A Russian court on June 5 rejected an appeal filed by imprisoned opposition politician Ilya Yashin against a fine he was ordered to pay over what authorities called a violation of the law on "foreign agents."
Yashin is serving an 8 1/2-year prison term for his criticism of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The former Moscow municipal lawmaker was fined 30,000 rubles ($334) in March for publishing materials online without denoting that they were made by a foreign agent.
Yashin's lawyers insisted that the fine was groundless as their client is serving a prison term and is unable to publish online materials.
Yashin, 40, is an outspoken Kremlin critic and one of the few prominent opposition politicians who stayed in Russia after a wave of repression against those who have condemned Russia's aggression against Ukraine since the full-scale invasion was launched in February 2022.
The sentence handed to Yashin in December 2022 was the harshest among the cases against those charged with discrediting Russia's armed forces under a new law introduced days after the invasion commenced.
The criminal case against Yashin was launched in July 2022. The charge against him stemmed from his YouTube posts about alleged crimes committed by the Russian military in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Yashin was added to the Justice Ministry's foreign agents' registry in July 2022.
In December last year, a Moscow court fined him for failing to label his online materials as made by a foreign agent.
Many critics and rights groups say the so-called "foreign agent" law is used by the Kremlin to crack down on any dissent. Repeated violations of the law on foreign agents may lead to a new criminal case against the politician.
Yashin took part in the June 5 hearing via a video-link. He stated that he does not consider himself a foreign agent and "devoted" all of his life to supporting Russian interests.
"Do not dare to call me a foreign agent," Yashin said.
Yashin is serving his prison term in correctional colony No. 3 in the western Smolensk region.
Since May 22, Yashin has been placed in a solitary confinement, which disrupted a scheduled three-day stay with his parents on the penitentiary's premises.
Judge Aleksei Shteinle allowed Yashin's parents to speak to their son for 25 minutes after the hearing on June 5.