Leonid Gozman, Russian Opposition Figure, Gets 10-Year Sentence in Absentia

Leonid Gozman

Leonid Gozman, a Russian opposition figure with Israeli citizenship, has been sentenced to ten years in a penal colony. Gozman had been labeled a foreign agent and put on the terrorists and extremists list by Rosfinmonitoring.

The Second Western District Military Court gave the ruling, which also bans him from running websites for five years. Gozman, 75, left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The ten-year sentence comes from two cases:

Terrorism Justification: Gozman got six years for justification of terrorism (Part 2, Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). This was due to an interview with Bild in August 2023. Investigators said he had praised drone attacks on Moscow and the Crimean Bridge bombing. His defense pointed out that the same witness testified in both cases. The witness worked at the Moscow Metro's crime prevention center.

Military Fakes: The sentence adds to an earlier conviction from July 2024. He got 8.5 years for spreading false information about the Russian Armed Forces (military fakes, Part 2, Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). This was about his social media posts on the killings of civilians in Bucha and the shelling of Ukrainian towns.

Gozman left Russia after the invasion, came back for a while, and was arrested in 2023 for breaking the law. He then left again and was put on the wanted list.

Separately, Gozman’s wife, Marina Egorova, was held under house arrest in Moscow for over a year. She was charged with smuggling cultural items—an inherited set of tableware she tried to take out of Russia. Gozman said in November 2024 that his wife was allowed to leave Russia.