Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin is currently living in exile in Berlin. But he still wants to return to Russia to change the situation there, Jashin said in Vienna on Thursday. Emigrating was not his choice at all.
The politician was sentenced to eight and a half years in December 2022 for publicly criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine and was transferred abroad from a Russian prison against his will in August 2024. Yashin was released in an international prisoner exchange (see video above).
“My biggest fear is not losing direct contact with an audience in Russia, that is, concrete technical channels, but my emotional connection,” Yashin said at an event in the ‘European Contexts’ discussion series. In any case, he would return if there was a change of power in Russia. The legalization of the opposition in Russia must be an issue in a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. If Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin remained in power, he reasoned, war would return.
Unites war opponents in Europe
He is currently mainly concerned with uniting Russian war opponents in emigration. Jashin said he organizes meetings with fellow countrymen in European cities and tries to help fight discrimination. A former Moscow district councilor, he worked closely with politician Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015, and was friends with Alexei Navalny, who died in custody in 2024.
In the environmental sector, there are still productive contacts between activists in exile and those left in Russia, journalist Angelina Davydova said at the event on Thursday. During the recent Black Sea oil spill, thousands of volunteers worked to clear the coasts of oil pollution. In recent years, the Russian state has massively repressed civil society involvement in many areas.
Source: Krone

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