In the Russian prison, where not everything is as it seems

When doctors examined their latest guest in one of Russia's notorious prisons, they were pleasantly surprised.

After examining his mouth, the doctors asked Ilya Yashin to politely forward their compliments to his dentist in the free world.

"They praised my lungs and said my heart was doing a good job," says the 39-year-old opposition politician, who was imprisoned because he had spoken out against Vladimir Putin's war.

The warm introduction to the Sizo 1 prison in Ischewsk, a barren former slaughterhouse and the new home of the Kremlin critic for the next ten years, did not end with it.

In contrast to the aggressive propaganda, which was broadcast by a television in his cell, Mr. Yashin said, who sent handwritten answers to The Telegraph this week that he had not yet learned hostility to him.

"respectful and personable"

"In the prisons of Moscow and Udmurtia, to which I have recently been moved, I came across a surprisingly respectful and compassionate attitude of inmates and guards," writes Mr. Yashin in a 12-page letter that was written with a quiet hand.

"In my opinion, the popularity of war in Russian society is quite exaggerated."

Mr. Jaschin was one of the last remaining public votes in Russia when he was imprisoned in December because he had dared to comment on war crimes in the Kiev suburb.

Mr. Yashin, a Moscow council member and moderator of a popular YouTube channel, opposed a new law that Putin signed after the invasion and that made it a crime to call the invasion as a "war", let alone talk about Russian atrocities.

His speeches on the Internet fought Putin's propaganda media, which stamp anti -war Russians as traitors and claim that only a tiny minority of the western -oriented Moscow is against war.

behind bars, says Mr. Yashin Fröhlich, the reality could hardly be more different.

he told The Telegraph that he rarely sees people who support war or Kremlin policy.

Even those who are sent to war to fight have their doubts, he said.

While he was pushed from one prison to another, he met numerous prisoners whose cell comrades had just been recruited by the Russian Wagner mercenary group to fight in Ukraine.

"Very rarely these fighters can be motivated by Putin's speeches," he says.

"They reach for weapons out of desperation: either because they face another 10 to 20 years in prison, or they do it for money."

"Putin is obsessed with money"

Mr. Yashin, however, admits that the Kremlin has managed to "promote an atmosphere of fear and oppression that is completely identical to the spirit of the Stalin era" by recovering people because of social media-like and throwing students from the university because they have expressed sympathy for the Ukrainians.

But he says Putin is not a Josef Stalin who locked up and killed millions of his people.

He argues that, in contrast to the Soviet dictator, Putin and his closest circle are not fanatics, but - like several studies on Putin's alleged wealth - "hedonists who love money and luxury".

The luxury habits of the Kremlin establishment could be his weak point to which the West has to target, says Jaschin and demands more sanctions against Putin's followers.

"So that Putin, who was once a guarantee of corruption, gained stability for her, becomes headache and permanent stress."

Hardest sentence

Most Russian dissidents fled from the district last year when Putin's draconian controls were introduced to freedom of speech.

But Mr. Yashin refused to become a political exile and spoke openly on his YouTube channel about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, including the massacre in the Kiev suburb, which soon triggered charges against him.

In a Kafkaesk trial this winter, a prosecutor rushed Russian propaganda and claimed that the corpses killed residents who were on a street in Bucha were simply actor to be dead.

In December, Jaschin was found to be guilty of discrediting the Russian armed forces and sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.

It is believed that it is the toughest punishment for over 160 people who have been imprisoned according to the same law since the start of the war. Several thousand others were sentenced to fines for the same charges.

The conscious decision of Mr. Yashin to stay in Russia and go to prison because he spoke out against the war in Ukraine reflects the path that his older political allies have taken in recent years.

Boris Nemzow rejected the advice of going into exile and protested against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, only to be shot outside of the Kremlin walls. Alexei Nawalny defiantly returned to Russia in 2021 after almost deadly poisoning and refused to become a political emigrant.

Mr. Yashin's optimism in relation to prison seems difficult to reconcile with abuse of ill -treatment in the Russian prison system.

Alexej Nawalny, who has the largest supporter among the Putin opponents, had to sue his prison colony recently, just to get a few winter boots.

This week, more than 600 Russian doctors signed an open letter in which they asked the Kremlin to enter Mr. Nawalny to the hospital after he had apparently received fever in a penalty cell after the prison administration had placed a sick man there to infect him.

Alexei Gorinov, a member of the council from the same Moscow community, in which Mr. Jaschin acted as chairman until recently, ended up in the hospital over Christmas after he was held in a damp, cold cell.

for Mr. Jaschin, who, despite obvious warnings, decided early on to remain in Russia, was always on the wall.

The busy young man who grown in prison would grow a beard in prison says that a friend of a civilian police officer was approached on the street at the beginning of summer and said that Mr. Yashin was bad society and "already with one foot in prison".

later his lawyer got the tip: either he persuades his clients to leave Russia immediately, or he goes to prison.

In July the politician was arrested before his trial in December.

"Heavy moral pressure"

Mr. Yashin spent almost six months in various detention centers in Moscow-including a stay in the notorious Butyrka prison, where thousands of political prisoners were executed during Josef Stalin's great cleaning-before he was brought to the prison colony to the east in Ichewsk in Udmurtia, shortly before New Year's Eve.

Mr. Yashin is not a newcomer in prisons - he has served short penalty in police custody because of his activism, but has been imprisoned for years, he has "severe moral pressure", he says.

One is surrounded by people "who have been living in these walls for years", he adds and gives you the feeling that you never get out of yourself.

When he knew that his days were counted as a free man in Moscow before the summer, Mr. Yashin in silence arranged several dental and other medical appointments to prepare for the inevitable.

Now he spends most of his days to read, take notes and conduct a diary or to write answers to supporters. Regular exercises are also a must.

"I will not give the authorities the pleasure of becoming an old wreck in prison," he says.