A Moscow court on 24 June sentenced Maxim Kruglov, deputy chairman of the Yabloko party and a former member of the Moscow City Duma, to seven years in a general-regime penal colony for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces. The Zamoskvoretsky district court also barred him from administering websites for three years. The sentence was one year below the eight-year term requested by prosecutors, who argued that two posts published on Telegram in April 2022 — one describing the killing of civilians in Bucha, the other citing United Nations data on civilian deaths in Mariupol — were motivated by political hatred, a factor that elevated the charge to a more severe category carrying up to ten years in prison.

In his final statement, Kruglov pleaded not guilty and maintained that his posts relied on UN figures and that no law designates that information as knowingly false. He told the court that the prosecution’s case effectively equated political dissent with hatred, calling it “a marker of the development of our political system.” The defence pointed to what it described as procedural flaws, including the prosecution’s assertion that Kruglov’s criminal intent dated to the creation of his Telegram channel in 2020, two years before the law on military “fakes” was enacted. Witnesses for the prosecution included a supporter of the pro-Kremlin Young Guard movement and a man who initially presented himself as a political scientist but was later identified as an employee of a municipal housing agency. The court accepted the prosecution’s argument that the posts were driven by political enmity.

The conviction carries immediate practical consequences. Kruglov, who had been held in pre-trial detention since October 2025, will be unable to stand for office for the duration of his sentence and beyond. His bank accounts were frozen after the financial monitoring agency Rosfinmonitoring added him to a list of persons involved in terrorism and extremism shortly after his arrest. The sentence coincides with a broader pattern of legal action against Yabloko members. The same week, a court in Pskov fined activist Ivan Prishchepa for displaying symbols linked to Alexei Navalny’s headquarters, a penalty that could disqualify him from running in the autumn State Duma elections. According to Radio Liberty, more than ten Yabloko members have been fined in 2025–2026 for displaying Nazi or extremist symbols, often for photographs of Navalny, even though his image is not on the official list of banned symbols; courts link the images to the 2021 designation of Navalny’s organisations as extremist.

Viewed from European capitals, the sentencing reinforces concerns about the narrowing of legal space for political opposition in Russia. Diplomats from Ireland, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States attended the trial, while Yabloko’s founder Grigory Yavlinsky and current chairman Nikolai Rybakov were present in the courtroom. Yabloko remains the only party permitted to contest elections that openly opposes the war in Ukraine, and its leadership has proposed an amnesty for those convicted under military censorship laws. The defence has announced it will appeal the verdict, calling it unmotivated and illegal. As the appeal process begins, the cumulative fines and criminal cases against party activists are expected to shape the field of candidates ahead of the State Duma vote later this year.