By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) -The deputy leader of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, which opposes the war in Ukraine, has been charged with deliberately spreading lies about the Russian army, state investigators said on Thursday.
Maxim Kruglov says he is not guilty of the charge, which can carry a jail term of up to 10 years, investigators said. A Moscow court will consider their request to place him in detention later on Thursday, a day after his arrest.
Natalya Tikhonova, a lawyer representing Kruglov, said via Yabloko that her client had been charged over the content of two posts he had made on the Telegram social media network in 2022 and that his home had been searched.
State investigators said the posts included false information about the Russian army’s purported actions against Ukrainian civilians.
YABLOKO URGED PUTIN TO REVERSE COURSE ON UKRAINE
Yabloko, which has only a handful of seats in regional parliaments and no seats in the national parliament, condemned President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and appealed to him to reverse course.
One of its other senior figures, Lev Shlosberg, was placed under house arrest in June after being charged with discrediting the Russian army, and another, Boris Vishnevsky, ran into problems on Tuesday when a court said it would consider a request from state prosecutors to designate his book extremist.
Shlosberg and Vishnevsky have both been designated as “foreign agents” by the authorities as well.
Nikolai Rybakov, the head of Yabloko, said in a statement that Kruglov had publicly called, among other things, for a ceasefire agreement to be negotiated in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said it is open to peace talks, but needs to achieve its original aims and has set out demands which Kyiv has rejected as tantamount to surrender.
Rybakov said he believed that laws brought in to punish anyone deemed to be spreading fake news or discrediting the army of the type being used against Kruglov and Shlosberg could be used to jail anyone who wants peace.
“We… continue to believe that all repressive laws should be repealed,” he added.
Russia holds elections for the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, next year.
(Reporting by Andrew OsbornEditing by Gareth Jones)
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