A Russian court handed down a guilty verdict and an 11-year, one-month prison sentence Monday to a high-profile opposition politician who publicly spoke out against the ongoing war in Ukraine, marking the latest escalation in government crackdowns on dissent ahead of next month’s national parliamentary election.
The ruling against Lev Shlosberg, deputy chairman of Russia’s Yabloko party — the only registered, official political party in the country that openly opposes the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched by the Kremlin in February 2022 — solidifies the Russian government’s sustained campaign to eliminate all public opposition to its military action, rights observers say.
The 63-year-old politician, who previously represented the Pskov region in the local legislature from 2016 to 2021, stood trial in his home city of Pskov, located roughly 370 miles northwest of Moscow. He faced two key charges under Russia’s sweeping wartime legislation: discrediting the Russian military and disseminating what the state defines as false information about the armed forces.
Prosecutors brought the charges after Shlosberg made public calls for an end to the war during a legislative debate, and shared a front page from a British tabloid on his Telegram channel. The front page placed a photograph of a bloodied woman adjacent to an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the headline reading “Her blood … his hands.” Shlosberg has repeatedly dismissed all charges against him as baseless and politically motivated.
Monday’s conviction is Shlosberg’s second in just two years. He was previously flagged by the Russian government as a “foreign agent” — a legal designation that carries intense social stigma in Russia and subjects recipients to constant, invasive state monitoring — and convicted of violating administrative rules tied to that status. He has remained in pre-trial detention since the new charges were brought against him in December 2023.
In his closing address to the court Friday, Shlosberg reflected on three decades of Russian political development, arguing that the country has moved “from hopes for freedom to the almost complete destruction of human and civil rights and freedoms.” He added that the war in Ukraine has upended the lives of every Russian, without exception, and warned that once the full, unreported death toll of the conflict is made public, “the entire country will shudder.”
In the wake of the verdict, Yabloko party officials called the sentence a “brutal” ruling handed down simply for Shlosberg’s “love of the Motherland and calls for a ceasefire.” The party confirmed via a Telegram statement that it will file an appeal to challenge the conviction and sentence.
Global human rights organization Amnesty International also condemned the verdict in a formal statement. Marie Struthers, the group’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, called Shlosberg’s prosecution and sentencing “blatant reprisals for exercising his right to freedom of expression to call for peace.”
Struthers urged Russian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally release Lev Shlosberg and quash his conviction.” She added that the Russian government must repeal wartime laws that criminalize peaceful anti-war speech, end targeted harassment of Yabloko party members and supporters, and uphold the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and political participation for all Russian citizens.