Dissident Spotlight: Ilya Yashin
In August 2024, Ilya Yashin was freed from a Russian prison in a prisoner swap. Before that, he refused to flee so he could mobilize Russians against Vladimir Putin.

In the same prisoner swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, Ilya Yashin was freed from a penal colony and able to flee to Germany. Yashin is a long-time Russian dissident who worked with Alexei Navalny to oppose Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.
Yashin was urged to flee Russia for years before his most recent arrest in 2022. He not only spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Yashin also raised awareness of the war crimes Russian soldiers committed in Bucha, a city in Ukraine where some of the war’s most infamous atrocities took place.
Putin made criticizing his invasion of Ukraine illegal, and Yashin was serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence for “disseminating knowingly false information” when he was freed in the prisoner swap. At a press conference following his release, Yashin summarized his reasons for remaining in Russia:
“A voice heard from inside Russia, even from in prison, especially from in prison, is much more convincing than a voice from outside.”
Yashin’s Anger at Navalny’s Death
Six months before Yashin’s release, Navalny died in a Russian penal colony. Navalny and Yashin had worked together throughout the years to publicize state corruption and fight against Putin’s consolidation of power.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, another dissident freed in the prisoner swap, had pointed words for the West in general and Germany in particular:
“It’s hard for me not to think that, maybe if these processes had somehow moved quicker – if there had been less resistance – that the Scholz government had to overcome in terms of freeing [Vadim] Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would have been here and free.”
Krasikov was a Russian security services hitman that Russia got back in return for the dissidents. Since Navalny was originally part of the swap deal, emotions were high regarding Navalny’s absence. Throughout the press conference, Yashin expressed guilt for being freed while so many of his compatriots remained imprisoned.
Yashin is a lesson in the passion it takes to sustain the fight for the freedom to have a political view different from that of a dictator. A nearly decade-long sentence for opposing one of Putin’s signature policies is evidence of the fragility of his ideas.
A nation’s strength lies with those who defend their ideas with words instead of guns.