Ilya Yashin (C) with his parents. Photo: Yashin’s Telegram channel
The parents of exiled Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin had their home searched by police on Thursday, Yashin wrote on his Telegram channel on Friday.
Yashin, an outspoken Kremlin critic who was serving an 8.5-year prison sentence for condemning Russian atrocities in Bucha until he was exchanged in a major prisoner swap in August, said that the search was related to a new criminal case opened against him in December for his alleged failure to observe the rules that apply to anyone branded a so-called “foreign agent”.
Following the search of their Moscow home, Yashin’s parents, Valery and Tatyana Yashin, were questioned at a police station and asked whether they had “maintained contact” with their son and if they knew where Yashin was. “As if the police don’t know where they deported me,” Yashin, who has been living in Germany since the August swap, said.
Noting that the situation was “unpleasant, but expected”, Yashin stressed that “the foreign agent law is fascist, the pressure on the families of opposition activists is disgusting, and the real foreign agent who is turning our country into a Chinese petrol station is Putin”.
Russian police have stepped up pressure on the families and friends of exiled activists and journalists in recent months, having raided the family home of Alesya Marokhovskaya, the editor-in-chief of Russian independent news outlet IStories, in December in connection with a similar criminal case.
In April, St. Petersburg police searched the home of journalist Ksenia Klochkova in connection with another “foreign agent” case against her exiled former colleague, Russian investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov.
