Former municipal deputy and prominent Russian opposition member Iliá Yashin has been sentenced this Friday to 8.5 years in prison, after a court found him guilty of “spreading false information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces” during his military campaign in Ukraine.
The Russian justice thus imposed the harshest sentence when applying the law that was approved in Russia last March to punish the “fakes” against the army. The prosecutor had asked for 9 years. In July, another municipal deputy, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
Yashin, who was a close collaborator of the opposition leader Borís Nemtsov assassinated in 2015 and an ally of the imprisoned Alexéi Navalni, has denied his guilt during his trial and has defended the need to be critical of what power says. “Citizens are not forced to believe everything the authorities say,” he said in November, during one of the sessions.
The accusation against the opponent is based on a broadcast he made on April 7 on his YouTube channel, in which he denounced the war crimes allegedly committed by the Russian Army in the north of kyiv.
According to the prosecutor, Sergei Belov, by this means “he spread false information about the alleged crimes committed in Bucha” by the Russian troops sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine. And he assured that he presented them “as proven facts”, knowing that “they were a provocation”.
The prosecution contended that Yashin “affirmatively told” viewers that the Russian military had killed civilians in Bucha, while at the same time speaking disparagingly about the current Russian authorities.
The defense, for its part, argued that the prosecution had not presented any conclusive evidence of crime. They assured that Yashin quoted in the broadcast of him both the Russian and foreign media, in addition to the war parties of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
And he accused the Prosecutor’s Office of trying to turn this into a trial on the massacre of civilians that occurred in Bucha, whose authorship Russia has always denied.
Following the start of its military campaign in Ukraine, Russia passed a new law that provides for up to 15 years in prison for spreading false information and discrediting the armed forces.
Ilya Yashin, 39, is one of the few politicians critical of the Kremlin and opposed to the military campaign in Ukraine who has not left Russia after the start of hostilities.
“I have a principle that I have followed for years until now: do what you must, come what may. When the hostilities started, I did not doubt what I had to do for a second. I must stay in Russia, I must speak the truth out loud and I must stop the bleeding at all costs,” Yashin said last Monday in court, making use of his last word.
In his speech, he called on President Putin to immediately withdraw troops from Ukraine. “I urge you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, to immediately stop this madness, to recognize the policy towards Ukraine as wrong, to withdraw troops from its territory and proceed to a diplomatic settlement of the conflict,” he told the judge.
He also made a direct appeal to the judge, in which he assures that he knew that they were going to sentence him. “You know that I am not guilty, but I know that you are pressured by the system. It is obvious that you will have to return a guilty verdict. But I have no ill will towards you, and I wish you no ill. Even so, try to do everything in your power to avoid injustice. Remember that not only my personal destiny depends on this verdict: this verdict goes against the part of our society that wants to live a civilized and peaceful life. The part of the society to which, perhaps, the honorable Member belongs”, he explained.
Before this trial began, Yashin had already been fined 30,000 rubles (about 450 euros) three times for discrediting the army. At the end of June he was arrested in Moscow and accused of disobeying a policeman. Police said that during the arrest, Yashin pushed the employee and grabbed him by his clothes, something the politician denies.
Since this incident, Ilya Yashin has been locked up. For what happened, he was arrested for 15 days. But on the same day that he was supposed to be released, a criminal case was opened against him under the law that punishes “fakes” against the army.
The court ordered preventive detention for him, which has been extended until now.
Yashin was a member of the liberal Yabloko party until 2008. Later, together with other opposition politicians such as Boris Nemtsov, he founded the Solidarity movement and later became a member of the PARNAS party. For years he has organized and participated in demonstrations against the Kremlin. From October 2017 to July 2021, he chaired the municipal council of the Krasnoselsk district of Moscow, the same one to which Alexei Górinov belonged.
