Tallinn (Estonia), Sep 9 (AP) Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin may be in jail, but he refuses to be silenced.

His social media accounts are regularly updated with anecdotes about his life in detention or video commentary criticising President Vladimir Putin's rule. He gives interviews to media outlets by providing written answers to questions through his lawyers from behind bars.

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He uses court appearances as an opportunity to speak out against the Kremlin's devastating war in Ukraine — which is exactly what he is being prosecuted for.

“So far the authorities have failed to shut me up,” Yashin told The Associated Press in a lengthy handwritten letter from a pre-trial detention center in Moscow, passed on via his lawyers and associates last week.

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“The opposition should speak the truth and stimulate a peaceful anti-war resistance. It is very important to help people overcome their fear. But one can only truly motivate people with their own personal example,” the politician added.

Yashin, 39, is one of the few prominent opposition figures who has refused to leave Russia despite the unprecedented pressure the authorities have mounted on dissent in recent years.

He says leaving Russia would have affected his authority and value as a politician.

A sharp critic of the Kremlin, a vocal ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny and an uncompromising member of a Moscow municipal council, Yashin was arrested in June.

The authorities charged him with spreading false information about the Russian military — a new criminal offence for which he faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The charges against Yashin reportedly relate to a YouTube livestream video in which he talked about Ukrainians being killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. He rejects the charges as politically motivated.

Yashin wrote answers to the AP's questions in his small cell in Moscow's notorious Butyrskaya prison that he shares with several other people.

His day there starts at 6 a.m. and ends at 10 pm, he wrote, and consists of a walk, three meals, a couple of inspections and lots of free time. So he writes and reads a lot to make use of it.

Last week, his parents visited him in detention. His mother, Tatyana, told the AP in a phone interview that he was “holding up well and not regretting anything.”

She said the risk of her son getting arrested has been there for years — since 2012, when arrests followed mass protests in Moscow over reports of widespread rigging at a parliamentary election.

“But you know how it is: You always hope for the best,” Tatyana Yashina said. “Nevertheless, we were, of course, prepared.”

Yashin said he, too, was ready for the arrest.

After the authorities adopted a law that criminalised the spread of false information about the military, effectively outlawing all criticism of what the Kremlin calls “a special military operation" in Ukraine, “it became obvious: The security forces will come after all public opponents of Putin who refuse to emigrate,” Yashin said.

What did surprise him, Yashin said, was how much respect law enforcement officers treated him with — they called his lawyers for him and after the raid allowed him to pack personal belongings to take with him to jail.

One expressed respect for his decision to stay in Russia despite the risk of arrest, while another one called him “a worthy enemy.”

In detention, both the inmates and the guards are genuinely puzzled to hear that the politician is facing 10 years in prison “for a few words against the war,” Yashin wrote: “In Russia, courts hand down shorter sentences for theft, assaults, rapes and sometimes even murders.”

With all protests suppressed by a brutal crackdown and most opposition leaders leaving the country, spreading the word has become the main effort for many.

Even though Navalny is in jail, his team continues to post video exposes of corruption and regular livestreams on the politician's YouTube channels. The three most popular channels combined currently have more than 10 million subscribers.

Yashin's own YouTube channel, regularly updated even after his arrest with news analysis and political commentary, has nearly 1.4 million subscribers.

Most of his videos over the past six months have been dedicated to the war and criticising the Kremlin for it.

“Demand for an alternative point of view has appeared in society,” Yashin told the AP.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)