Press Release, 24.06.2026

A judge of the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow has just delivered the verdict in the criminal case against Yabloko Deputy Chairman Maxim Kruglov: guilty, sentenced to seven years in prison. The sentence has not yet entered into force and will be appealed.

It should be noted that Maxim Kruglov was charged with the so-called dissemination of “fake news” about the Russian Armed Forces (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code), allegedly committed on grounds of “political hatred”. The charges arose from two posts on Telegram in which the politician expressed sorrow over the deaths of people in Ukraine. The prosecution had sought a sentence of eight years in prison; the defence experts maintained that the politician’s messages contained no hatred and no signs of aggression whatsoever.

The verdict against Maxim Kruglov is a blatant act of retribution by the authorities against a political opponent, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov has stressed: “Maxim has committed no crimes, and has already spent nearly a year in the Butyrka prison. The investigation presented no evidence of  ‘guilt,’ and the ostensibly random ‘witnesses’ from the party of power who appeared at the trial would long since have been punished for perjury in any fair court.”

The entire proceedings in the Kruglov case represent “a demonstration of the degradation of law enforcement and a regression to the era of the Stalinist Great Terror,” the Yabloko leader has concluded.