFP

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