Ilya Yashin place of detention Russia
Arrest and imprisonment
On 4 March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian armed forces and their operations.On 27 June 2022, Ilya Yashin was detained in Moscow by local police. On 28 June, Yashin was sentenced to 15 days in detention for disobeying a police officer. Yashin called the case politically motivated and intended to suppress his political stance towards the war in Ukraine.On 12 July, Yashin was accused by the Investigative Committee of Russia of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces and his home was searched. On 13 July, a court ordered his pretrial detention; Yashin was tried over a YouTube video released in April 2022 in which he discussed the discovery of murdered Ukrainian civilians in the suburban town of Bucha, near Kyiv. State prosecutor requested nine years in prison for Yashin. Amnesty International and other organisations called on the government to release him immediately, regarding his case as part of repressions on war critics.On 9 December, a Moscow court sentenced Yashin to eight years and six months imprisonment for his statements about the circumstances of the killings in Bucha on charges of "spreading false information" about the armed forces. His punishment was the harshest given under the new laws which criminalize spreading "false" information about the armed forces. In his closing remarks to the court ahead of the verdict, Yashin said: "As if they will sew my mouth shut and I would be forbidden to speak forever. Everyone understands that this is the point. I am isolated from society because they want me to be silent. I promise as long as I’m alive I’ll never will be. My mission is to tell the truth. I will not give up the truth even behind bars. After all, quoting the classic: 'Lie is the religion of slaves.'"Yashin said about Russian President Vladimir Putin that "Strong leaders are calm and self-confident, and only weaklings seek to shut everyone up, burn out any dissent." Before his sentencing, he urged Putin to "immediately stop this madness, recognise that the policy on Ukraine was wrong, pull back troops from its territory and switch to a diplomatic settlement of the conflict". He further said addressing Putin: "You have brought terrible misfortune to the Ukrainian people, who will probably never forgive us."In his closing speech, he said that "it is better to spend 10 years behind bars as an honest man than silently burning with shame for the blood that your government sheds."On 19 April 2023, Yashin lost his appeal to his eight-and-a-half years sentence at the Moscow City Court. In his speech before the court, Yashin called Putin a wanted war criminal and said that Putin's war censorship laws violate the 1993 Russian Constitution, which expressly prohibits censorship.
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