Prosecutor Anna Goryacheva requested the sentence before the city court in Pskov. Schlosberg is deputy chairman of the liberal Yabloko party. The verdict is expected to be announced on Monday.
The politician was under house arrest for a long time and was taken into pre-trial detention in December. In November, he was already sentenced to 420 hours of community service for allegedly failing to comply with conditions as a so-called foreign agent. Russian justice uses this stigma to label people who, in the government’s view, work against Russian interests.
In parallel, Yabloko is fighting its exclusion from the parliamentary election in September. The Supreme Court excluded the party last Monday; an appeal is also to be decided on Monday in Moscow.
The trigger for the proceedings was Schlosberg’s call for a ceasefire in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as a Telegram post with images of war victims and Putin. Human rights activists see the case as a political show trial.
Source: www.zeit.de
