Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin awaits his verdict at a Moscow court, 9 December 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE / YURI KOCHETKOV / POOL
Jailed Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin thanked the city of Paris for awarding him honorary citizenship of the French capital on Wednesday.
In a message relayed from his prison cell via his Telegram channel, Yashin wrote: “I can now tell my prison guards: it only seems that I am an honourable resident of a punishment cell, but I am in fact an honourable Parisian.”
Yashin, who is serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for spreading “false information” about the Russian army, added that he would use his new status “to more effectively defend the interests and rights of Russian citizens opposed to war and dictatorship”, and said he hoped his voice would now be “better heard on the international stage” as a result.
The City of Paris awarded honorary citizenships to both Yashin and Oleg Orlov, the imprisoned co-chairman of the human rights group Memorial, who is currently serving a 2.5-year sentence for “repeatedly discrediting the Russian military” on 9 July.
Announcing the awards, Deputy Paris Mayor Jean-Luc Romero-Michel said that both men’s “indomitable courage in the face of the repression of Putin’s regime deserves recognition and support”.
Since being imprisoned in late 2022 for speaking out about the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in March of the same year, Yashin has been repeatedly sent to a “punishment cell”, a separate facility within his prison with far harsher conditions, which is often equated with solitary confinement.
