Maxim Kruglov, deputy chairman of Russia’s liberal opposition party Yabloko (“Apple”) and an opponent of the war in Ukraine, was sentenced today to seven years in prison for spreading what authorities described as false information about the Russian military, just two months before parliamentary elections.

Kruglov, a former member of the Moscow City Council, was arrested in October last year over posts he made on the messaging platform Telegram in 2022, the same year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine with tens of thousands of troops.

Kruglov pleaded not guilty in court and stated that he believes the war in Ukraine is a tragedy that should be brought to an end as quickly as possible.

One of the two posts cited in the case referred to United Nations data on the number of people killed in the war, while the other concerned events that took place in Bucha, a town north of Kyiv, in March 2022.

Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russian forces of killing civilians in Bucha. Moscow maintains that the killings were staged in order to discredit its troops.

Yabloko, one of Russia’s main liberal parties in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, now holds only a small number of seats in regional legislatures and none in the national parliament. Nevertheless, its continued participation in elections provides it with a platform to express its anti-war positions.

Russia is scheduled to hold elections for the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, in September.