Yashin laying flowers at the spot in Moscow where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a friend, was killed. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
ESCAPING the brutal Russian penal system would seem like blessed deliverance to most inmates. But not to Ilya Yashin, who stunned the world when he angrily condemned his inclusion in a sweeping prisoner swap that freed him and a handful of other opposition figures in Russia.
Instead, he portrayed it as an act of duplicity rather than a benevolent humanitarian gesture.
“What happened on Aug 1, I don’t view as a prisoner swap,” he said at a news conference in Bonn, Germany, seemingly blinking back tears, “but as my illegal expulsion from Russia against my will. And I say sincerely, more than anything I want now to go back home.”
To those who have followed Yashin’s career, his stance should not have been so surprising.
He has spent the past two decades in Russia working against Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule, knowing that doing so would land him in jail and even preparing for it.
In a wide-ranging interview after his release, Yashin said the very fact that Russia was willing to free him confirmed “that I was actually a problem for them behind bars”.
Since his detention in June 2022, Yashin, 41, had managed to publish essays, letters and statements against Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
He was willing to serve his eight and a half-year sentence and had communicated clearly and repeatedly that he did not want to be included in any prisoner exchange.
Others who were older or more infirm deserved priority, he said.
He did not see his exchange as a concession by the Kremlin, but rather an attempt to deprive him of his moral authority.
“I was well aware that while in Russia, even behind bars – especially behind bars – I could tell the truth and the weight of my words would be quite high,” he said a few hours after buying new clothes, sneakers and a simple black watch.
“Because when I stay in Russia and take those risks, I’m actually responsible for my words. People hear you much better when you’re there. And the fact that I was expelled from Russia proves that I was right.”
He said, “More than anything, I want to return home.” But he added that he was told by the Russian security service representative accompanying him that if he did so, he would meet the same fate as Alexei Navalny, the late opposition leader.
Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 after being poisoned, was immediately arrested, and died this year in an Arctic penal colony.
Yashin said he was also told that returning to Russia would render the exchange of other political prisoners impossible.
Now that Yashin has traded his black prison uniform for civilian clothes, it remains to be seen whether he can make a much harder transition: preaching his anti-Kremlin message to Russians from the relatively comfortable position of freedom in the West.
“Time will tell whether I will be able to remain a problem for them abroad,” he continued. “I don’t really understand how to be a Russian politician in exile. I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll try to learn it and try to be effective here, too.”
For several decades, as Putin eroded political freedom in Russia – a crackdown that intensified after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – many Russian dissidents went into exile.
Yashin instead went to the dentist; he was sure he would eventually be arrested for speaking his mind, and he wanted his teeth to be in decent shape in jail, where dental care is notoriously lacking.
As authorities effectively criminalised protest and made it illegal to even call the invasion a war, Yashin, who was serving as a municipal deputy in Moscow, used every opportunity to condemn it in the strongest terms.
He knew, he said, that if he wanted to encourage Russians to stand up to Putin, he would have to lead by example, even if it meant going to prison.
In April 2022, as Russia’s military withdrew from the suburbs around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Yashin appeared on his YouTube channel to condemn the brutal treatment of civilians in Bucha and the emerging accusations of war crimes by the Russian army.
Several months later, Yashin was arrested and charged with “discrediting” the Russian armed forces.
“I acted not only for reasons of my own conscience, but also for pragmatic reasons and politics,” he said in an interview. “I wanted to be heard by Russian society, and I understood that I had to be behind bars to do this.”
One of the main pillars of his actions in exile, Yashin said, would be “anti-war education for Russian citizens”.
“The key task of the free world and the Western world now is to save Ukraine,” he said, underscoring that this was his central message to Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, who greeted the freed prisoners upon their exchange.
“Because the front between the good and evil, of freedom and tyranny, bigotry and progress, runs through Ukraine. If Putin is allowed to devour Ukraine, he will keep going.”
His other key focus, he said, would be advocacy for political prisoners remaining in Russia.
The rights group OVD-Info has counted 2,702 people who are being “politically persecuted right now” in Russia, almost 1,300 of whom are in prison or pretrial detention. Ten have died in custody, including a pianist who had gone on hunger strike while in pre-trial detention.
The pianist, Pavel Kushner, was charged with “inciting terrorism” because he posted anti-government videos on his YouTube channel. The channel had five subscribers.
Yashin has a much broader audience, and 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube.
He addressed them, starting his first stream since he was freed, by talking about Kushner’s death, and advocating that a wide-ranging amnesty for political prisoners be included in any peace deal with Ukraine.
For now, he is adjusting to his new life, one he said he never imagined.
“I need to understand how to exercise this freedom,” he said. “I’ve never lived in exile. I didn’t want to live abroad. I never thought about it.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
