Exiled Russian opponent Ilia Iachine announced on Telegram on Friday that his parents’ house in Russia had been searched, before they were questioned by the police for a criminal case against their son.
Ilia Iachine, liberal opposition activist, was sentenced at the end of 2022 to eight and a half years in prison for denouncing “the killing of civilians” by the Russian army in the Ukrainian town of Boucha, near kyiv. Moscow rejects these accusations.
He was released in August 2024 as part of a large prisoner exchange between Russia and the West and has lived in Germany ever since.
According to him, this research is linked to a new criminal case against him, opened in December, for refusing to declare himself a “foreign agent”. This term, which evokes Soviet repression, is accompanied by heavy administrative constraints, under penalty of sanctions, and is often applied to opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
After the search, Mr. Iachine’s parents were questioned by the investigators, who notably asked them if they were « and contact » with their son and knew where he was, according to the opponent. “As if the services did not know where they themselves sent me after having expelled me from Russia”he quipped, adding that his parents had refused to answer.
The latter, by supporting their son during his hearings, had acquired their own notoriety in opposition circles.
-At the end of December, Ilya Yashin was placed on the Russian Interior Ministry’s “wanted persons” list.
The Russian authorities have also charged one of the few opponents still in the country, Lev Chlosberg, for not having respected the constraints linked to his status as a “foreign agent”. This liberal politician explained in a message on Telegram on Friday that he no longer had the right to leave his region of Pskov, in western Russia.
Another Russian opposition activist also prosecuted, Konstantin Kotov, left the country illegally. According to them, he was under house arrest awaiting trial.
Mr. Kotov was accused of having donated 3,500 rubles, or around thirty euros, to the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), an organization founded by the late opponent Alexeï Navalny and classified as “extremist” in Russia. “I understood that playing roulette with the court and the investigation made absolutely no sense”he explained to the media Mediazona.
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