Moscow City Court upholds sentence for opposition activist Yashin on counts of false information about Russian Armed Forces

MOSCOW. April 19 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court has upheld a judgment on opposition activist Ilya Yashin (designated as a foreign agent in Russia), who was sentenced to eight and a half years in a general penitentiary on counts of spreading false information about the Russian Armed Forces, an Interfax correspondent said.

"The sentence pronounced by Moscow's Meshchansky District Court on December 9, 2022, is upheld," the court said in an appeal ruling on the Yashin case on Wednesday.

The court thus dismissed the appeal from Yashin's defense.

The defense asked the appeals court to overrule the sentence and to acquit its client. The prosecutor insisted that the sentence was lawful.

The sentence took effect after the Moscow City Court's ruling, and Yashin will soon be transferred to the penitentiary.

The Meshchansky District Court sentenced Yashin to eight and a half years' imprisonment and prohibited him from administering Internet resources for four years.

Yashin was found guilty of publicly disseminating knowingly false information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces due to political hostility.

The investigators and the court found that Yashin spread false information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine on YouTube on April 3, 2022.

Yashin pleaded not guilty and said his prosecution was politically motivated.

He was detained and placed under arrest in July 2022.