Ilya Yashin Claims He Was Stripped of Russian Citizenship

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Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin said Monday that

Yashin, a former Moscow city councilman and vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, was sentenced in 2022 to more than eight years in prison for denouncing the invasion of Ukraine. He was freed last summer in a prisoner exchange between Russia and the West.

Court documents in a new criminal case against Yashin showed that the Interior Ministry had classified him as a “stateless person” who is barred from entering Russia.

“In other words, I’ve been deprived of Russian citizenship,” Yashin wrote on Telegram, calling the move, if confirmed, “a major new precedent and a new stage of Putin’s lawlessness.”

Independent Russian media reported that a judge on Monday asked prosecutors to explain the Interior Ministry’s designation at a hearing next week.

Russia’s Constitution forbids the government from revoking citizenship. Still, some lawmakers have pushed for such measures since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying “traitors” should be deprived of citizenship.

Yashin, an ally of the late opposition activist Alexei Navalny, has lived in Germany since being freed last year.

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