1. Ilya Valeryevich Yashin is a Russian opposition politician who led the People's Freedom Party from 2012 to 2016, and then its Moscow branch.
26 Facts About Ilya Yashin
1. 2.
Ilya Yashin was head of the Moscow municipal district of Krasnoselsky and former chairman of the Council of Deputies of the Krasnoselsky district from 2017 to 2021.
3.
Amidst an increase in government crackdowns on the opposition following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, some considered Ilya Yashin to have had the largest platform of any opposition politician that had not either left the country, been imprisoned, or been killed.
4.
Ilya Yashin was freed in August 2024 as part of the 2024 Ankara prisoner exchange.
5.
Ilya Yashin was born in a Russian family in Moscow on 29 July 1983.
6.
From 2007, Ilya Yashin studied at the Department of Applied Political Science at the Graduate School of Economics.
7.
Ilya Yashin served as the leader of the Yabloko party's youth wing since 2001 until 2008, organizing mass protests and speaking to the media about their causes.
8.
Ilya Yashin ran for Moscow parliament in 2005 where he later became a close associate of Boris Nemtsov.
9.
Ilya Yashin is known for making passionate speeches at opposition rallies.
10.
Ilya Yashin is an active participant in the Strategy-31 campaign for freedom of assembly.
11.
On 31 December 2010, Ilya Yashin was arrested for demonstrating in Moscow at another rally for Strategy-31.
12.
Ilya Yashin was taken to a police station and detained for fifteen days.
13.
Ilya Yashin organized and participated in rallies on December 10 and 24,2011, February 4 and March 5,2012.
14.
On 22 October 2012, Ilya Yashin won 5th place in the elections to the Russian Opposition Coordination Council, collecting 32.4 thousand votes in his support, and became a member of the Council.
15.
On 10 September 2017 Ilya Yashin was elected a municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow.
16.
On 7 October 2017 Ilya Yashin was elected a chairman of the council of deputies of Krasnoselsky municipal district of Moscow.
17.
Ilya Yashin argued that the requested amount of half as much as it was due to her years, and the funds of the municipal budget provided for such payments cannot be used for other purposes, Yashin considered this practice a kind of "golden parachutes".
18.
In December 2017, Ilya Yashin abandoned the official car with a driver, which was supplied to him as the head of the municipal district, and since April 2018 this car began to be used as a social taxi for the small residents of the district.
19.
On 11 April 2018 Ilya Yashin announced his intention to run in the election for Moscow mayor's office and beat the incumbent Sergey Sobyanin.
20.
Ilya Yashin reported that he considered it was due to his support for Alexei Navalny.
21.
On 27 June 2022, Ilya Yashin was detained in Moscow by local police.
22.
Ilya Yashin called the case politically motivated and intended to suppress his political stance towards the war in Ukraine.
23.
On 13 July, a court ordered his pretrial detention; Ilya Yashin was tried over a YouTube video released in April 2022 in which he discussed the discovery of murdered Ukrainian civilians in the suburban town of Bucha, near Kyiv.
24.
Ilya Yashin's punishment was the harshest given under the new laws which criminalize spreading "false" information about the armed forces.
25.
On 1 August 2024 Ilya Yashin was, against his will, included in the 2024 Ankara prisoner exchange and deported to the West in exchange for a number of convicted Russian operatives and other criminals from western prisons.
26.
However, Ilya Yashin would condemn the fact that one of the prisoners that would be exchanged for his freedom was Vadim Krasikov, who had originally been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili during the Second Chechen War.