world mirror
Whether YouTube videos about the news situation or art activities in the supermarket: Anyone who expresses criticism against the state, military and judiciary in Russia must fear harsh punishments. How are the convicts and their relatives doing?
There is applause in the hall when Ilya Yashin speaks his last word in the appeal proceedings one day in December – connected from a prison camp to the Moscow court. On the monitor you can see him in a prison uniform behind thick bars. He was sentenced to eight and a half years for “discrediting the army.” Yashin is heard saying that he is a politician over the poor audio, and that he sees it as his job to call a spade a spade and to tell the truth. That’s why he calls the war war, that’s why he reported on Butscha. The judge should at least say openly that he was only convicted because of his opinion.
Of course the appeal fails. Ilya Yashin’s parents Tatyana and Valeriy didn’t expect anything else. Nevertheless, they are in the hall, a place with a clear view of the monitor. The procedures are almost the only chance to see the son. They are rarely allowed to visit him in prison – they saw him in May and then again in November. When they visit, the Yashins say they have to go into a cramped cubicle. Their son sits behind two thick panes of glass, you can only see him blurry, he speaks into a telephone receiver.
Yashin didn’t want to leave the country
Ilya Yashin, 40, formerly a close associate of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, was declared a “foreign agent” in Russia. On his popular YouTube channel, he quoted Western reporting on the events in Bucha and compared it with the Russian one. That was obviously too much.
“Ilya said, Mom, you have to be ready, they can come for me at any time,” Tatjana tells Jaschina. No opposition member can sleep peacefully in Russia anymore, which is why many have left the country. “Our son would have seen emigration as a betrayal,” says Valery Yashin – “especially because of his friend Boris Nemtsov.”
Ilya Yashin’s parents, Valeriy and Tatjana, always prepare themselves when they go to court – this gives their son Ilya strength, they say.
Not everyone knows how dangerous even the smallest protest is. St. Petersburg artist Aleksandra Skotschilenko also had no idea what risk she was taking when she stuck small fake price tags on the supermarket shelf.
One of the signs says “400,-” as if it were a ruble price. If you look closely, it says in small print: “About 400 people are hiding from the bombs in a school in Mariupol.” Aleksandra had handed out five such labels, her little silent protest – she thought. But someone reported the signs to the police, and with the help of a supermarket surveillance camera, Aleksandra was found. When the judge read out the verdict, she burst into tears: seven years in prison.
Partner brings special food
Aleksandra has been in custody since summer 2022. Since then, her partner Sonja Subbotina has been carrying bags of food and water bottles to the prison twice a week. Relatives are allowed to bring 30 kilos per month. Sonja negotiated out 35. Because Sascha, as everyone calls her, has a gluten intolerance and needs special food. And she needs medication – she has a congenital heart defect, a hole in her heart.
Subbotina has terminated the shared apartment. Since the house was searched, she says, she hasn’t been able to sleep there anymore: “I was afraid of every step in the stairwell, I always thought, now they’re coming again.” Now she rents a room in a run-down Kommunalka, a Soviet-era communal apartment, with nine other tenants. There are ten refrigerators in the kitchen, three showers and three toilets are shared.
The artist Aleksandra Skotschilenko as a defendant in court.
Sonja’s room is piled high with boxes of gluten-free bread, chocolate bars and bananas. Sonja herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring, she was operated on immediately and the prognosis is good. Since then, she says, she no longer feels guilty about doing something for herself. She has to stay strong for Sascha.
I was allowed to hold Sascha’s hand once, more than a year ago. I asked her guards at a court case, there was a nice shift on duty. I took Sascha’s hand and we both cried. But it was so good to be able to touch her.
“We do this for our son”
The Jashins’ lives now revolve solely around their son. Every now and then they stop by his empty apartment and meet his friends there. “We have found ourselves in this situation. It is now important that we retain our dignity. We must not see ourselves as victims. We are doing this for ourselves and, above all, for our son,” says father Jaschin.
Tatjana goes for a manicure before every court case and puts on her makeup carefully – she knows that her son notices and likes things like that. Ilya should see that they are doing well, that they are staying strong.
Both have the same hope as the families of many other imprisoned opposition activists – that the regime will be shorter-lived than the prison sentence of their relatives. Valery Yashin puts it this way: “Everything here is so absurd, it’s getting more and more absurd. It just can’t last much longer.”
Sonja Subbotina in Saint Petersburg draws hope from the many letters her friend receives from all over Russia and even abroad. Leaning against the shelf in Sonja’s room is a small drawing that Sascha sent from prison: It shows a prisoner in a cramped cell who is growing wings – wings made from white envelopes.
Journalists film the screen on which the accused Ilya Yashin appears.