A court in Russia’s Far East Kamchatka Peninsula on Monday sentenced Vladimir Yefimov, the head of the local branch of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, to an additional two years in prison for displaying extremist symbols and “discrediting” the Russian military.
The Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky city court also barred Yefimov, 70, from managing websites for five years. The sentence will be added to a previous two-year prison term handed down in January for a similar offense.
Prosecutors accused Yefimov of “publicly displaying Nazi symbols” by comparing pro-war Russian pop singer Shaman to a Hitler Youth character from the musical “Cabaret.”
This marks Yefimov’s third conviction since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was first arrested in May 2022 for condemning Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities in Facebook posts. He was convicted of “discrediting” the military in March 2023 and initially fined.
In June 2024, Yefimov’s sentence was converted to six months of supervised release. He was arrested again last summer for allegedly violating a court-imposed ban on online activity.
In addition to his political work, Yefimov is a veteran journalist who founded what is believed to be Kamchatka’s first independent TV station during the Soviet era. He received a regional journalism award in 2021.
Yefimov is one of at least five Yabloko leaders charged under wartime censorship laws since 2022. The party has run on pro-peace platforms in elections held since the invasion but has seen limited success.
Russia’s wartime censorship laws effectively ban anti-war statements and independent reporting on what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
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