Judge Elina Babayants of Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court has sentenced Maksim Kruglov, deputy chairman of the Yabloko party and former member of the Moscow City Duma, to seven years in a general-regime penal colony under Russia’s law criminalising the dissemination of knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces motivated by political hatred, under paragraph ‘e’, part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code. The sentence was reported by Mediazona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutor Yulia Guznyayeva had sought a sentence of eight years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his final statement, Maksim Kruglov told the court: ‘I believe in the future of this country. I believe that Russia will achieve what I speak of \u2014 that it will become a peaceful, prosperous country. A country respected by its neighbours, not feared by them. A country where it is possible to disagree.’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The criminal case against Maksim Kruglov was based on two posts in his Telegram channel. The first, published on 2 April 2022, concerned Mariupol and was accompanied by a photograph of the destroyed city. ‘1,267 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, according to UN data. Women, children, the elderly, men. Russian speakers. Thousands of soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian. For two months, the merciless Russian world has been “denazifying” Ukraine. The photograph appears to show Mariupol “denazified” by the “special military operation”.’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The second post, about events in Bucha, was published on 3 April 2022: ‘What appears to have happened in the town of Bucha is some kind of hell. I wonder whether the Russian Ministry of Defence will say anything more coherent than “they did it themselves, it’s a provocation to discredit us, it’s all them, they’re killing themselves and their own residents.” But there is one incontrovertible fact. The Russian army was in the town of Bucha. Then the Russian army left the town of Bucha. And what remained in the town of Bucha was not peace, order or denazification, but death and destruction. An international investigation into war crimes is needed. The killings must stop.’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At his interrogation, Maksim Kruglov said he did not remember whether he had published the posts and therefore did not admit guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maksim Kruglov is a Russian politician, a Candidate of Political Sciences, academic, deputy chairman of the Yabloko party and former chairman of the party’s faction in the Moscow City Duma. He is married and has a daughter. He was detained on 1 October 2025 in St Petersburg, where he had travelled to meet friends. He was taken to Moscow and interrogated throughout the night, then held at the Investigative Committee building until his court hearing. His home was subsequently searched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-61092","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","news-type-nashi-novosti-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n