RUSSIA Heroes do not flee: Ilya Jashin jailed

Two months of preventive detention for the deputy of the Moscow Duma. He risks a maximum of 10 years for having spread “untruths” about the army. Like Navalny, Jashin is one of the few opponents who has not fled the country. The anti-Putin front is still alive in Russia.

Moscow () – The repression of opponents of the Putin regime hardly occupies Russian headlines anymore. However, the arrest of the capital’s deputy, Ilja Jashin, caused quite a stir. He is one of the most prominent and still active figures after Aleksej Navalny and many of his followers were sent to prison and so many other opponents fled abroad.

The Bassmannyy court in Moscow ordered Jashin’s arrest on July 13 and his preventive detention for two months. The politician could now be sentenced to a sentence of up to 10 years. He is accused of spreading “false news about the army” following a video posted on YouTube on April 7 in which he spoke of mass murders in Bucha and around kyiv.

In the footage, Jashin accuses Russian soldiers of war crimes, citing a video from the BBC about what happened in Bucha. The deputy was transferred from his apartment, where a search was carried out, after which a charge of resistance was added to a public official for not voluntarily handing over the keys to all the furniture and drawers in his house. Later a small crowd of Jashin’s supporters gathered outside the courthouse and were detained in turn.

Jashin is one of the few opposition figures to win a seat in the Moscow Duma in last year’s local elections thanks to the navalnist mechanisms of “useful voting”, which the regime opposes by all means. He is also one of the few opponents to have followed Navalny’s own example, staying in Russia knowing he would face harsh persecution. In the social networks of his supporters they ask him to escape: “run away or you will end up in jail!”. The fact is that on Jurij Dud’s TV show (who was also detained), Jashin said that he was “ready for the concentration camp”.”.

Jashin’s colleague, Deputy Aleksej Gorinov, from the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow, was also sentenced to seven years in prison for “telling falsehoods”. His arrest inaugurated the application of the recently approved provisions of the law. Jashin’s two months of unnecessary pre-trial detention before indictment is a sign that the case has a repressive focus. And they do not bode well for the outcome of the trial, explains his lawyer Mikhail Birjukov.

The defense intends to appeal to the Constitutional Court to challenge the indictment and arrest methods, and Jashin himself wants to “fight to the end” to defend his rights and freedom of expression in general. As he himself said: “It is not normal that it is forbidden to question the press releases of the Ministry of Defense.” The deputy’s friends and sympathizers did not believe in the detention until the last moment, due to Jashin’s ability to express his thoughts without violating the current regulations. As several supporters put it, “we thought they had settled for [detener a] Navalny”.

In recent times, Jashin has become a more and more authoritative voice, presenting himself as a credible, effective and independent politician, even compared to the rest of the opposition. The signal that the authorities intend to give with their arrest, in a few words, is “everyone go away”, and as the lawyers believe, at the trial the prosecutor will say: “we have given you so many signs and warnings, that if you have not left, the fault is only yours”.

The few dissident heroes who chose the so-called “Navalny option” are sending a strong message to the entire population: we are not traitors or pro-Western, we are Russians, and Russia is not Putin’s Russia. Ilja Jashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Aleksej Gorinov and many other lesser-known people, some of whom are still at large, testify to a hope that no war can stifle: as the journalist Aleksandr Rikhlin says, “heroes are not only who die, are also those who do not flee, and we will not forget it”.