The trial of opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who faces up to a decade in prison for denouncing President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, opened in Moscow on Wednesday.
Yashin, a 39-year-old Moscow city councilor, is being prosecuted amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissenting voices in Russia, with most opposition activists already in jail or in exile.
An ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and a former close associate of assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Yashin decided to remain in Russia after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Standing in a defendant’s cage in Moscow’s Meshchansky district court on Wednesday, Yashin sought to put on a brave face, laughing, sticking his thumbs up, and stretching, an AFP correspondent said.
Wearing a dark green hoody and jeans, he was also seen smiling at his parents in the front row.
Yashin was detained while strolling through a park in the Russian capital this summer and faces up to 10 years behind bars for allegedly spreading “false” information about the Russian military.
The case against Yashin is based on an April YouTube stream in which he spoke about the “murder of civilians” by the Russian military in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, calling it a “massacre.”
While in detention, Yashin has not minced his words about Russia’s tactics in Ukraine. In a speech in court earlier this month, he accused Russia’s judges of acting as “political servants of the Kremlin.”
Another Moscow councilor, Alexei Gorinov, was this summer sentenced to seven years in prison for denouncing the Ukraine offensive.
The 61-year-old had questioned plans for an art competition for children in his constituency while “every day children are dying” in Ukraine.
Moscow has stepped up efforts to stamp out domestic dissent since Putin sent troops into Ukraine, and almost all of Putin’s best-known political opponents have either fled the country or are in jail.
