“Love for the motherland sometimes requires going against the state.” The story of Lev Shlosberg, sentenced to 11 years
Author, Ilya Barabanov*
Place of work, BBC Russian Service
Published August 17, 2026
Reading time: 15 min
On August 17, Pskov politician and former local deputy, who headed the regional branch of the Yabloko party for 30 years, human rights activist and journalist Lev Shlosberg** was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison on charges of creating “fakes” about the Russian army and discrediting it. The BBC Russian service tells the story of one of the most prominent regional politicians in the history of modern Russia.
On June 6, 2017, Lev Shlosberg spoke at the next meeting of the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies. Schlosberg spoke about the lessons of patriotic education being introduced in schools. Local United Russia members were forced to listen to him. The video shows how deputies diligently look at their tablets or talk to each other so as not to react in any way to the words of the opposition deputy from the Yabloko party. But the face of the then governor of the region, Andrei Turchak, clearly shows that he extremely does not like Shlosberg’s speech.
“When schools begin to introduce lessons on state patriotism, it means that something is going wrong in the state,” said Shlosberg. — Patriotism is love for the motherland. This is a personal feeling, a person’s personal experience. The homeland is not a state or a government. Homeland is that corner of the earth with which a person is connected by the origins of life. And if people begin to teach from childhood love for the state, love for power, this is not patriotism, this is instilling loyalty and humility. And at key moments in life, when the fate of the Fatherland is being decided, a person brought up in this way, choosing between love for the homeland and loyalty to the state, can betray his homeland. Because love for the homeland sometimes requires going against the state, against the authorities.”
This speech by Schlosberg was then widely circulated on social networks, and was discussed and quoted by many. It can still be found on dozens of YouTube channels. Over the past nine years, the then Pskov governor Turchak managed to leave the region, make a rapid career in Moscow, where he was a senator, first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko and secretary of the general council of United Russia - and then just as quickly found himself in disgrace and again left for the region as governor, but this time in Altai. And Shlosberg lost his deputy mandate in Pskov, experienced the revocation of the license of the newspaper he published “Pskov Guberniya”, was declared a “foreign agent”, became involved in three criminal cases and will have to spend the next 11-plus years in prison.
“When children are told about the Civil War, will they be told that this was not a victory of the Reds over the Whites and Greens, but a national tragedy? When children are taught about patriotism using the example of the Great Patriotic War, will they be told about the price of victory? About the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. About Stalin's deadly mistakes. About millions of soldiers who have not yet been found or buried. About the victors who were exiled to concentration camps after the victory. Will they be told about millions of denunciations, about the laws of three ears of corn? Will this also be part of patriotism? - Shlosberg said at that very meeting of the Pskov Regional Council of Deputies in the summer of 2017. “When children are told about the history of the Republic of Crimea in the 21st century, they will be told about the armed seizure of parliament, about the Crimean Tatars, about the Donbass, about the hitherto classified lists of those killed in an undeclared fratricidal war, about “they are not there,” about the unfortunate passengers of the Boeing?”
“Why is patriotic education in our country primarily military-patriotic. Why not peaceful and patriotic? Do we want to prepare children for war or for peace?” — the deputy continued to ask questions.
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin answered most of Lev Shlosberg’s questions. But the politician still remained to live in Pskov, fundamentally refusing to emigrate.
Politician in the classical sense of the word
“I met Schlosberg in 2003, when I became chairman of Yabloko in St. Petersburg. Then Yabloko did not get into the State Duma and the question of change arose. And there were clear leaders of change,” Maxim Reznik, former leader of St. Petersburg Yabloko, tells the BBC Russian Service**. — On the one hand, Ilya Yashin**, who headed the “youth team” and organized street activity, on the other hand, our St. Petersburg branch, we collaborated with both Garry Kasparov** and Eduard Limonov. And the third was Schlosberg. He was a man who personified a calm, measured strategy for a broad coalition and the need to interact with all democratic forces."
A graduate of the history department of the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute, Lev Shlosberg, having served two years in the missile forces, established the Pskov Free Institute in 1992. In 1994, he joined the Yabloko party, and since 1996 he has headed the regional branch of the party.
Following the results of the 2003 State Duma elections, Yabloko did not enter parliament for the first time, gaining, according to official data, 4.3% of the votes - less than the minimum minimum. However, there was a legend that President Vladimir Putin managed to congratulate the leader and one of the co-founders of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, on the fact that he and his fellow party members received a faction in the new, fourth convocation of the Russian parliament.
In 2003 and 2016, Shlosberg tried to become a State Duma deputy, running in a single-mandate constituency in the Pskov region. He received first 2% and then 6% of the votes in the elections. But he was interested not only in politics.
“I’m tired of working in a municipal newspaper. I just bought “Pskov Province” at the station in 2010 and said: “Is it still possible to write like this in our time?!” I knocked on the door of the editorial office, it was quite large, there were four offices, and one small man was sitting there and said: “Hello.” I say: “Hello, I’m talking about work.” And he: “I’ve been working alone for the last two years.” We talked for half an hour, the next day I went to work,” this is how Denis Kamalyagin**, editor-in-chief of the Pskov Province newspaper, which Shlosberg has published since 2000, describes his acquaintance with the deputy.
Kamalyagin says that while working with Shlosberg, who was the founder of the newspaper, they had various kinds of friction. Kamalyagin believed that a politician cannot head an independent media: “I won’t lie, we had disagreements about freedom of speech. We approach this differently. He is a politician, not a journalist. In the classical sense of the word, says Kamalyagin. — I said, for example, we cannot hide this about Yabloko, it must be written. And he’s like: “But we’re good, you can write nasty things about them, but you can’t write about us.” Perhaps as a person I agree with this, but as a journalist I disagreed.”
The small regional newspaper was read by many. “It was a newspaper for Moscow, not for Pskov,” says Kamalyagin. — It was a newspaper for the intelligentsia and local elites. The newspaper was published on Wednesday, and on Thursday there was a session of the Pskov regional assembly. And when [Governor] Turchak came in, he always waved “Pskov province.” He liked to read articles to himself.”
"Invited to join this meanness"
In 2011, in the elections to the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies, Yabloko, led by Lev Shlosberg, received 6.7% of the votes. Schlosberg received the only mandate that the party was entitled to.
And just a year later he became a politician recognized by the whole country. Then, in response to the American sanctions “Magnitsky Act,” the Russian State Duma adopted a law that received the unofficial name of the “Dima Yakovlev Law.” If American legislators introduced sanctions against people who were involved in the death in a pre-trial detention center of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian State Duma decided, as a countermeasure, to prohibit foreigners from adopting Russian orphans. The Russian law was unofficially named after one of them, Dima Yakovlev.
It caused a great public outcry, and then the Kremlin decided to resort to the same political technology trick, which it will then repeat in February 2022. It was decided to distribute responsibility for the unpopular political decision among the maximum possible number of politicians, and the presidential administration ordered that the law, which had already been approved by the State Duma, be “supported” and “approved” by the regional parliaments in separate statements.
“We have been asked to share political responsibility for one of the most shameful laws adopted in the Russian Federation. Just as they hid behind their children, now they are trying to hide behind the legislative assemblies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation! - Schlosberg was indignant at a meeting of the regional assembly in December 2012. “We were asked to get involved in this matter.” This savage law was adopted in response to the signing of the “Magnitsky Act” in the United States. Now society has read this law. These are not actions against potentially guilty persons. These are actions against absolutely defenseless children. This is a cannibalistic, flesh-eating, unscrupulous and vile law. And today the Pskov deputies are invited to join this meanness and every deputy to subscribe to this meanness?”
As a result, the Pskov Regional Assembly did not support the bill the first time: 21 deputies voted in favor of the required 23. But after the break, one of the deputies said that his button did not work and asked for a repeat vote. This time the resolution was already supported by 26 deputies. Schlosberg again voted “against”, but this did not change anything: the decision was made.
Pskov sensation
In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. And soon after this, a detachment under the command of Igor Girkin captured Slavyansk, which started a war in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Moscow officially disavowed the conflict and did not admit that it supported the separatists in any way. But when, closer to August 2014, the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR were on the verge of defeat, Russia introduced a limited contingent that surrounded the Ukrainian military in the so-called “Ilovaisk Cauldron” and helped preserve the republics created by Moscow.
“Pskov Province,” which was published by Shlosberg, was then the first to write about the funeral of soldiers of the 76th Airborne Division at the local cemetery. The news about the death of Pskov paratroopers in eastern Ukraine, which confirmed the participation of the Russian army in the conflict, became a sensation, and many journalists went to Pskov.
"We came to this cemetery, photographed the wreaths from the Ministry of Defense, the name of this paratrooper. Kiselev (Dmitry Kiselev is a Russian TV presenter and one of the most prominent propagandists - BBC note) then published a story about voluptuous necrophiliacs,” says BBC journalist Vladimir Romensky**. “The next day we met with Shlosberg. Lev Markovich - a man for whom I had great respect and love. The next time we met, he was the first to hug me, although I think I wanted to do it more. A few days after we left Pskov, Lev Markovich was attacked [and beaten] so that he had a concussion and short-term memory loss. Then we met many times in Moscow. "
On August 29, 2014, Shlosberg was returning home after a day of work when three men attacked him from behind right in the center of Pskov. The first blow to the head with a blunt object knocked him unconscious, but the attackers continued to beat the politician for several minutes, including hitting him in the head and stomach. Schlosberg suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken nose and numerous bruises, and after the attack he temporarily lost his memory.
Shlosberg himself connected the attack with the publication about the closed funeral of Pskov paratroopers. However, the perpetrators were never found: a criminal case for the attack was opened under the article of hooliganism, and the investigation was subsequently suspended several times.
Party difficulties
The brutal beating was not the only consequence of publications about the deaths of Pskov paratroopers in Ukraine for Shlosberg. In September 2015, he was deprived of his parliamentary mandate. "The political orderer of the deprivation of my mandate is the governor of the Pskov region Andrei Turchak and his group. I am very tired of these people: with my work in the Assembly, parliamentary requests, the fight against corruption, control over the expenditure of budget money, interference in matters that they would never like to bring to society," Schlosberg wrote then in his newspaper.
At the end of 2015, he tried to lead Yabloko, nominating his candidacy at the party congress. “He was not on the side of the radical oppositionists,” says a BBC source in the party leadership. “He followed Ivanenko’s line, which meant the position of “Let’s negotiate with the Kremlin” (Sergei Ivanenko, who died in 2024, was one of the leaders of Yabloko, a deputy of the first three convocations of the State Duma and was responsible in the party, including for interaction with the presidential administration. - BBC). Schlosberg was perceived as a loyalist, but on his own mind. He saw himself as a federal politician."
“If Yashin and I were expelled from the party at some point, then Shlosberg at some point became an obvious contender for the chairman,” says the BBC and Maxim Reznik. “But Yavlinsky then promoted Emilia Slabunova [to the chairman of the party, a deputy from Karelia."
Then, in the second round of elections at the party congress, Emilia Slabunova from Karelia actually won, she was supported by both Grigory Yavlinsky and the outgoing chairman Sergei Mitrokhin. "Lev Markovich is a clear leader. [The current chairman of Yabloko, Nikolai] Rybakov, is such a soft democrat who will not take over the party, and if Shlosberg became chairman, then no one would say that Yavlinsky is in charge of everything," agrees Shlosberg's long-time colleague in the Pskov Province Denis Kamalyagin.
The uniqueness of Yabloko is that the party chairmen change regularly, but at the same time everyone understands that Grigory Yavlinsky remains the real leader of the political structure, and if Schlosberg were to head the party, he would become its real leader, several BBC interlocutors agree. Yavlinsky has always been very jealous of strong competitors in the party, they note.
Despite all these circumstances, in 2016, Shlosberg was able to again become a deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly; Yabloko received a little more than 6% of the votes in those elections.
“Entangling in politics is only possible from Russia”
In 2017, the Pskov region was headed by Mikhail Vedernikov. The new governor immediately began to conflict with both the local Yabloko and the Pskov Province, which was published by Shlosberg.
