Russian police searched the Moscow apartment of opposition figure Ilya Yashin’s parents on Thursday and briefly detained them for questioning, the exiled activist said on social media.
“The prosecutor wanted to know if they remain in contact with me and where I am based right now — as if the security forces don’t already know where they themselves deported me,” Yashin wrote in an Instagram post.
Yashin, a former municipal councilman in Moscow, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in 2022 for his criticism of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was released from jail in August as part of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries.
Russia’s Interior Ministry placed Yashin on its wanted persons list last month, though at the time it was not clear what criminal charges he faced. According to the former councilman, police told his parents that he was charged on Dec. 5 with refusing to comply with Russia’s “foreign agent” law.
“All of this is unpleasant but was to be expected,” Yashin wrote, describing Russia’s “foreign agent” law as “fascist.”
“The real foreign agent — who is turning our country into China’s gas station — is Putin,” he added.
Since his release from prison last year, Yashin has been involved in the Russian opposition movement in exile, taking part in an anti-Kremlin protest in Berlin in November.
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