A court in Far East Russias Kamchatka Peninsula sentenced Vladimir Yefimov, the head of the local branch of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, to two years in prison for violating wartime censorship laws.Yefimov, 70, was arrested in May 2022, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and outlawed criticism of the war.
He was accused of discrediting the Russian military by condemning Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities in Facebook posts.In March 2023, Yefimov was convicted of those charges and fined, and in June 2024, his sentence was converted to six months of supervised release.
However, authorities arrested him again last summer for allegedly violating a court-imposed ban on posting online.On Tuesday, the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky City Court found Yefimov guilty of discrediting the military and sentenced him to two years in prison.
He was also banned from managing websites for four years, according to the state-run news agency TASS.Yefimov faces additional criminal charges for public displays of Nazi symbols after reportedly comparing Russias pro-war singer Shaman to a Hitler Youth character from the musical Cabaret.Besides heading Yablokos local branch in Kamchatka,Yefimov is also a journalist, foundingwhat is said to be the first independent broadcaster in the Soviet era, TVK, and was awarded a regional journalism prize in 2021.Senior Yabloko members have openly campaigned on pro-peace platforms in elections held since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but they have had little success in securing posts in local office.Russias wartime censorship laws have effectively banned anti-war statements and media coverage that diverge from the Kremlins narrative of what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine.