Russian authorities have sentenced opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight years in prison for allegedly "spreading fake information" about the country's army forces.
On Friday, Judge Oksana Goryunova of the Moscow district court said that 39-year-old Yashin will serve the sentence in a penal colony and gave the defendant 10 days to appeal the verdict. The politician was tried over a YouTube video that was released in April where he discussed evidence uncovered by Western journalists.
Imprisonment of Putin's Opposition
The evidence was of Russian atrocities in Bucha, near Kyiv, and cast doubt on the official Moscow version of the reports being fabricated as a "provocation" against Russia. Furthermore, Yashin was an ally of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is known as Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic.
Yashin was also close to Boris Nemtsov, who is an opposition politician who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. On social media accounts that Navalny's team managed, he said that the verdict on his colleague was another shameless and lawless verdict from Putin but argued that it will not silence him and urged the people of Russia to not be intimidated by it, as per Aljazeera.
Navalny added that the verdict against Yashin was yet another reason why they must fight, adding that he had no doubt that they would win in the end. The politician is serving more than 11 years for fraud, contempt of court, and parole violations. He has rejected all of the charges against him as trumped-up charges that were intended to silence him.
The situation comes as Russia passed new legislation after the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 earlier this year. The new laws provide for jail terms of up to 15 years for disseminating false information about the military.
According to BBC, Yashin told the court that he had given both the official Russian and Ukrainian versions of the story. During his video recording, the opposition politician shared images and stories from the scene by several global media outlets that covered the situation in Ukraine.
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Russia's Alleged War Crimes in Ukraine
However, Russia's defense ministry had condemned the accusations as a fabricated "provocation" and images of dead civilians as being "staged." As prosecutors called for a nine-year prison sentence, Yashin's lawyer Maria Eismont said that they would appeal against the judge's verdict.
Yashin, in a post on the messaging app Telegram, told his supporters that there was no reason to be sad despite the verdict against him. He said that they told the truth about war crimes and had called for an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine.
The politician also said during a July interview that his arrest was not something to be surprised about as Russian authorities had made clear that there were only two alternatives for Kremlin opponents: emigration or jail.
On the other hand, Russian investigators said that Yashin's statements about the circumstances of the killings in Bucha were a criminal offense under the recently introduced legislation. The law considered discrediting the Russian armed forces an illegal act, CNN reported.
