Fewer than one in 100 defendants in the Russian court system get acquitted. Even in the best of circumstances then, Ilya Yashin’s chances looked poor. As the last of Russia’s high-profile opposition politicians who remains alive and isn’t in prison or in exile, there never was any question as to whether he was going to be convicted.
Today, he was predictably found guilty in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, on the deeply-questionable charge of ‘spreading false information about the Russian military’. His crime was to raise the allegations of systematic human rights abuses in the Ukrainian town of Bucha on his YouTube channel in April. Prosecutors are demanding a nine-year prison sentence (as of writing, the actual term has not been announced). So far, so predictable. Yet two aspects of the case are noteworthy.
After urging Putin to ‘stop this madness immediately,’ Yashin then sought to hearten his supporters
The first was the extent to which, while the verdict was a given, the actual trial was surprisingly balanced.
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