Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin transferred from penal colony to ‘unknown address’

Jul 31. () –

Former Russian councillor and opposition leader Ilya Yashin, sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for “spreading false information” about the activities of the Russian Army, was transferred on Tuesday along with four other politicians from the penal colony where they are being held to an “unknown address”, according to his lawyer, Tatiana Solomina.

“Ilya Yashin has left the colony in an unknown direction. This was announced today to his lawyer Tatiana Solomina. Earlier it was reported that Liliya Chanysheva, Sasha Skochilenko, Ksenia Fadeeva and Oleg Orlov had been transferred from the colony,” reads a statement posted on Yashin’s Telegram channel.

Yashin, 39, was sentenced in early December 2022 to eight and a half years in prison by a Moscow court for reporting on his YouTube channel about war crimes in Ukraine allegedly committed by the Russian Armed Forces in the city of Bucha.

Until then, Yashin was one of the few opposition leaders still at large. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), among others, denounced a “decapitation” of the opposition and that “telling the truth in Russia has become a crime.”