The new sentence came two months after the prominent sociologist and Marxist thinker was fined 600,000 rubles (around US$6,570) for denigrating the Kremlin’s military campaign on social media.

The fine was seen as a surprising and rarer form of punishment for Kagarlitsky – charged with “justifying terrorism” – during Moscow’s massive crackdown on dissent.

Russian news agencies quoted a judge in the Moscow region court ruling to “change the sentence and give Kagarlitsky a punishment in the form of five years in a penal colony”.

Kagarlitsky was arrested in July 2023 after he made a comment on social media alleging that a Ukrainian attack on Moscow’s Crimea bridge was “more or less understandable”.

The 65-year-old is a well-known academic who has written extensively on Russian society and leftist political history.

He taught at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics – once a university that was seen as a bastion of liberal thinking.

Russia declared Kagarlitsky a “foreign agent” in 2022.