Today’s Russian reality increasingly resembles a “danger scale”: if you are a reasonable person with your own position on the war in Ukraine—and especially if you don’t stay silent, if you live a social life online—you can no longer feel safe. And if you also aspire to a role that comes with any authority or public influence, the risk rises sharply: any word, any old post, any “inconvenient” intonation can suddenly become a pretext—and within this logic, freedom turns not into a right, but into an exception.

Against this backdrop, the speech by Maxim Kruglov, deputy chair of the Yabloko party, at the Moscow City Court sounded especially telling—delivered during an appeal hearing on the preventive measure. He directly linked the criminal prosecution against him to political motives and described what, in his words, is perceived in pre-trial detention as a daily, almost fatal formula of courtroom routine.

Kruglov said that during his time in custody—“almost three months now”—he saw how detainees had adopted a “sinister abbreviation,” “BZ,” meaning “no changes.” According to him, it is heard “every day”—by him, his cellmates, and other prisoners: “We understand that the question of the preventive measure is, in principle, in the investigator’s hands.” He stressed that what had been “abstract” knowledge while he was free became “quite concrete” inside “these walls,” because the court, as he put it, is not inclined to argue with the investigation even when the justifications look “absurd and ridiculous.”

Separately, Kruglov emphasized what exactly he is accused of: “I am being blamed for an internet post from 2022, from April, if I’m not mistaken… a post… written 3.5 years ago.” He contrasted this with serious criminal charges: “I’m not being accused of murder, fraud, bribery, or violence—just a post,” which, he said, for many years “raised no questions” and was not seen as “a threat to state security” or “a crime against the state.” “Now they consider it one,” he stated, underscoring that the status of an old publication suddenly changed.

Kruglov then connected what is happening to the political context and his own role in the party. According to him, ahead of State Duma elections, the system—as he understands it—does not want to see him at liberty: “And I understand that before the elections to the State Duma, I, as deputy chair of the Yabloko party, cannot, in the system’s view, be at liberty.” He explained the logic this way: the party advocates “both a ceasefire agreement and peace,” and therefore the case is “a political story.” “The State Duma elections are coming soon, and that means, for some reason, they need me to be in these places,” he said in court.

At the same time, he added a separate caveat: in his observation, this is not “selective justice” in a narrow sense. In his picture, the system is equally cold to everyone, and the formula “no changes” is universal. “A political case or a non-political one—there is always no change, always an extension, if the investigator and the prosecutor file such a motion,” Kruglov said.

The final emphasis of his speech was not only political, but moral: he called it obvious that keeping a person in prison for a “peaceful, humanistic post” is not merely cruel, but senseless. As Kruglov put it, “to keep a person in prison for a peaceful, humanistic post on the internet makes no sense and contradicts… considerations of humanity, justice, and even common sense.”