Press Release, 6.02.2026

Photo: Lev Shlosberg at the hearing on 5 February 2026 / Photo by Pskov Yabloko

On 5 February, the Pskov City Court held a second hearing to consider Lev Shlosberg’s appeal against the sentence in the criminal case concerning “missing ‘foreign agent labels’”, as Shlosberg saved several videos (posted by other people) on his VKontakte social media page without supplying them with mandatory foreign agent labels (which is, in fact, impossible to do on the network from even from a technical point view for posts whose authors are other people). The politician was participating in the proceedings in person.

Speaking in court on 5 February, Lev Shlosberg stated: “The entire process at Judicial District 38 was of a prosecutorial nature. We believe that the court effectively adopted the position of the state prosecution in order to avoid assessing in the verdict those unconditional, objective and confirmed facts which prove my innocence.”

Lev Shlosberg’s defence lawyer, Vitaly Isakov, presented the court with his comments regarding the state prosecutor’s objections to the appeal. The appeal, it should be recalled, lists and substantiates on 74 pages 99 violations of criminal and criminal procedural law committed by the court when issuing the verdict.

In his statement, Vitaly Isakov noted that

• the public prosecutor was substituting concepts: saving a video is not the same as distributing it.
• the distributor of information is the person who uploaded it, as confirmed by the VKontakte administration.
• the videos had been saved for personal purposes within the framework of the right to collect information and had not been aimed at public distribution;
• the public prosecutor had not specified what socially dangerous consequences had resulted from saving the clips on Lev Shlosberg’s page, merely claiming that this “crime” allegedly undermined the authority of the government.

“The authority of state power is not a legal value but a psychological one; it is not protected by any federal laws. It is unclear how saving five small videos to one’s own page undermined the authority of the government,” Vitaly Isakov said. He also added that this was the only case in the country where a person was being charged with the absence of a label on a saved video. “Lev Shlosberg puts the label everywhere, despite disagreeing with the “foreign agent” status, and one cannot claim that he deliberately and consistently fails to do so,” Isakov noted.

Also the public prosecution has not established what harm was caused by saving the video to the politician’s personal page. “A person is being held liable for an action which has caused harm to no one,” the lawyer concluded. Isakov also pointed out that the defence had not been told which clause of the regulations on the activities of foreign agents Lev Shlosberg had violated.

Lev Shlosberg commented on the defence’s objections and the prosecutor’s position: “These objections bring us back to the verdict, to the subject of the accusation. The state prosecutor is deliberately avoiding our objections because she has nothing to say on the substance.”

Consideration of the case will continue on 16 February at 3 p.m.