Russia's prominent anti-war politician jailed for 11 years

A Russian court in Pskov sentenced 63-year-old opposition politician Lev Shlosberg to 11 years and one month in a penal colony on Monday. Shlosberg, who serves as deputy chairman of the liberal Yabloko party, faced charges of spreading false information and discrediting the Russian armed forces. The prosecution had requested a slightly longer sentence of 12 years and one month. The conviction stems from a political debate where Shlosberg called for an end to the war in Ukraine and a Telegram post featuring a critical British tabloid front page. Shlosberg has rejected the charges throughout his second trial in two years, describing the legal proceedings in his closing speech as an imitation designed to achieve an illegal goal.

The timing of the ruling coincided with a decisive legal maneuver in Moscow, where Russia's Supreme Court denied an appeal by Yabloko and upheld an earlier decision to bar the party from participating in the upcoming September 18-20 parliamentary elections. Yabloko, which has functioned as the only official political party overtly opposing the invasion of Ukraine, was struck from the ballots following accusations that it publicly supported the international LGBT movement, which Russia classifies as extremist, alongside separate copyright infringement claims brought by the pro-Kremlin nationalist party Rodina. With Yabloko removed, all ten remaining parties cleared for the State Duma election explicitly support the war.

The dual blows against Shlosberg and his party underscore the shrinking space for political pluralism in Russia as the war enters its fifth year. Yabloko labeled the sentence barbaric, noting it was handed down for love of the Motherland and calls for a ceasefire, and vowed to appeal the decision. International condemnation was swift, with Amnesty International denouncing the verdict as a blatant reprisal for exercising freedom of expression and demanding Shlosberg's immediate release.

While state-owned pollster VCIOM reported that ratings for the ruling United Russia party dipped to 32.1% earlier in August, independent watchdogs remain constrained, and the Kremlin is widely expected to control the electoral outcome. In his final statement to the court, Shlosberg reflected on three decades of post-Soviet political evolution, warning that once the true death toll of the conflict in Ukraine is revealed, the entire country will shudder.