Russian court jails a Kremlin critic for 11 years for opposing the war in Ukraine
A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11…
A prominent Russian opposition politician, Lev Shlosberg, has been sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison for opposing the country's war in Ukraine. The verdict came down on Monday in a court in Pskov, following a trial where Shlosberg was accused of "discrediting" and spreading "false information" about the Russian military.
Shlosberg, 63, is the deputy chairman of the Yabloko party, the only official political party openly opposing the war. The charges against him stemmed from a debate in which he called for an end to the conflict and from posting on his Telegram channel an image that juxtaposed a bloodied woman's photo with Russian President Vladimir Putin's, with the headline, "Her blood... his hands."
Shlosberg, who served in Pskov's regional legislature from 2016 to 2021, has rejected the charges as baseless. This is not the first time Shlosberg has faced legal troubles in the past year; in December 2025, he was placed in pre-trial detention on the same charges and has remained incarcerated since. In his final remarks to the court, Shlosberg lamented that over the past 30 years, Russia had taken "a path from hopes for freedom to the almost complete destruction of human and civil rights and freedoms."
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