The Moscow City Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's decision to reject a libel suit against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
In December, opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov and Vladimir Ryzhkov filed a defamation suit against Putin and the state TV channel Rossiya 1, but the Savyolovsky District Court rejected it last month.
The three said they would appeal the decision.
They demanded that Putin and Rossiya 1 pay $34,000 in compensation after the premier alleged in his annual Q&A session last year that Nemtsov, Milov and Ryzhkov siphoned off billions of rubles in state funds during the 1990s, when Russia was engulfed in chaotic capitalist reforms.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, spent two weeks in a Moscow jail after taking part in an anti-Kremlin protest on New Year's Eve.
MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti)
