Against his will in exile

Yashin: Change of power in the Kremlin necessary for peace

The Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin

(Bild: glomex)

The Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin is currently living in exile in Berlin. However, he is still aiming to return to Russia in order to change the situation on the ground, said Yashin in Vienna on Thursday. Emigration was not his choice at all.

The politician was sentenced to eight and a half years in December 2022 for publicly criticizing the Russian war against Ukraine and was taken abroad from a Russian prison against his will in August 2024. Yashin was released in an international prisoner exchange (see video above).

"My greatest fear is not losing direct contact with an audience in Russia, i.e. concrete technical channels, but my emotional connection," said Yashin at an event in the "European Contexts" discussion series. He would definitely return if there was a change of power in Russia. The legalization of the opposition in Russia must be a point in a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. If Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin remained in power, the war would return, he explained.

Ilya Yashin

(Bild: glomex)

Uniting opponents of war in Europe
At the moment, he is mainly concerned with uniting Russian opponents of the war in emigration. He is organizing meetings with compatriots in European cities and trying to help with discrimination, said Yashin. He used to be a Moscow district councillor, worked closely with the politician Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in 2015, and was friends with Alexei Navalny, who died in custody in 2024.

Journalist Angelina Davydova said at the event on Thursday that there are still productive contacts in the environmental sector between activists in exile and those who have remained in Russia. During the recent oil spill in the Black Sea, there were thousands of volunteers who cleaned up the coast from oil pollution. In recent years, the Russian state has massively repressed civil society involvement in many areas.