MOSCOW -- A court in Moscow has sent Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin to pretrial detention for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military.
The Basmanny district court ruled on July 13, when Yashin was expected to be released after serving a 15-day jail term for allegedly disobeying a police order, that the Moscow municipal lawmaker must stay in pretrial detention until at least September 12.
Yashin's lawyers asked the court to place their client under house arrest. The hearing was held behind closed doors at investigators' request.
"The request to put me in pretrial detention says: 'Yashin damaged Russia's interests by his statements....' Absurd. With my statements I defended Russia. Its interests are being damaged by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who drew my Russia down into the war [with Ukraine], created the dictatorship of thieves, and frightens everyone who disagrees with him," Yashin wrote on Facebook after the ruling was pronounced.
Yashin's lawyers said the day before that their client was charged with distributing false information about the Russian armed forces in the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Yashin, 39, is an outspoken Kremlin critic and one of the few prominent opposition politicians still in Russia after a wave of repression against supporters of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and people who have spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine.
He has been fined four times in recent weeks on charges of discrediting the Russian military over his open opposition to the war in Ukraine.
He said last month after his arrest on the disobedience charge that a criminal case might be launched against him after he served his jail term.
Yashin also said that the authorities were trying to force him to leave Russia, which he refuses to do.