Ilya Yashin. Photo: EPA-EFE / YURI KOCHETKOV / POOL
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, currently serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence in a penal colony for spreading “false information” about the Russian army, published an emotional tribute to his friend and former colleague Alexey Navalny on Tuesday.
In a letter posted to his Telegram channel, Yashin said that there was “no question” that Navalny was killed by the authorities who “attempted to assassinate him in 2020 [and] have now finished the job”.
He dismissed state propaganda arguments that the Russian president had nothing to gain by killing Navalny, arguing that Putin had both “the motive and the means” and that the timing of Navalny’s murder was deliberate “so that no one would doubt Putin’s involvement”.
Navalny, Yashin wrote, would “go down in history as a man of exceptional courage who died a hero.”
He described Putin, on the other hand, as “a small man who accidentally gained immense power … who hides in his bunker, kills from the shadows and makes millions of people the hostages of his complexes.”
Yashin said he hoped that Putin would be held accountable for his crimes “not only before God but also before temporal justice”, before pledging to continue his struggle for a free and peaceful Russia.
“As long as my heart beats in my chest, I will fight tyranny,” Yashin wrote at the end of his letter, “As long as I live, I will not fear evil. As long as I breathe, I will be with my people. I swear.”
