The paper describes a novel rule-based approach to classification of opinion statements on the level of individual sentences. In contrast to existing approaches, the proposed method relies on the rules elaborated for semantically distinct verb classes. To deeply analyse the type, strength, and confidence level of expressed opinion, the system relies on the compositionality principle and lexicon of sentiment-conveying terms, functional words, modifiers, and modal expressions. The method is capable of processing sentences of different complexity, including simple, compound, complex (with complement and relative clauses), and complex-compound sentences. KEYWORDS Opinion mining, sentiment analysis.