When Ilya Yashin steps onto the small stage in Berlin’s Mauerpark, those present cheer. They clap, pull out their smartphones, want a picture of the man who was in a Russian prison camp just a week ago. “I can hardly believe that I’m standing here now,” says Yashin. He thanks his supporters and calls out to the crowd: “You saved me!”
He says he has received 30,000 letters and postcards in the past two years in prison. Every letter felt like “freedom.” He was able to answer ten thousand letters. To prove it, he holds up his right index finger. It wasn’t even that sore at school. The audience laughs.
On Wednesday evening, it was Yashin’s first major appearance in front of his supporters since he was released in a prisoner exchange. He is addressing Russians in exile; the event will not be translated into German. According to the organizers, 3,000 people had registered, and about half of them showed up. Someone brought a large blue and yellow Ukrainian flag, and the white-blue-white flag of Russia’s war opponents can be seen here and there. It is mainly young people who have come. They are sitting on picnic blankets; the mood is relaxed, unlike what is usually the case at political events.
More than 1350 political prisoners
But at the core, it’s about politics. Since his arrival in Germany, the 41-year-old Yashin has hardly had a chance to relax. He tirelessly gives interviews and talks about his plans. “I’ll be honest, I still don’t understand how you can do Russian politics outside of Russia,” he admits in a conversation with the Russian exile broadcaster “Dozhd”. But he wants to learn.
This also includes the appearance in Mauerpark. Yashin talks a lot about emotions and feelings, but mentions few concrete plans. He talks at length about the strength he has drawn from the letters of his supporters. He also talks about those who are still in Russian prisons. Volunteers distribute flyers from the human rights group OVD-Info. According to this group, there are more than 1,350 political prisoners in Russia.
Yashin also remembers Boris Nemtsov, who was shot outside the Kremlin in 2015 and whose close friend he was. He speaks of Alexei Navalny as a victim of Vladimir Putin’s rule. The anti-corruption activist and most important Russian opposition figure died in a Siberian penal camp in February. Many are convinced that it was murder.
Putin is drawing a bloody line through Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, says Yashin. When he talks about the war, a young man shouts: “You’re all paid!” Yashin grins. “I’ve heard of Putin sympathizers, but I’ve never seen one in real life.” The crowd chants: “Putin, fuck you!”
Yashin relies on hope and love. Love for his neighbors, for the weaker. When people shout “Love is stronger than fear,” he replies: “Love is stronger than everything, even than death.”
And he actually seems to give those present some hope. Polina, for example, is carried away by Yashin’s words. The 37-year-old woman left Russia with her husband after the major attack on Ukraine. “I wanted to see with my own eyes that he was alive, that he was healthy,” she says in Russian. She thinks it’s good that Yashin is speaking out against the war and sees him as an honest politician. Then she thanks the German government for saving him from Putin. “We understand that it was a difficult step.”
Exchange against the Tiergarten murderer
Yashin, born in Moscow in 1983, was already involved in politics as a teenager. He studied political science and wanted to be elected to the Moscow City Council at the age of 22. He repeatedly demonstrated against Putin and was arrested several times. At the end of 2022, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for allegedly spreading “knowingly false information” about Russia’s armed forces. He had spoken in a YouTube video about Russian war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine. Last week, he and 15 other detainees were released in the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
In addition to some who probably simply had the wrong passport and were therefore used as a bargaining chip for Putin, there were also Kremlin critics among those released. These include Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Mursa, the human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Navalny’s comrades. The price that Germany had to pay was the release of the so-called Tiergarten murderer.
Oleg OrlowJens Gyarmaty
Yashin, Orlov and Kara-Mursa have been combative in recent days. They will do their best to get other comrades released. This seems to be getting through to the Russian emigrants who are in Mauerpark that evening. They keep chanting: “Freedom for political prisoners!” and “Russia will be free!”
Hours before Yashin’s appearance, Oleg Orlov also spoke in Berlin. Like Yashin, he spoke about the importance of writing to political prisoners. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to know in prison that you are not alone and that so many people from different countries are thinking of you.”
Neither Orlov, Yashin nor Kara-Mursa wanted to leave Russia. They have said this repeatedly since landing at Cologne-Bonn airport. Their stories are similar. A few days before the exchange, they were asked to sign a petition for clemency to Putin. They refused. Then they were picked up by secret service agents. No one told them where they were going. Kara-Mursa, who has already survived two poisonings, was sure he was being taken to his execution.
On Wednesday evening, his mother will speak in Mauerpark. Yashin has invited her. Elena Gordon says: “My guilt is that I raised a good person.” Since his conviction in April last year, she has lived in hell. “My personal hell is now over, but the hell we have been living in since February 2022 continues.” Her voice falters.
No fear of Putin’s henchmen
Neither Yashin nor Orlov are afraid that something could happen to them in Germany. The deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has already threatened them. On his Telegram channel he wrote: “They should not forget the transience of their existence in this world.” They should always look around carefully.
Orlov said dryly that Medvedev had already said so many stupid things that they shouldn’t be taken seriously. Yashin had also already announced on “Dozhd” that he wanted to move around freely. “I will not walk through Germany with bodyguards.”
So he stands unprotected on the stage, in sneakers, black trousers, and a mint green shirt. Before the event, visitors were able to ask questions via Telegram, and a good hundred were received. Only a few of them are read out. The questions are about Belarus, how Yashin managed to remain mentally stable in prison, and how he plans to coordinate the opposition. Yashin jokes. He asks to go back to prison, where at least there was no social media. “But I promise that I will have no scruples on Twitter. I want to be a consolidating figure, now is not the time for arguments.”
The head of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Russia program, Alexej Yusupov, warns against excessive expectations. He is reluctant to use the term opposition in exile. “Opposition suggests that there is still a political process in which these people could come to power in an orderly process,” he says. “And that is completely out of the question.”
Yusupov speaks more about resistance, about communicating with the media, engaging in civil society, raising money. Navalny was able to do this. “Even from the camp, he managed to dominate the discussion.” In his opinion, this also made Navalny the “undisputed informal leader” of the Russians in exile.
It’s about strategies
He has succeeded in giving people a feeling that their commitment is part of a larger context, that an action leads from point A to point B. “The biggest problem of foreign exile is not the lack of resources or personalities, but a feeling of futility,” says Yusupov. He cites the protests in front of the Russian embassy as an example. “This is a purely symbolic act. It achieves nothing, it does not help Ukraine, it does not bring us any closer to the end of the Putin regime.” If Yashin succeeds in giving Russian exiles a feeling like Navalny with ideas and suggestions, he could follow in his footsteps.
The older exiled politicians who claim leadership are unlikely to like this. This includes Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who lives in London and was released in a prisoner exchange in 2013. He told Dozhd a few days ago: “You can’t expect miracles from the opposition.” When the moderator asked him whether he could imagine working with Yashin and the others, he replied that they all had different views. What they had in common was the desire for a peaceful future, for an end to the war, for building a democratic country. “We should form a coalition on this basis.”
Yusupov believes that there could now be a generational conflict among the emigrants. The younger generation expects not just a slogan, but a concrete strategy. Developing this strategy takes years. People can also be lost along the way. “There are the first emigrants who are going back to Russia.” Others who stay will eventually be more concerned with their integration than with political engagement.
“My dream of Russia is a peaceful country”
At the end of his speech, Yashin describes Russia as he imagines it. “My dream of Russia is a peaceful country in which people live freely and are not afraid to take to the streets. That parents are not afraid to raise their children and are not afraid that Putin will come and send their child into the army and be used up in the war.”
Not everyone finds this as convincing as Polina. Architecture student Mark also wanted to see Yashin with his own eyes. “I’m happy to see that Ilya now feels free.” But the student does not see him as a leader of the exiled opposition. “I never thought that was possible from the start.” At least, says Mark, Yashin has promised to fight for the rights of the Russian refugees. That would help.
Anna Shibarova, 55, is also skeptical. “Someone has come out of prison who wants to do something, who wants to get into politics.” However, it has become clear that Yashin still needs time to find his feet. “He seemed very emotional, but hardly said anything concrete.”
Sergei Lukashevsky is standing next to her. The human rights activist and historian was head of the Moscow Sakharov Center until 2023. He found Yashin’s appearance honest. “When he says something, you can believe him.” In order to organize the opposition now, a mediator is needed, someone who can talk to everyone, he says. With politicians, activists and ordinary people. After all, Yashin has “moral capital.” He didn’t just write letters, he risked his life. “That’s a big difference.”
