A Moscow court on Friday sentenced prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in jail for spreading "false" information about the Russian military in his criticism of the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine.

The 39-year-old Moscow city councilor was found guilty for saying that occupying Russian forces in Ukraine were responsible for the massacre of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha this spring.

Judge Oksana Goryunova of the Meshchansky district court said Yashin had committed a crime by disseminating "knowingly false information about Russia's Armed Forces."

One of the few vocal Kremlin critics who chose to stay in Russia following the war’s outbreak, Yashin made his comments during a YouTube stream in April, though he wasn’t arrested until July.

An ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Yashin is one of hundreds of Russians to face prosecution under new laws that criminalize spreading information contradicting the Kremlin line about the war, though this is the harshest punishment yet to be handed down for such a case.

In his closing address to the court earlier this week Yashin labeled the law and his imprisonment “the will of Vladimir Putin,” adding that the Russian president also bears personal responsibility for the “bloodbath” in Ukraine.

Yashin’s supporters, including prominent opposition politicians, gathered outside the court house in Moscow ahead of the verdict and sentencing on Friday.

“This trial is unfair, it violates the...

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