Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court has placed former Moscow City Duma deputy and Yabloko deputy chair Maksim Kruglov in pre-trial detention until November 29. He has been charged under Paragraph “d”, Part 2, Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code on spreading “fake news” about the army.
Kruglov was detained in St. Petersburg and then taken to Moscow. According to the Moscow Investigative Committee, in April 2022 he posted in a public Telegram channel what investigators describe as knowingly false information about the actions of Russian forces against civilians in Ukraine.
His lawyer, Natalia Tikhonova, said the case is based on two posts: one about Bucha, and another in which the politician, citing UN data, wrote about Ukrainian civilians killed during the Russian invasion. Kruglov did not admit guilt. Investigative actions continued throughout the night, and a search of his apartment led, among other things, to the seizure of his party membership card.
“It looks like some kind of hell in the town of Bucha... There must be an international investigation into war crimes. The killings must stop,” Kruglov wrote in one of the posts that is believed to have triggered the prosecution.
From 2019 to 2024, Kruglov served as a Moscow City Duma deputy and headed Yabloko’s faction there. In 2024, he ran again for the city legislature, but the election commission refused to register him.
Party leader Nikolai Rybakov said Yabloko would do “everything possible” to defend Kruglov. The party also linked the case to continuing pressure on its members, recalling the case against Lev Shlosberg and the arrest of Ryazan politician and journalist Konstantin Smirnov.
Assessments of the reasons for the arrest differ. Politician Andrei Pivovarov called the case part of preparations for the State Duma elections and a sign that the Kremlin does not want to see even weakened democrats in the campaign. Political analysts Ivan Preobrazhensky and Fyodor Krasheninnikov, by contrast, said it primarily reflects an effort to demonstrate the activity of the repressive system, which in their view continues to seek new targets for prosecution.