The Gagarinsky District Court of Moscow sentenced in absentia 8.5 years in a general regime colony to 73-year-old politician Leonid Gozman in the case of military “fakes” (clause “e” of Part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by the press service of the Moscow courts.
At a meeting on April 26, lawyer Mikhail Biryukov read out a written appeal from Leonid Gozman, in which the politician asked the court to ensure his participation in the consideration of the case via video link from Berlin. Judge Larin refused, citing the fact that the defendant “has the opportunity to broadcast his position through a lawyer,” and the court “does not have the technical ability to ensure Gozman’s participation in the hearing in this way.”
The reason for initiating a criminal case was two posts by Leonid Gozman on Facebook: in the first, the politician wrote that “Bucha sharply increases the likelihood of a world war,” in the second, he suggested that Russian villages are being shelled by the Russian army.
The indictment also lists four posts against Gozman in his Telegram channel: that the politician does not want to leave Russia, despite the risk of arrest; a post suggesting that Putin hates Russia; a discussion about why the letter Z became the symbol of the Russian army in 2022; and a post with the words: “They put all of us in the position of those Germans who were against Hitler, but continued to live in Germany — nothing but shame for the Fatherland.” The investigation considered all this to be “fakes” about the Russian army.
In addition to the posts, the indictment lists several broadcasts on various YouTube channels in which Leonid Gozman participated, including one of the episodes of the Ekho Moskvy program with Irina Babloyan «In the Human Dimension»; an episode of the program «Honest Word» on the channel «Popular Politics» and a broadcast on one of the Ukrainian channels.
Gozman was arrested in absentia in this case at the end of February 2024. In May 2022, the Ministry of Justice declared Leonid Gozman a «foreign agent», and a month later it became known that criminal cases had been opened against him and his wife for untimely notification of a second citizenship (Article 330.2 of the Criminal Code).
In September 2022, Gozman was twice sentenced to 15 days of arrest under protocols on public identification of the USSR with Nazi Germany (Article 13.48 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Administrative protocols were issued against the politician for posts on Facebook and LiveJournal written in 2020 and 2013, respectively. In one of them, the politician mentioned that Stalin was worse than Hitler. After a series of administrative arrests, Gozman left Russia.