Kremlin opponent Ilya Yashin, who was recently released in a major prisoner exchange, spoke to Euronews about his time in Russian prison and told us what will bring Putin down.
ADVERTISINGRussian opposition activist Ilya Yashin was released on August 1 after two and a half years in a Russian prison thanks to a prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries.
He spoke to Euronews in Berlin about Russia, his time behind bars and his plans now that he is free again.
“It’s very important to stay in good shape emotionally and physically, otherwise you’ll just collapse,” Yashin says as we sit on a graffiti-covered concrete slab in a Berlin park. “Besides, two years is not a critical period,” he adds.
“It is said that such irreversible changes only occur after three years behind bars. After that, people develop serious health problems: their teeth fall out, their hair falls out.”
Yashin was well prepared for his prison sentence
Yashin knew he would be arrested if he did not leave the country and he was well prepared for the prison sentence, he told Euronews.
In a 2022 interview, he told Russian video blogger Yuri Dud (“wDud”) that he had already had his teeth fixed at the dentist in preparation for his prison sentence.
“I was probably lucky in many ways because I got a lot of support and there were a lot of letters,” Yashin said of the support he received.
“I knew that many people were worried about me. Of course, that gave me strength and the will to live and somehow inspired and motivated me to take care of myself.”
Yashin was lucky. After being sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on December 9, 2022 for insubordination to the Russian armed forces, he spent part of his time in solitary confinement in the so-called PKT punishment block of his prison in Smolensk, western Russia, but mostly served his sentence in the general prison system.
Transfer to a PKT cell is considered the highest disciplinary punishment in Russian prisons. Prisoners are completely isolated from other inmates and the rest of the facility and are not allowed to move around freely, visit the library or go to church to pray.
“There are special blocks like this one where people are even more isolated. They don’t have cell phones or other privileges that they could smuggle into prison,” Yashin says of his solitary confinement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s greatest opponent and arguably Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, was held in such a punishment block until he died under questionable circumstances on February 16 in the “Polar Wolf”, one of Russia’s harshest penal colonies in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Siberia.
“Prisoners and prison guards had respect”
Yashin admits that he was simply lucky compared to many other political prisoners in Russia. He said he was neither tortured nor mistreated.
“On the whole, the staff (of the prison) sometimes even treated me with sympathy. It seems to me that the rigid orders to isolate me and create unbearable conditions for me were often even sabotaged at the level of the prison guards.”
“Because everyone understood that I was not a criminal. And the ordinary employees understood very well that I was not in prison for any crime. I had not killed or raped anyone,” Yashing explained.
ADVERTISING“I was there because of my views, because of my words, because of what I believe in. And that earned me the respect of the inmates and even the staff.”
“However, political prisoners are treated differently overall,” he said, his eyebrows furrowed. He looked thoughtfully to the side and suddenly seemed worried.
“Of course, I’m most worried about Alexei Gorinov. Because this is my comrade, this is a man who, it seems to me, was imprisoned to intimidate me, to drive me out of the country. I am already free, he is still in prison, and he is an old man, he is 63 years old, and he has quite serious health problems.”
Russian opposition politician Gorinov, who is missing part of his lung, was sentenced to seven years in prison on July 8, 2022, for proposing a minute’s silence for the children killed in Ukraine during a meeting of the Krasnoselsky District Council of Deputies in Moscow.
ADVERTISINGYashin now wants to do everything he can to get him out of prison.
According to Yashin, political prisoners in Belarus have a much tougher situation
It is also still important to stand up for the imprisoned Belarusian opposition members. Not a single political prisoner from Belarus has been released as part of the prisoner exchange program.
The pressure on Belarusian politicians is even worse. “They are under much greater pressure than we are,” he says. For years, lawyers have been unable to reach the people there.
“We didn’t know what was going on with Sergei Tikhanovsky for almost two years. We don’t know what was going on with Maria Kalesnikova. They were tortured and mistreated for almost two years. We don’t know if they are even still alive.”
ADVERTISING“And, of course, I think it is right to establish some kind of cooperation with the Belarusian opposition, at least with regard to supporting political prisoners,” Yashin said.
Belarusian video blogger Tikhanovsky was sentenced to 18 years in prison in December 2021 for an unauthorized rally.
Belarusian civil rights activist and opposition politician Maria Kalesnikava, a face of the democracy movement in Belarus, was sentenced to eleven years in prison.
Using YouTube against Putin
In addition to the release of political prisoners, Yashin wants to focus on his work in anti-war education. Yashin has a YouTube channel with over 1.6 million followers.
ADVERTISINGThere he is trying to inform the Russian population about the Kremlin’s war crimes, including the massacre in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. Russian forces are accused of brutally executing civilians there during the fighting for Kyiv in spring 2022.
After the withdrawal of the Russian military, a total of 458 bodies were found there. 419 of them showed signs of torture.
According to Yashin, the fact that he had spoken about it was the formal reason for his arrest. But his imprisonment did not stop him from telling the truth. He found a way to continue posting on his YouTube channel despite strict censorship from prison.
“Well, you could communicate with others by exchanging letters. And sometimes the censors let things through,” Yashin said.
ADVERTISING“Of course, there were times when my texts were blocked or something was crossed out. But still, when there is a huge amount of letters, and I had a huge amount of letters. I received more than 30,000 letters and postcards in the two years I was imprisoned. And the censors couldn’t handle it. And often things got through,” he recalls.
“This allowed me to share some information in my letters. Information of public interest that I wanted to share on my social networks or that my team asked to turn into a video on YouTube.”
Yashin said the popularity of opposition channels has increased dramatically in the past two years.
“People who were used to getting information from television after the war began realized that television as it exists today in Russia does not satisfy people’s need for information. It is pure propaganda. So people started looking for alternative sources of information and alternative opinions in order to understand what was really going on.”
ADVERTISINGIs support for Putin really that great?
Although Putin can count on a certain amount of support, more and more people in Russia are becoming skeptical, said Yashin.
“I don’t think there are that many people who support Putin ideologically and would be ready to follow him unconditionally,” Yashin explained.
“There are about as many Putin supporters as Putin opponents. Russian society is largely made up of people who take a wait-and-see attitude,” he said. “The economic and social situation of Russian society is deteriorating. And people, it seems to me, are seeing this more and more clearly. They are linking it to Putin’s policies.”
“By the way, the uprising of (Wagner boss Yevgeny) Prigozhin last summer was a real rebellion, despite Putin’s hysterical reaction. Society reacted rather indifferently to it. There were no rallies in favor of Putin.”
ADVERTISINGIn Russia, people are currently unable to express their opinions openly. Civil resistance in Russia is only possible underground, says Yashin, “because any open criticism of the authorities, any statement against the war basically means criminalization.”
Putin’s power is based on “propaganda, manipulation and, of course, the use of violence,” Yashin explained.
But there are more and more dissatisfied people in Russia who are ready to take action. “If there was a way to legally express their protest, these people would undoubtedly use this opportunity,” Yashin is convinced.
