Opposition politician Ilya Yashin goes on trial in Moscow

Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court is hearing a case against opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who is accused of “knowingly” spreading “false information” because he streamed information about the killing of civilians in Bucha.

According to the investigation, Yashin was allegedly “certainly aware that the photographs and videos published by the Kyiv regime, allegedly testifying to Russian service members’ illegal actions in the city of Bucha, in the Kyiv region, are a false flag.”

The politician has been in custody since the end of June. He faces a 10 year prison sentence.

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Ilya Yashin was one of only a few Russian opposition politicians located in Russia who openly spoke out against the war and remained free (Alexey Navalny made anti-war statements in court and, through his lawyers, from a penal colony).

In August, authorities opened a case about “discreditation” against Evgeny Roizman, the former mayor of Yekaterinburg, who actively criticized authorities on social media. He wasn’t jailed, but was barred from appearing in public and from using the Internet.

In July, Alexey Gorinov, Yashin’s colleague on Moscow’s Krasnoselsky District Council, was sentenced to seven years for speaking out against the war in Ukraine during a meeting that was broadcast on the Internet.