Imprisoned Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin sharply assaulted Russian President Vladimir Putin from prison. In a letter to the British Guardian, the Kremlin critic described a regime change in Moscow as necessary to halt the country’s threat of war. “Unlimited power and impunity have driven this man mad, he has become a slave to his insane ambitions,” Yashin wrote of the Kremlin chief.
Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in December for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian armed forces. In a YouTube video, the 39-year-old previously spoke of alleged war crimes committed by the Russian army during the occupation in Bucha.
He warns against Russophobia
According to Yashin, only a few supporters of the Russian offensive war are in prison. “Strangely enough, behind bars I very rarely meet sincere supporters of the war and Putin’s aggressive policies,” the Kremlin critic wrote. The prisoners include generals, secretaries of state and wealthy businessmen. “The rhetoric of these prisoners is usually very radical: they have seen the system from the inside, know how rotten and corrupt it is and see themselves as victims of this system.”
However, there are also prisoners who decide to go to war in Ukraine for the Russian armed forces. According to the opposition politician, these are very poor or very desperate prisoners who, given the long prison sentence, see the war as “their only chance for freedom”.
Yashin warns against general judgments about the Russian population in view of Western sanctions. They need an alternative to Putin’s imperialism, which brings death, poverty, isolation, corruption and arbitrariness. The West must therefore “send a clear signal to the Russian people that it does not see them as enemies”. “It would be a grave mistake for the rhetoric and sanctions policies of the West to degenerate into Russophobia,” Yashin wrote.
Sources
(t-online/dsc)
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
