Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin has been sentenced in Moscow to eight and a half years in prison for alleged contempt for the Russian military. The defendant’s guilt has been fully proven, the Moscow court said on Friday, according to the Mediazona internet portal. The judge rejected the defense’s objection that these were Yashin’s personal assessments. The prosecutor had demanded nine years in prison against Yashin.
The 39-year-old, one of the last remaining prominent members of the opposition in Russia, spoke of a political staging of the trial. “With this hysterical verdict, the authorities want to scare us all, but in fact they have only shown their weakness,” the politician’s Telegram channel said immediately after the announcement.
Massacre in Bucha publicly denounced
Yashin is considered a confidant of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in the prison camp. He has protested Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and has condemned war crimes committed by the Russian military. As the Moscow-born in April publicly denounced the massacre of Russian soldiers in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, authorities launched a defamation lawsuit against the Russian military in the summer.
Yashin has been in custody ever since. He had asked his followers on his Telegram channel to come to the public hearing.
Navalny responds to the sentencing online
“This further unconscionable and illegal sentencing by Putin will not silence Ilya and should not frighten the honest people of Russia,” Navalny said on social networks. In contrast, the political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya explained that with the harshness of the punishment, the Russian leadership crosses the line from a demonstration of power to “inadequate brutality against an already very weak opponent”. The harshness shocked even some pro-war lawyers, she said.
Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin also commented on the verdict at a press conference, although he initially pretended not to know who the convict was. Putin said it was his principle not to interfere in the activities of the courts. Under the constitution, Yashin’s lawyers can appeal to a higher court, he added.
Source: Krone
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