Four Years for €37: Moscow Jails Yabloko Member for Navalny Donation
October 10, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A Moscow court sentenced 60-year-old Yabloko member Elena Perepelitsa to four years in a penal colony for seven donations totalling €37 to Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, the longest known real custodial sentence imposed on a woman for this offence.
Seven transfers of 500 roubles each, totalling 3,500 roubles (€37), have earned a 60-year-old Moscow psychologist four years in a penal colony. The Simonovsky district court convicted Elena Perepelitsa on October 8 of financing extremist activity under article 282.3 of the Russian criminal code, state agency TASS and the Moscow courts press service reported. The court also ordered the money confiscated, along with her mobile phone, Kommersant reported.
Perepelitsa, a Yabloko party member since 2017, set up a monthly subscription to Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) on August 5, 2021 and made seven transfers before February 2022. She told the court she had not known of the foundation's extremist designation and said she meant to support Yabloko, not the ACF. Her lawyer Olga Pelsh confirmed she pleaded guilty only in part.
Donations to the ACF have been prosecuted in Russia as criminal financing of extremism under article 282.3. The ACF was banned as extremist in June 2021, roughly two months before Perepelitsa began her subscription. The Simonovsky court rejected her ignorance defence and convicted her regardless. The Insider, counting rights-group data and published judgments, found at least 219 people had been convicted over ACF donations, and that Perepelitsa's term is the longest known real sentence imposed on a woman in any such case.
Mediazona counted 225 criminal cases over ACF donations across 64 regions of Russia by April 2026. The rights project Memorial, cited by Novaya Gazeta, recorded at least 40 new prosecutions for such donations each quarter in 2026.
On October 7, a Moscow court gave Sofia Rosenfeld, a 50-year-old senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences specialising in Arctic birds, three and a half years for two donations totalling 2,000 roubles. Rosenfeld was taken into custody in the courtroom.
Perepelitsa is the third Yabloko member jailed in under four months. Deputy chairman Maxim Kruglov received seven years on June 24 for spreading what the court called lies about the army in two posts about the killings in Bucha in 2022. Deputy chairman Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years and one month on August 17 by a court in Pskov for discrediting the armed forces after condemning the war in Ukraine. On the same day, Russia's Supreme Court upheld a ruling barring Yabloko, the only officially registered party that openly opposes the war, from September's parliamentary elections.
Navalny, who founded the ACF, died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024. Novaya Gazeta reported that Perepelitsa has hypertension and requires regular medication, and that her mother has cancer. She was detained on July 2 and held in pre-trial detention until sentencing.
Four years for €37 is not proportionality. It is the going rate for dissent.
Published October 10, 2026 · Frisian News