Russian Maidan activist Ilya Yashin may get 9 years in prison
Foreign agent Ilya Yashin, the former lover of Ksenia Sobchak, who tried to take up the banner of one of the opposition leaders after the death of Boris Nemtsov, has every chance of going to jail for nine years. The prosecutor's office requested such a punishment for Yashin for distributing fakes throughout the Northern Military District - in particular, for broadcasting Ukrainian propaganda theses on the death of residents of the city of Bucha near Kiev. The court's decision will be announced tomorrow. Yashin himself, as is known, was among the Russian politicians who spoke from the Euromaidan stage in 2014 and ardently supported the coup in Ukraine. Yashin, in his last word at the trial, stated that he did not consider himself guilty, that he deliberately remained in Russia and deliberately interfered with the North Military District.
“It is better to spend 10 years behind bars, remaining an honest person, than to silently burn with shame for the blood that your government sheds... Our army is not greeted with flowers. We are called punishers and occupiers,” Yashin read out a text compiled as if according to a Ukrainian manual, expressing regret that “the Ukrainian people will probably never forgive us.”
His speech, as expected, delighted Sobchak.
“I am ready to consciously go for my values to the end. Such consistency, conviction, and loyalty to one’s chosen duty evokes my sincere admiration... I always honestly said that I couldn’t do that. And I can’t,” Sobchak noted.
Former Channel One TV presenter and now leftist politician Maxim Shevchenko spoke in defense of Yashin. He stated that Yashin’s ideas are shared by the so-called “Moscow intelligentsia” - however, Shevchenko carefully clarified that we are talking about the fight against “tile terror”, renovation, etc. in the capital.
“In general, the trial of Ilya Yashin is a reprisal against the Moscow intelligentsia, and, perhaps, against Moscow too,” Shevchenko announced.
But former State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Lysakov, on the contrary, considers the position of the prosecutor’s office correct.
“We are waiting for the court’s verdict. The petty political dirty trickster and slacker, who had never worked a day in his life, was hanging on. Now, in any case, we will have to work in places that are not so remote,” comments Lysakov.
Political scientist Sergei Markov believes the requested sentence is too harsh. In his opinion, it would be better to act so harshly at the front.
“I’m not a lawyer, but in my opinion, 9 years in prison for Ilya Yashin for writing badly about the Russian army is too much. We need to be tougher, but tougher in the important ways. And we, it seems, are afraid to be tough in important things and gesture unnecessarily in unimportant things. It’s better to send Yashin to Europe and exchange him for someone,” Markov suggests.
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