I will help build a new, free and happy Russia, says Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin after losing appeal

Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin lost an appeal against an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence on a charge of spreading false information about the army on Wednesday. Later, a defiant Yashin predicted he would one day help build a "new and free Russia". Yashin is a longtime ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He was arrested in June 2022 for his statements made on his YouTube channel about war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.

Moscow denies that it has committed war crimes or attacked civilians in Ukraine. It terms its invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation". Russia claims that the allegations are false and have been fabricated to damage its reputation.

The 39-year-old said that he had told the truth about the war in Ukraine in his video and that his conscience was clear.

He asked the Russian Defence Ministry's main spokesman to be summoned to the court. However, the judge swiftly rejected the request.

"The sentence handed down to me is staggering: eight-and-a-half years in prison for a 20-minute speech on the Internet. I have met plenty of murderers, rapists and burglars in prison who have received lesser sentences," Yashin told the court, according to a copy of his speech on his Telegram channel.

The decision on Yashin's appeal came two days after his fellow Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years on charges of treason. Kara-Murza was also accused of "knowingly spreading false information". Kara-Murza had made speeches in the United States and Europe accusing Russia of bombing civilians in Ukraine.

Soon after it invaded Ukraine in February last year, Moscow introduced sweeping censorship laws which have since been used to silence dissenting voices.

Under the laws, discrediting the army is punishable with up to five years in prison. The offence of "spreading deliberately false information" carries a maximum sentence of up to 15 years. Yashin was convicted for the latter.

Yashin is still hopeful and predicted that Russia would one day be a very different place.

"The pendulum of history is inexorable and I know that, once I am eventually freed, I will be one of those who will have to clean up this whole bloody mess," he said.

"I will become one of those who will build a new, free and happy Russia on the ruins of Putinism."

(With inputs from agencies)

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