A court has sentenced prominent Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin to eight years and six months in prison in one of the biggest punishments yet for opposing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow’s Meshchansky district court found Yashin, a former local lawmaker, guilty of spreading “fake information” about the Russian army for airing BBC footage with first-hand testimonies of mass killing in Bucha.
A longtime activist close to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and assassinated politician Boris Nemtsov, Yashin, 39, was among the few activists who remained in Russia after Putin ordered the invasion in February.
“When the war began, I didn’t doubt for a second about what I must do. I must be in Russia, speak the truth loudly, and stop the bloodshed,” Yashin said in his final courtroom speech on Monday.
He said he believed it was better “to spend 10 years behind…
