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The deputy leader of Russia’s Yabloko opposition party has received a seven‑year prison sentence for social media posts that criticized the war in Ukraine.
Maxim Kruglov, a former Moscow city councillor, was detained in October on charges of spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
The accusations were based on two April 2022 posts: one condemned civilian casualties in the Ukraine war, and the other criticized the Russian army’s conduct in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where many civilians were found executed after Russian forces withdrew.
Russia’s state RIA news agency reported that a judge at Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court sentenced him to seven years of imprisonment, to be served in a general‑regime penal colony.
Kruglov has denied the charges, claiming his posts simply called for an investigation into the events, according to the independent Mediazona outlet.
At 39, Kruglov is one of several senior Yabloko figures who have encountered legal challenges since the previous year.
In June, authorities placed Lev Shlosberg, head of the party’s Pskov branch, under house arrest, and in December, they fined party chair Nikolai Rybakov for posting a photo of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny on social media.
Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in 2024, is designated an “extremist” in Russia, and any reference to him or his banned Anti‑Corruption Foundation can result in prosecution.
Yabloko is among Russia’s oldest opposition parties.
It garnered millions of votes in parliamentary elections during the 1990s and early 2000s, yet has failed to win any seats in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, since 2007.
The party says it has faced continuous bureaucratic restrictions designed to block its candidates from participating in elections.
Since launching its offensive in Ukraine in 2022, Russia has carried out a crackdown on dissent that mirrors Soviet‑era tactics, levying fines or imprisonment on anyone who opposes the war.
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