Russian court arrests opposition politician Ilya Yashin for 15 days

A Moscow court has arrested Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin for 15 days, he himself wrote on his Telegram channel.

He was found guilty of disobeying a police officer. “The report against me was compiled by a police sniper (!) Alexey Mitrofankin. He claims that I grabbed his uniform, harassed him with swear words, and pushed him with my hands,” he wrote in a Telegram post. According to Yashin, in fact, he was sitting on a park bench with his friend Irina Babloyan, when he was approached by three police officers and “quietly brought to their car with the letter Z on the windshield”.

Earlier, Yashin was detained in a Moscow park. Babloyan said that the police officers that had detained him did not explain anything.

In May, a Moscow court fined Yashin 90 thousand rubles (€1,600) for “discrediting the use of Russia's armed forces”. One of the reasons for the fine was a public post with a picture of a girl with an anti-war slogan at a protest against the US invading Vietnam, another—a live stream on his Youtube channel.