“The reality of Russia in 2025 is when, sitting in a caged aquarium in a courtroom, you learn from lawyers about the detention of another of your party members on charges of the same unconstitutional article of the Criminal Code under which you yourself are accused...

“The reality of Russia in 2025 is when, sitting in a caged aquarium in a courtroom, you learn from lawyers about the detention of another of your party members on charges of the same unconstitutional article of the Criminal Code under which you yourself are accused. This is exactly the experience I had on October 1, when I learned about the arrest
Maxim Kruglova
, deputy chairman of Yabloko, deputy and head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma in 2019-2024.
I remember very well how in 2019 the results of the elections to the Moscow City Duma demonstrated the political
the maturity of civil society, and the appearance of a large Yabloko faction in the Moscow parliament, headed by Maxim Kruglov, became almost a sensation. Personally, for me, that election campaign, along with the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, aroused serious optimism and prompted me to join Yabloko, which I had been thinking about for a long time and what I eventually did
in October 2019.
It is now clear that all positive trends, all hopes for the best can be trampled almost instantly and that the distance from a legal politician to a prisoner in the current realities is very small. The more important it is not
forget the principle defended by the Yabloko party: For peace and freedom!
Your Vasya N., pre-trial detention center-1, St. Petersburg"