A RUSSIAN court sentenced prominent anti-war activist and Marxist theorist Boris Kagarlitsky to five years in prison today.

The appeal court ruling came a day after Russia accused the United States and its allies of sabotaging agreements that would have prevented war in Ukraine.

Lawyers for Mr Kagarlitsky said their client had also been ordered by a Moscow military court to pay 600,000 rubles (around £5,200) for “justifying terrorism,” charges which he denied.

Mr Kagarlitsky, founder and chief editor of the left-wing news organisation Rabkor and an outspoken critic of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, was detained in July 2023 in connection with a since-deleted YouTube video about the 2022 Crimea Bridge explosion. 

The move follows a meeting of the UN security council on Monday, where Russia accused the West of sabotaging agreements that would have prevented the war.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the cause of the war was the failure to implement the 2015 Minsk agreements, which he blamed on “Kiev’s sabotage” supported by the West.

The agreements aimed to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists that flared in April 2014 in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbass region.

Had the Minsk agreements been implemented, Mr Nebenzia said, “the tragedy that has taken place in Ukraine today would not have happened, a tragedy in which the United States and the collective West are complicit.”

Journalist Steve Sweeney, who has been reporting for Russian news outlet RT from the Donbass, addressed the security council today.

He told the Morning Star: “I was trying to bring some humanity to the meeting and the real-life consequences of their decisions. 

“These are the people supplying the arms, ammunition and missiles raining down on the people of Donetsk.”

US deputy ambassador Robert Wood accused Russia of putting forward “significant myths and disinformation” to rewrite history.