Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin’s sentence will be announced on Wednesday at 12 o’clock local time. The prosecutor demands a nine-year prison sentence for Jašin.
Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashinin the trial in Moscow has ended. The verdict will be announced on Wednesday at 12 noon local time.
Activist Yashin is accused of spreading false information about the Russian army.
On Monday, the prosecutor demanded a nine-year prison sentence for Jašin.
According to the prosecutor, the allegations about the Russian army spread by Yashin could have damaged the army’s reputation and therefore the crime should be considered serious.
The trial has been closely followed by several Russian media, for example the independent Mediazona (you switch to another service) and a newspaper Kommersant (you will switch to another service).
Told about Russian mass executions in Butša
In April, Jašin published a live broadcast on his YouTube channel, where he told about the executions carried out by the Russian army in Bucha, Ukraine.
At the beginning of April, the Ukrainian forces had liberated the city of Butsha from the occupation of the Russian army.
After Russia retreated, mass graves and torture chambers had been found in the city.
Jašin told his more than one million followers on YouTube that Russian soldiers are suspected of having executed civilians in a particularly brutal way in Butša.
At the end of June, Jašin was arrested for resisting official authority in the middle of the day and was taken to jail for 15 days. Immediately after that, he was placed in pretrial detention.
The authorities said that Yashin is suspected of spreading false information about the Russian military.
Putin cleans up the opposition with the help of a vague law
In March, the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, approved an amendment to the Criminal Code, which concerns spreading lies in the media.
Intentionally spreading false information about the Russian military can result in three years in prison or fines ranging from 700,000 rubles to 1.5 million rubles.
Serious violations can result in a 10-15 year sentence. The definition of a serious offense in the law is very broad.
Jaš and his defense consider the charges political.
Yashin’s lawyer Maria Eismont argued in court Monday that Yashinin broke the law only to the extent that he had disseminated information about Russian military violence in public.
According to Eismonti, in his video, Jašin referred to international media materials, among other things BBC’s (switching to another service) to the news when telling about Butša’s events.
According to Eismonti, freedom of speech includes the fact that an individual can tell what kind of information is circulating online, and it is not a crime.
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