A Russian Dissident Gets Sent to Prison for Telling the Truth About Ukraine
A Russian Dissident Gets Sent to Prison for Telling the Truth About Ukraine
Ilya Yashin stayed in Russia when it invaded Ukraine. Now, he's being imprisoned by a government that criminalizes truth.
Days after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government adopted a series of laws making it a crime to call the war a war and the invasion an invasion. One aspect of the criminal code, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, made it a crime to distribute "deliberately false information" about the Russian Armed Forces.
On December 9, a Moscow court declared opposition politician Ilya Yashin, 39, in violation of the statute and sentenced him to 8.5 years in a penal colony. (The prosecutor had asked for nine.) According to human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov, out of over 160 cases over distributing "fake" information, Yashin's sentence is far and away the longest one.
Of the Russian opposition figures who were free and in Russia, Yashin was close to the last one standing. There are opposition figures who remain in Russia but behind bars, like Alexei Navalny or Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post columnist. When prison authorities allow, they relay messages through their lawyers that are posted on social media or in the press. Then, there are opposition groups and figures who can broadcast freely from abroad. For example, Navalny's organization is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, one of the hubs of the opposition in Belarus and Russia.
In the eyes of the Russian government, Yashin's spreading of "false information" was to show the truth about the war in Ukraine. On his YouTube livestream in April, he showed footage from the BBC after the Russian Army retreated from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and reacted to what he saw. "All of this is an absolutely apocalyptic picture, like in horror films. Dead bodies with open eyes, with hands tied behind their backs," he said, adding that it "looked like a massacre." Yashin has about 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube.
Yashin's long sentence comes as there are signs that increasing numbers of the Russian public are hesitant about the war. According to leaked polling data published by the newsletter Faridaily, ten percent fewer Russians think Putin needed to start the war than six months ago. A declining number think the war is "going according to plan." Still, a rising number think the war should keep going -- seemingly an illustration of sunk-cost fallacy.
Yashin, an associate of Navalny and a former member of a district council in Moscow, was one of a few opposition politicians to remain free and stay in Russia when the war started. During the trial, the prosecution asked him why he stayed. He responded, "A Russian politician must remain in Russia." He went on, "I remain the voice of those people who want to change Russia for the better, want Russia to be a civilized, open, friendly country, where the values of freedom, justice, and equality prevail."
Since the invasion, he has repeatedly been punished for social media posts. In May, he was fined a total of about $1,700 on three counts of "discrediting" the Russian Army. Among the counts was posting a 1969 anti-Vietnam War photo to his Telegram channel that read "Bombing for peace is like f***ing for virginity," with his comment adding "50 years later, these slogans are still relevant." In reaction, he said, "Following the logic of the police, I discredited the Russian army by posting this image. In 1967, though, the Russian army didn't even exist. And the girls in the picture were criticizing the U.S. military."
The threats from the state escalated. He was arrested on June 27 on charges of disobeying a police officer. According to journalist Irina Babloyan, who was walking with Yashin in a Moscow park, police approached them and told him to come with them. She said that he didn't resist in any way and merely asked why he was being arrested, although the police claimed that he pushed them. While in detention that was only supposed to last 15 days, authorities announced charges on July 12 relating to the April YouTube stream, continuing to keep him behind bars. The trial began on November 29.
On December 9, in the glass box -- in Russian known as the "aquarium" -- where Yashin was kept as the verdict was read, he reacted with humor. "Don't worry! If someone thinks that Putin will rule for 8 [more] years, then they're a very big optimist." Many in the room applauded.
Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote of the sentence, "This is simply an instinctive reaction to power to something that it cannot control." In June, Yashin said he could only think of five others who had stayed in Russia. Six months later, there's no sign of an opposition leader speaking freely inside Russia.