Ilya Yashin addresses a crowd of supporters in Mauerpark, Berlin, Germany, 7 August 2024. Photo: Vasily Krestyaninov / Novaya Gazeta Europe
Less than a week after his sudden release from a Russian penal colony in the largest ever prisoner swap between Russia and the West, opposition politician Ilya Yashin made his first public appearance before a 2,000-strong crowd in Berlin’s Mauerpark on Wednesday evening.
The event, which fittingly took place on parkland where the Berlin Wall once stood, marked the first post-release public appearance of the politician tipped by many to be the most likely successor to Alexey Navalny as the next unofficial leader of Russia’s fractured, exiled opposition.
“Two weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined this, it makes me believe in miracles,” Yashin began after receving a standing ovation, telling the crowd that the support of ordinary people had kept him going during his imprisonment, and that he had always “felt free” when he was reading some of the 30,000 letters and postcards he received in prison.
An independent politician and blogger who was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for publicly condemning the indiscriminate 2022 killing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Yashin told the crowd that there was now global resistance to tyranny, the front line of which passed through Ukraine.
While the event was largely well-mannered, and at times light-hearted, Yashin was occasionally heckled, to which he initially quipped that, though he had certainly heard of them, this was his first time seeing “Putinversteher” (Putin apologists) in the flesh.
Yashin paid tribute to the previous victims of the Putin regime, including opposition politician and outspoken Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in broad daylight in Moscow a decade ago, and also expressed his solidarity with political prisoners in Belarus, reminding the crowd that the fate of two of the country’s highest-profile political prisoners, remained unknown.
While admitting that it was still unclear how he could continue to represent the Russian people from exile, Yashin ended his appearance with a message of hope, describing a peaceful, free and unafraid Russia, where children didn’t get sent to die in wars, and reminding the crowd that in terms of numbers, love and progress, the odds favoured Russia’s opposition.
