The 2nd Western District Military Court has sentenced opposition politician Leonid Gozman in absentia to six years in a general-regime penal colony, finding him guilty of “justifying terrorism” over an interview he gave to a foreign publication. The report comes from a Mediazona correspondent present in the courtroom.
Taking into account an earlier sentence in absentia in another case — related to so-called “fake news” about the army — Gozman was given a total prison term of ten years. The prosecution had requested six years under the terrorism-justification charge and eleven years in total.
The accusation was based on an interview for Bild in Russian, in which investigators claimed to see approval of drone attacks on Moscow and the explosion on the Crimean Bridge. Gozman’s lawyers asked the court to acquit him.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the politician left the country. In 2024, his wife, Marina Yegorova, was detained in Moscow and accused of smuggling cultural property over an attempt to take out of Russia a set of inherited silverware. Yegorova spent more than a year under house arrest. In early November, Gozman reported that she had left Russia, emphasizing that her departure was carried out legally.
