Opposition politician Ilya Yashin, one of the few remaining voices in Russia prepared to speak out against Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine, was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail in Moscow this Friday.
Once that is over, the 39-year-old will also be barred from posting anything online for a further four. The judge told him he would be able to get his iPhone 11 back after that.
From his glass cage, Yashin thanked her. “I appreciate your sense of humour,” he said, smiling.
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The verdict is hardly a surprise. In a powerful closing statement on Monday, Yashin, who is declared a foreign agent in Russia, had addressed the judge saying she knew he was not guilty and that he in turn knew what kind of pressure the system put on her.
He bore her no grudge for the inevitable guilty verdict, he said. “But it is better to spend 10 years behind bars as an honest man than silently burning with shame for the blood that your government sheds.”
His main crime in the eyes of the state was to publish a video on his YouTube channel documenting the Russian army’s alleged crimes in Bucha, a city in Ukraine, to his almost 1.4 million followers.
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But the lengthy verdict, issued in the speeded-up monotone characteristic of all Russian judges, provided a comprehensive summary of the many criticisms Yashin has made online and in person against President Putin, the regime’s pernicious use of propaganda, and what Yashin has called this “monstrous war”.
A friend and political associate of Alexei Navalny, Yashin is the most high-profile figure to be sentenced under the raft of fake news legislation introduced in March after the invasion of Ukraine.
It is also the longest sentence handed out under the legislation, although 366 people have been fined or jailed to date for supposedly discrediting the Russian armed forces, according to the human rights group OVD-Info.
Yashin’s father held his hands in his face as the verdict was read out. Outside the court he told Sky News “we won’t break and he won’t break”.
A small group of supporters chanted “Russia will be free”, the traditional slogan at anti-Putin rallies, many of which Yashin and Navalny had led.
At a press conference in Bishkek, President Putin was asked to comment on Yashin’s sentence. “Who’s he?” he replied, before adding that he did not think it appropriate to question court decisions.
