INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The trial of opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who faces up to a decade in prison for denouncing President Vladimir Putin's invasion of
Ukraine, opened in Moscow on Wednesday.Yashin, a 39-year-old Moscow city councilor, is being prosecuted amid an unprecedented crackdown on
dissenting voices in Russia, with most opposition activists already in jail or in exile.An ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny
and a former close associate of assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Yashin decided to remain in Russia after Putin sent troops
sticking his thumbs up, and stretching, an AFP correspondent said.Wearing a dark green hoody and jeans, he was also seen smiling at his
parents in the front row.Yashin was detained while strolling through a park in the Russian capital this summer and faces up to 10 years
behind bars for allegedly spreading "false" information about the Russian military.The case against Yashin is based on an April YouTube
stream in which he spoke about the "murder of civilians" by the Russian military in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, calling it a "massacre."While
Russia's judges of acting as "political servants of the Kremlin."Another Moscow councilor, Alexei Gorinov, was this summer sentenced to
troops into Ukraine, and almost all of Putin's best-known political opponents have either fled the country or are in jail.
