Ukraine, 15 days in jail for last opponent in Moscow

Russian opponent Ilya Yashin, who was arrested in Moscow last night while walking in a downtown park, was sentenced by the Khamovniki District Court to 15 days in jail after being found guilty of resisting arrest. Yashin, who is 38 and was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, is a district councilor in Moscow. Last year, he stepped down from his post as President of the Legislative Council of the Krasnoselky District, a position he had held since 2017, denouncing the pressure of the authorities on him following his support for Aleksei Navalny. Journalist Irina Babloyan, who was with him, announced his arrest last night and assured that Yashin had no resistance to the police. Yashin, former vice president of the People’s Freedom Party Parnas, and co-founder of Solidarnost, is one of the few remaining dissidents in Russia. After Navalny’s arrest last year, and especially after the invasion of Ukraine began, opponents of Vladimir Putin left the country one after another, pursued by court cases against them. Vladimir Kara-Murza, who in the past had suffered two different attempts at poisoning, was arrested on 11 April and sentenced to 15 days in prison on the same charge as against Yashin. Later, however, a second charge was formalized, according to which he allegedly spread false information on the Russian military forces, an accusation for which he faces a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, and in recent days his pre-trial detention was extended to 12 August. . On May 25, Yashin received a fine of 90,000 rubles ($ 1,800) for discrediting Russian military forces for openly expressing his opposition to the war against Ukraine. Today, he denounced that the case against him is politically motivated and an attempt to force him to leave Russia.