MOSCOW: Russian opposition politician Lev Shlosberg — one of the last public figures openly criticising Moscow’s Ukraine offensive still in Russia and not in prison — was arrested on Tuesday, his party said.
Amid its military campaign, Russia has intensified a campaign against dissenters and opponents, ushering in strict military censorship laws and jailing critics for years.
Shlosberg, 61, is a well-known former lawmaker in Russia’s western city of Pskov and a longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin.
The Yabloko party, of which he is a member, said he was detained for calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine — which Russia has been resisting for months despite international pressure — in a video debate earlier this year.
“Lev Shlosberg was sent to a temporary detention centre as a defendant accused of repeated ‘discreditation’ of the army,“ the press service of the Yabloko party said in a statement.
It earlier said authorities opened a criminal case against Shlosberg over a January video “in which the politician defended his position on the necessity of a quick ceasefire” in Ukraine.
The party said security services searched Shlosberg’s home and offices in Pskov — as well as the home of his 96-year-old father.
He is due in court Wednesday, it added.
Shlosberg has already twice been fined for discrediting the army, a law adopted by Moscow days after it launched its Ukraine offensive and which has been widely used to silence dissent.
Most high-profile opposition figures have fled Russia amid the crackdown.
Exile figures have criticised Shlosberg for not denouncing the offensive strongly enough and for criticising Ukrainian counter-attacks.
A long-time critic of the Kremlin, Shlosberg has been denouncing Moscow’s actions in Ukraine since 2014, when it annexed the Crimea peninsula and backed pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
That included highlighting instances of Russian soldiers killed fighting Kyiv’s troops at a time when Moscow denied its troops were taking part in the conflict.
