September 5, 2026, 7:44 AMTELEGRAMRSSRU
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Leonid Gozman

Not in RussiaChecked against the source: September 5, 2026, 6:09 AM
Criminal Code
Article 205.2 part 2, Russian Criminal CodeArticle 205.4 (part unknown), Russian Criminal CodeArticle 207.3 part 2 item d, Russian Criminal CodeArticle 278, Russian Criminal CodeArticle 330.2, Russian Criminal Code
Case category
Anti-war casesTerrorism casesCases against "foreign agents"
Verdict
Ban on activity, Imprisonment (in absentia)
Sentence
10 years
Date of verdict
2024-07-11
Region
Moscow
City
Moscow

Case summary

He is a politician, a public figure and a psychologist. In the past, he was one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces party and later led the Right Cause. In April 2022, a case was initiated against him for failure to notify the authorities of his foreign citizenship, but the information was made public as late as 15 July. The politician was detained and questioned by the Investigative Committee and was released afterwards. Gozman was detained again on 25 July, and after that an arrest warrant was reported to have been issued for him. However, he was then released, and the investigator apologised and said that there had been a mistake. On 30 August, Gozman was arrested for 15 days under the article on equating the actions of the USSR with those of Nazi Germany (Part 1 of Article 13.48 of the Code of Administrative Offences) for a post he had made on Facebook. On 13 September, he was detained on his way out of the special detention centre and the next day was arrested for the same period under the 2nd part of the same article (a repeated offence) for an online post dated 2013. After that Gozman left Russia.

In December 2023, a case was reported to have been initiated against Gozman for spreading deliberately false information about the Armed Forces. On 11 July 2024, he was sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in this case.

In January 2025, Gozman was included in the list of extremists and terrorists of Rosfinmonitoring with a mark that is placed at the names of people prosecuted under terrorist articles. A case of public justification of terrorism was later reported to have beein initiated against him for his interview in the Russian-language version of the Bild newspaper about Ukrainian drone attacks and the explosion on the Crimean Bridge.

On 14 October 2025, the FSB reported about the initiation of a case against Gozman and other members of the Anti-War Committee of Russia for a violent seizure of power and organising the activities of a terrorist community. The basis for initiating the case was the adoption of the Berlin Declaration on the need for a change of power in Russia.

On 14 November, the court sentenced Gozman in absentia to ten years of imprisonment in the case of justification of terrorism. The sentence was imposed in conjunction with the punishment in the case of war-related “fakes”.

Others charged under Article 205.2 part 2, Russian Criminal Code

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Source: this person’s record in the OVD-Info political persecution database

Published under CC BY 3.0. The criteria for treating a person as politically persecuted belong to OVD-Info; FACTUM relays their assessment and makes none of its own.

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