Russian court sentences opposition leader Shlosberg to 11 years for war criticism

Lev Shlosberg stood in a courtroom in Pskov on Monday and told the judge that he was innocent. The senior member of Russia's Yabloko party, the only registered political faction openly calling for an end to the war in Ukraine, had just been convicted of discrediting the armed forces. His sentence: eleven years and one month in a penal colony. As he made his closing statement before the verdict, Shlosberg offered a line that seemed to capture something larger than his own fate. "A single person is imprisoned," he said, "yet fear seeps into the hearts of millions."

Shlosberg's crime, in the eyes of the Russian state, was speaking plainly about the war. He had called it a catastrophe for Russia. He had described it, in a video debate, as a bloody game of chess. He reposted the video on Telegram. The Kremlin, which insists the conflict is not a war but a "special military operation," says he was spreading slanderous lies about the army. The courts agreed, and now he will spend more than a decade behind bars.

The timing of his conviction is not incidental. On August 10, Russia's Supreme Court banned Yabloko from participating in upcoming parliamentary elections. The decision was upheld the same day Shlosberg received his sentence. With one stroke, the state eliminated the only institutional voice in Russian politics openly opposing the invasion. The party that might have channeled dissent through legal means no longer has a legal means to exist.

In his final words to the court, Shlosberg did not retreat. He repeated his call for an immediate ceasefire in a war that has now lasted four and a half years. He spoke of the thousands upon thousands of lives ended. "Sooner or later," he said, according to a transcript, "the precise and complete death toll—with names included—will be made public, and the entire nation will shudder at this list of martyrs." The independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and the BBC's Russia Service have attempted to count the fallen through public records. They have identified more than 239,000 Russian soldiers killed. When they factored in death certificates and estate information to estimate excess mortality, the number climbed above 350,000. Russia publishes no official casualty figures.

Shlosberg's imprisonment is not an isolated act of state justice. In June, Maxim Kruglov, the deputy leader of Yabloko, was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of spreading lies about the military. The pattern is deliberate. Since the invasion began in February 2022, Russia's parliament has passed laws designed to punish anyone found guilty of discrediting the armed forces or deliberately spreading false information about the operation. The penalties are severe—long prison sentences. The effect is comprehensive. Public criticism of the war has become practically non-existent inside Russia.

What Shlosberg's case reveals is a state apparatus working on multiple fronts to eliminate dissent. The courts imprison individual voices. The legislature bans the parties that might amplify them. The laws themselves are written so broadly that almost any honest statement about the war becomes a crime. A person can be arrested for a video, convicted for reposting it, and sentenced to more than a decade in prison. The machinery does not need to be subtle. It only needs to work.

Shlosberg maintained his innocence throughout the trial, calling it a political prosecution. Whether the courts will ever acknowledge that characterization is unlikely. What is certain is that he will now enter the penal system, and millions of Russians will have absorbed the message his imprisonment was designed to send: speak against this war, and you will disappear. The state has made its choice about what kind of country it wants to be, and it is willing to imprison its own citizens to enforce that vision.