The Court of Cassation upheld Yashin’s sentence

The Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction upheld the sentence of politician Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison under the article on the so-called fakes about the army. This is reported by “Sota”.

Yashin was arrested last summer. He was accused of spreading false information about the Russian army because of a video on his YouTube channel about the events in Buch, where civilians were killed during the Russian occupation in March 2022.

The defense insisted that the information disseminated by Yashin cannot be called knowingly false, since he expressed his own opinion, and also cited statements from both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

Yashin participated in the meeting via video link from the colony where he is currently located. In his speech, he, in particular, opposed the war in Ukraine.

The judge interrupted him several times, including in connection with the word “war”. He demanded from Yashin: “call the special military operation as it is, not as you called it.” Officially, Russian authorities call the Russian invasion of Ukraine and hostilities in this country a special military operation, while representatives of the authorities often refer to what is happening as a “war” without taking any responsibility for it (there is no formal state of war between Russia and Ukraine).

Among other things, Yashin noted that he was convicted essentially for questioning the statements of Russian civil servants, in particular the representative of the Ministry of Defense Konashenkov. “How, exactly, are we supposed to take government officials at their word? Are they gods or holy apostles? Their words are cast in granite or equated to biblical commandments? Why does the state forbid us to dispute the statements of representatives of the authorities?” – the oppositionist asked.

Ilya Yashin was convicted in December 2022. In the fall, he was transferred to a colony in the Smolensk region. There, he was recently transferred to a barrack with strict conditions of detention. This happened immediately after Yashin spent five days in a penal detention center (SHIZO). The fine was imposed on him when he refused to participate in the construction of new barracks, asking to replace it with another job.

About Yashin’s transfer to strict detention conditions, his lawyer Mikhail Biryukov reported. He clarified that Yashin is isolated from the main mass of prisoners and is being held together with four “malicious violators of the regime”. Also, he is limited in the right to call relatives, the number of his dates and transmissions is reduced.