A Russian appeals court on Wednesday upheld an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed on opponent Ilia Yachin for his criticism of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, amid accelerating repression in Russia.
The sentence pronounced at first instance in December “remains unchanged”, said the judge, according to an AFP correspondent in court. Mr. Yashin, 39, was found guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
A charismatic opponent, he was convicted for having denounced, in a live intervention on YouTube, “the murder of civilians” in the town of Boutcha, near Kiev, where the Russian army was accused of abuses, which denies Moscow.
“The feeling of having moral superiority over the thieves and killers who have taken over gives me strength. They know I don’t fear them,” Mr. Iachine said during the hearing, according to a transcript released by his team.
“What is my fault? It is to have fulfilled my duty as a Russian politician and patriot and to have spoken the truth about this war”, he also affirmed.
At the end of the hearing, one of his lawyers, Me Maria Eismont, reaffirmed that his client was not guilty because the accusation of “false information” is based solely, according to her, on “the opinion from the Russian Defense Ministry.
“Iachine has a very playful mentality,” she added, assuring that he “felt good”.
Crescendo repression
Mr Yashin’s trial is particularly watched in Russia, as he was one of the last prominent Russian opponents of Vladimir Putin not to have been imprisoned in Russia.
This decision, unsurprisingly, comes the day after the rejection of another appeal, that of the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage, who was kept in pre-trial detention until the end of May.
Since the launch of the offensive against Ukraine at the end of February 2022, the Russian government has accelerated its repression of dissenting voices, punishing hundreds of people with fines and prison terms, or closing the last critical NGOs.
From now on, the great opposition figures who have remained in the country, such as Alexeï Navalny, Ilia Yachine or Vladimir Kara-Mourza, have received heavy prison sentences.
Vladimir Kara-Mourza was sentenced Monday to a record sentence of 25 years in prison, in particular for “high treason”, an unprecedented severity against an opponent in Russian history since the Soviet repressions.
But the repressive machine also affects simple anonymous people, guilty of having spoken publicly against the offensive, sometimes in simple messages on social networks seen by a very small number of people.
A father, Alexei Moskaliov, and his 13-year-old daughter recently found themselves at the heart of an emblematic case. In the spring of 2022, the latter drew a picture in class against Russian intervention in Ukraine and was denounced by the school principal.
A few months later, his father was targeted by the courts and sentenced in March to two years in prison for online publications criticizing the conflict. A few hours before his conviction, Mr. Moskaliov had fled to Belarus, but he has since been arrested and extradited to Russia.
Thursday, a court must consider a request to deprive him of custody of his daughter.
“By doing this, they want to intimidate society”, reacted Wednesday Oleg Orlov, head of Memorial, pillar of human rights dissolved at the end of 2021 by Russian justice and co-winner of the last Nobel Peace Prize.
“And they get there […] Society is afraid and prefers to be silent,” continued Mr. Orlov, speaking to the audience of Ilya Iachine.
Since March, Oleg Orlov has himself been prosecuted in a case for “discrediting” the Russian army, which could send him to prison for three years.