Status: 09.12.2022 2:55 p.m
A court in Moscow has sentenced one of the last prominent Russian opposition politicians to eight and a half years in prison. Yashin is said to have spread false information about Putin’s armed forces in Ukraine.
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin has been found guilty by a Moscow court of spreading “false information” about the armed forces. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, according to the AFP and Reuters news agencies. Prosecutors had asked for nine years in prison.
Yashin speaks of a production
Yashin speaks of a political staging of the process. “With this hysterical verdict, the authorities want to scare us all, but in fact they have only shown their weakness,” it said on its Telegram channel immediately after the verdict was announced.
In April, Yashin publicly denounced the massacre carried out by Russian soldiers in the Kiev suburb of Bucha in a stream. In the summer, the authorities initiated proceedings against him for defaming the Russian armed forces. Since then, Yashin has been in custody.
The local politician of the “Solidarity Movement” is one of the last prominent members of the opposition in Russia. He demands the departure of President Putin and is considered a confidant of the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Navalny described the verdict against Yashin as “shameless and lawless”. With this, Putin will “not silence Yashin, and it should not intimidate the sincere people in Russia,” said Navalny in online networks. “It’s another reason why we have to fight. And I have no doubt that in the end we will win.”