Ilya Yashin biography. Scandalist and provocateur: Who is Ilya Yashin? Yashin and Navalny
Solidarity member Ilya Yashin intends to run for municipal deputies from the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow. The opposition activist continues to raise money for his project, distributing social networks details of your bank accounts. Until now, he has never managed to get elected anywhere: neither to the regional Legislative Assembly, nor to the district councils, not to mention the elections to the State Duma.
Ilya Yashin was born in Moscow in 1983. In 2005, he graduated from the Faculty of Political Science at the International Independent Ecological and Political Science University (MNEPU), having defended his diploma in methods of organizing street protests. He worked as a columnist for Novaya Gazeta and The New Times.
In 2007, Yashin entered graduate school at the Higher School of Economics, where his supervisor was Yuliy Nisnevich. Yashin’s mentor is a board member of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiatives Transparency International-R, a frequent guest on Ukrainian talk shows and one of the leading analysts at Radio Liberty and Voice of America. Nisnevich takes an open pro-American position, believing that Russia has forever “fell out of civilizational reality.”
"Apple" and "Defense"
While still a student, in 2000, Yashin joined Yabloko, becoming one of the main organizers of the party’s street actions. Ilya’s oppositional agility was noted by the party leadership and he was appointed head of the Moscow Youth Yabloko.
Street actions organized by Yashin were distinguished by their radical orientation, sometimes with obvious signs of vandalism. So, in August 2004, he, along with other young Yabloko members, shouted “Down with police autocracy!” poured paint on a memorial plaque with a portrait of Yuri Andropov. Activists also opposed military conscription. In November 2006, Yashin and Maria Gaidar, using climbing equipment, descended from the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge and unfurled a poster that read “Give back the elections to the people, you bastards!” After the protest, both of them were detained by the police and soon released. According to the former leader of the Yabloko youth, the party paid $300 a month for organizing street protests.
In 2005, Yashin headed the all-Russian Youth Yabloko. At the same time, he became one of the founders of the Defense movement, an organization financed, in particular, by American government funds. The symbols of “Defense” (a clenched fist raised upward) are completely identical to the logos of foreign protest movements that led the “color revolutions” in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Yugoslavia.
With money from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Soros Open Society Foundation, Yashin and other “defenders” organized dozens of anti-Russian actions. They declared their main task to be the organization of a nonviolent revolution in our country. "Defense" also took part in anti-government protests in Belarus. During the opposition march “Chernobyl Way” in Minsk in April 2005, Yashin and several of his comrades in “Defense” were detained by Belarusian police. The court sentenced them to administrative arrest, but they were soon released from custody and deported to Moscow.
By 2012, “Defense” had virtually ceased to exist. It is noteworthy that at the same time, USAID activities in Russia were curtailed. On the basis of “Defense”, the “Spring” movement was created in St. Petersburg in 2013.
Yashin was at one time naturally suspected of receiving money from oligarchs. Defense activists collaborated with the We movement, whose activities were sponsored by ex-YUKOS owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. From April to September 2005, “Defense” held a series of actions in support of the oligarch, who was imprisoned for fraud, embezzlement of other people’s property, tax evasion and other crimes. YUKOS board member Leonid Nevzlin, sentenced in absentia in the Russian Federation to life imprisonment for organizing a series of murders and assassinations, spoke of Yashin as a “promising young politician.”
Ilya has always been partial to criminals. For example, in 2013, he, along with other pro-Western liberals, criticized the arrest of the former mayor of Yaroslavl, Yevgeny Urlashov, who was subsequently convicted of bribery. At a rally in support of bribery official Yashin shouted that the “people’s mayor” was arrested on the personal order of the President of the Russian Federation. “We are all in dungeons, it’s time to destroy this prison,” an opposition activist shook the air.
Yashin and Navalny
At Yabloko, Yashin also met Alexei Navalny. On December 5, 2011, then former party members were detained after an agreed Solidarity rally on Chistoprudny Boulevard. The accomplices tried to stage a provocation in the center of Moscow. At the end of the rally, Yashin from the stage called on all those gathered to march through Myasnitskaya Street to Lubyanka Square. Many of those who succumbed to Yashin’s call were detained by the police.
The court found Yashin and Navalny guilty of resisting law enforcement officers and arrested them for 15 days. The provocateurs complained to the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR decided to pay the instigators of the riots 26 thousand euros from the Russian budget. In June 2015, Yashin and Navalny each received one and a half million government rubles. Yashin himself does not like to talk about the sources of his income. According to the oppositionist, he is supported by a political science degree.
Opposition Coordination Council
The rallies on Bolotnaya were Yashin’s finest hour. The Solidarity member also has a romantic history associated with protests. In October 2012, Ilya was elected a member of the Coordination Council of the Opposition, which also included Ksenia Sobchak. At winter street events, the TV presenter smeared chapstick on Yashin’s lips, and the couple published photos together on trains. The press discussed their possible marriage.
During a search of Sobchak’s apartment, which took place as part of the case of the riots on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, law enforcement officers, in addition to large sums of money, found the journalist and Yashin in the apartment. The collapse of the extramarital union of the daughter of a senator and a “fighter against the regime” coincided with the self-dissolution of the Opposition Coordination Council.
It is obvious that Yashin’s relationship with some of his CSR colleagues was not as pleasant as with Sobchak. Former MP State Duma Ilya Ponomarev once accused the ex-head of the Moscow branch of PARNAS of provocations directed against Yabloko and the disruption of inter-party agreements. On the eve of the 2015 Novosibirsk mayoral elections, Yashin caught Yabloko members in alliance with members of the nationalist movement “Restrukt”.
Later, Ponomarev also called Yashin a parasite, talking about his opposition activities. In addition, the former parliamentarian believes that the pride of the Solidarity member does not allow him to admit his own mistakes. Ponomarev made such a statement in the context of the scandal that erupted between Yashin and economist Andrei Illarionov, those who accused former CSR colleague for slander, perjury and treason. The conflict arose due to Yashin’s contradictory testimony in the case of the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Illarionov noted that immediately after the tragedy, on February 28, 2015, Yashin said that he communicated with Nemtsov’s companion Anna Duritskaya. According to the opposition activist, it was she who told him how the murder happened. However, Yashin later stated that he spoke with Duritskaya for only a minute, she was hysterical and could not provide any details about Nemtsov’s death.
Exit from Yabloko. Scandals in PARNAS
Over the past 12 years, Ilya Yashin has been trying to get elected to at least some government bodies, starting with municipal councils and ending with participation in Duma elections. However, the opposition activist became involved in new scandals, and not the people's choice.
In 2005 and 2009, Yashin lost elections to the Moscow City Duma. In 2007, he refused to participate in the elections in State Duma according to the Apple list. He openly criticized the party leadership, declaring his readiness to fight for the post of its chairman. Yashin’s actions were assessed by Yabloko as “inflicting political damage.” As a result, Ilya was asked to leave Grigory Yavlinsky’s party. At the same time, the young activist managed to split the ranks of seasoned liberals. Human rights activists Sergei Kovalev, Tatyana Kotlyar, Valery Borshchev stood up for the young man, but their intercession did not play a significant role.
Expelled from Yabloko, Yashin continued his political activities in Solidarity, where he was elected to the bureau federal council. But even in this structure, the brawler Yashin is true to himself. In the spring of 2016, he and his Solidarity colleague Alexander Ryklin were the first to announce the holding of a “march in memory of Boris Nemtsov.”
From 2012 to 2016, Yashin combined his work in Solidarity with membership in PARNAS. He served as deputy chairman of the party. In the spring of 2014, like other Parnassovites, he condemned the reunification of Crimea with Russia, calling the restoration of historical justice a “criminal annexation.”
“Undoubtedly, Crimea is the territory of Ukraine, which was illegally annexed by Russia using armed forces and in violation of international obligations,” Yashin said at the presentation of his report “Putin. War" in Kyiv. Yashin’s “reports” are a compilation of facts from Wikipedia and Google queries. Once one of these works, even before the official presentation on the streets of Moscow, was carried out by migrants from Central Asia. The distribution took place in the Bolotnaya Square area near public toilets.
In September 2015, Yashin became a candidate from PARNAS to the Legislative Assembly of the Kostroma Region. The electoral voyage ended in failure - it was not possible to overcome the two percent barrier. However, there was so much noise around the election campaign! Yashin walked around the courtyards, trying to gain the trust of pensioners, deafening local residents with powerful speakers. Once, Kostroma residents even complained to the police about the troublemaker. The deputy chairman of PARNAS resisted the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who asked Yashin to stop making noise in the courtyards, refusing to comply with their demands. Ilya was detained, but released after drawing up a report.
At the end of 2016, Yashin left PARNAS. From there, as from Yabloko, Yashin left with a scandal. More precisely, his exit was accompanied by a series of scandals, among which was a sexual one, in which he became an involuntary participant.
The chairman of PARNAS, Mikhail Kasyanov, and member of the party’s federal bureau, Natalya Pelevina, were connected not only by politics. This became known after a video of one of the intimate meetings of fellow party members was released. During a private conversation between Pelevin’s Parnassov partners, Yashin promised to give up his place in the election campaign for 30 thousand dollars. Kasyanov’s passion told him that this fact could be confirmed by a certain “Kostya” (probably referring to the deputy chairman of PARNAS, Konstantin Merzlikin). Pelevina also called Yashin “complete scum”, because of which people in the party are changing for the worse.
It turned out that Yashin in PARNAS was a lobbyist for Navalny’s interests. Such conclusions follow from the hacked correspondence between Pelevina and Kasyanov, published in April 2016. Pelevina called Yashin a “gnome” in her messages.
After watching the video of Kasyanov’s meeting with Pelevina, Yashin demanded that the PARNAS leader give up first place on the party’s electoral list. He refused. Then Yashin will not participate in the party primaries. He also protested against the inclusion of video blogger Vyacheslav Maltsev in the PARNAS federal list, but this demarche was ignored by Kasyanov. According to the results of the elections to the State Duma of the seventh convocation, PARNAS gained less than 1% of the votes, and in December Yashin announced his resignation from the party. The oppositionist explained this by “a long conflict with Kasyanov.”
The fact that Yashin endured insults inflicted by fellow party members for quite a long time can be explained by his fiscal interests. PARNAS was financed during the elections by a certain “Public Alternative” foundation, the founders of which are Kasyanov and his deputy Konstantin Merzlikin. Yashin officially received a salary from this fund. He indicated such information when registering for elections in the Kostroma region.
Yashin is now actively making money. He claims that he needs them for his election campaign for the post of municipal deputy. The scale, of course, is not the same as that of the self-proclaimed presidential candidate Navalny, but still. To live, you have to run for something. The “fight against the regime” for Yashin, as for many non-systemic oppositionists, is determined not so much by ideological need as by the desire to make money. Therefore, Yashin saw his colleagues in the Opposition Coordination Council, fellow party members in Yabloko and PARNAS not as political rivals, but as business competitors.
Grigory Nazarenko
Family
He is not in a registered marriage. According to media reports, the father - Valery Yashin, - former general director of OJSC Svyazinvest and OJSC Petersburg Telephone Network, mother - Tatyana Yashina, sister Natalya Yashina.
Biography
Ilya Yashin was born in Moscow on June 29, 1983, where he graduated from a secondary school with in-depth study of the Russian language and literature and an art school.
In 2000, he entered the political science department of the International Independent Ecological and Political Science University (MNEPU). In 2005, he defended his diploma on methods of organizing street protests.
Since June 2005, Ilya Yashin has been a columnist " Novaya Gazeta"Yashin's columns were also published in The New Times, Gazeta.Ru, Daily Journal, RBC-daily, The Moscow Times and others.
In 2007, he entered graduate school at the Higher School of Economics, Department of Applied Political Science.
Policy
In 2000, Ilya Yashin joined the Yabloko party, where he proved himself to be an active member and supporter of street actions. At Yabloko, Yashin was involved in youth work.
In 2001-2005, Yashin served as head of the Moscow Youth Apple. In 2005-2008, Yashin headed the all-Russian Youth Yabloko.
Since 2003, Yashin has been a member of the regional council of the Moscow branch of Yabloko. In addition, from 2002 to 2006 he was an assistant to a Moscow City Duma deputy. Evgeniy Bunimovich.
On March 12, 2005, Ilya Yashin became one of the founders and a member of the coordinating council of the youth public movement "Defense", from which he left as a result of a split in February of the following year.
In the fall of 2005, Yashin ran for deputy of the Moscow City Duma in electoral district No. 13 (University), but lost the election.
In 2007, he refused to participate in the elections to the State Duma on the Yabloko list, although his entry into the federal three was discussed. In December 2007, Yashin openly criticized the Yabloko leadership and declared his readiness to fight for the post of party chairman.
In December 2008, Yashin was expelled from the Yabloko party by a decision of the regional council of the Moscow organization with the wording “causing political damage.”
Some Yabloko members supported the position of Ilya Yashin: they spoke out in support of him Sergey Kovalev And Victor Sheinis, human rights activists Andrey Babushkin, Valery Borshchev And Tatiana Kotlyar, head of the St. Petersburg branch Maxim Reznik, deputy chairman of the Moscow branch Alexey Klimenko, and some other activists. The executive director of the Moscow Helsinki Group left the ranks of Yabloko in protest Daniil Meshcheryakov. A Soviet dissident spoke out in support of Yashin Vladimir Bukovsky.
Over the years of work at Yabloko, Ilya Yashin has repeatedly appeared in high-profile PR campaigns directed against the government policy.
In August 2004, an action was held under the slogan “Down with the police autocracy!”, carried out by Youth Yabloko, during which a memorial plaque with a portrait of Yuri Andropov was poured with paint.
On January 25, 2005, Yashin held the action “Shaving Against Conscription” - Yashin publicly shaved himself to zero near the walls of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces as a sign of protest against the government’s plans to deprive students of deferments.
On November 23, 2006, the “Action on the Bridge” took place: together with Yashin, he stretched out the banner “Give back the elections to the people, you bastards!”
On September 12, 2007, Yashin committed a symbolic self-immolation on the Sofiyskaya embankment in Moscow and was hospitalized with minor burns.
Yashin began a new round of his political career in the Solidarity movement.
In December 2008, Ilya Yashin took part in the founding congress of Solidarity and was elected to the bureau of the federal political council.
In March-April 2009, Yashin headed the headquarters in the elections for the mayor of Sochi.
In July 2009, with the support of Solidarity, he nominated himself for the elections of deputies of the Moscow City Duma of the fifth convocation in single-mandate district No. 14, but the election commission removed Yashin from the elections, invalidating all the signatures collected in support of his registration.
In 2010, Ilya Yashin joined PARNAS and became an active participant in “dissent marches” and other opposition rallies held in Moscow.
Since 2011, Yashin has been an active member of street actions of “dissenters” and one of his closest associates.
On December 5, 2011, Yashin, along with Alexei Navalny, were detained after a rally on Chistoprudny Boulevard, sanctioned by the authorities and held by the Solidarity movement. The court found Yashin, and later Navalny, guilty of resisting law enforcement officers and imposed 15 days of administrative arrest as a punishment.
Ilya Yashin has been under the close attention of foreign human rights activists since 2005, as evidenced by the fact that he was repeatedly recognized as a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, and the ECHR petitioned for him.
On December 24, 2011, he spoke at a protest meeting of many thousands in Moscow, held on Academician Sakharov Avenue.
On February 1, 2012, Ilya Yashin, at the head of a group of activists from the Solidarity movement, hung a banner with the slogan “Putin, go away” in front of the Kremlin. The banner was installed on the roof of a house on Sofia Embankment.
On October 22, 2012, in the elections of the Coordination Council of the Opposition, he took fifth place on the general civil list, gaining 32.4 thousand votes, losing to Navalny, Bykov, Kasparov and Sobchak.
In October 2013, he announced his readiness to run for the Moscow City Duma in 2014.
During the “Crimean Spring” of 2014, Yashin opposed the reunification of Crimea with Russia.
On May 26, 2015, during the presentation of Boris Nemtsov’s report “Putin. War” at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, Yashin sharply criticized Russia for its foreign policy towards Ukraine, saying that “of course, Crimea is the territory of Ukraine, which is illegally annexed to Russia, using armed forces and violating international obligations."
In 2015, RPR-PARNAS entered into an agreement to create a democratic coalition with the Progress Party and Democratic Choice and nominated lists of candidates in 4 regions - Kaluga, Kostroma, Magadan and Novosibirsk. Lists of candidates in the Kaluga, Kostroma and Novosibirsk regions were nominated based on the results of open primaries.
On July 27, the election commission of the Novosibirsk region refused to register the list of candidates, considering some of the collected signatures invalid. However, elections with the participation of Parnassus took place only in the Kostroma region, where the leader of the list, Ilya Yashin, barely collected 2 percent of the votes.
On February 23, 2016, in Moscow, Yashin presented a report on the head of Chechnya entitled “Threat to National Security.” Kadyrov himself obtained the text of the report on the eve of its presentation and published it in advance on his official Instagram page; in comments to the media he called Yashin’s report “babble” and “gossip from the Internet.”
Income
Yashin's official declaration has not been made public.
He himself speaks about his income as follows: “As for my earnings, there is no secret here either. I have a degree in political science - that’s what feeds me. Most of my income comes from political analytics, which I prepare for various non-profit structures. I note that foreign organizations Not among them, I have never received a penny of foreign money."
Rumors and scandals
On March 17, 2009, an anonymous user published a video on the Internet in which Ilya Yashin allegedly offers a bribe to traffic police officers in their official car. Yashin himself called the video “provocative.”
In 2010, Yashin became a victim of a provocateur Kati-Mumu.
"Katya - a pretty, long-legged brunette - made an impression on me and for a couple of weeks we had an easy relationship. We went to the cinema, had dinner at a restaurant. One Saturday evening I picked her up from the club and took her home by car - to the same apartment not far from Kolomenskaya metro station. There we slept with her.", Yashin said later.
On April 26, 2010, Ilya Yashin filed an application to initiate a criminal case with the Prosecutor General's Office due to the publication of scandalous videos online.
On June 11, 2012, in the apartment where Yashin was at that moment and where, according to the Investigative Committee, he actually lived, at least 1 million euros were seized during a search by operatives.
Ilya Valerievich Yashin is a political and public figure, supporter of the opposition to the current government, deputy chairman of the People's Freedom Party (PARNAS), one of the founders and recognized leaders of the democratic movement "Solidarity".Previously, he was a member of the leadership of the internal party association “Youth Yabloko”, in the bureau of the Moscow branch of “Yabloko”, and was a co-founder and coordinator of the youth association “Defence”.
Childhood and family of Ilya Yashin
One of the most famous and popular young politicians was born in the capital on June 29, 1983. There is very little information about his childhood and family: his father is a native of Leningrad, former director of Petersburg Telephone Network OJSC, his mother is a co-founder of one of the largest domestic IT companies, Peter-Service. He has a sister, Natasha. 
The future opposition figure graduated from school with a specialization in “In-depth study of the Russian language and literature” and received additional art education at a specialized children's institution. Then, in 2000, he entered the non-state International Independent Ecological and Political Science University and became an active member of the Yabloko United Democratic Party.
While studying at the university, he led the youth branch of this party, participated in protests, including speeches against the abolition of deferments for students from military service, a march during the celebration of Freedom Day in Minsk in 2005, and became one of the founders of “Defense.”
Career of Ilya Yashin
After protection thesis the young man qualified as a political scientist. From his second year until 2006, he worked as an assistant to the Moscow Duma deputy, poet and teacher Evgeniy Bunimovich, and from 2007 - a graduate student at the Higher School of Economics. 
He also continued to make resonant publications and striking actions of decisive disagreement with the unfair, in his opinion, actions of the authorities (for example, using mountaineering equipment, he unfurled a banner over the Moscow River demanding the return of elections to citizens, carried out a spectacular conditional self-immolation in protest against the usurpation Putin's powers), gained strong authority among his comrades.
Ilya also did not remain alone for long. His new chosen one was Varvara Shcherbakova, an actress of the St. Petersburg drama theater “On Liteiny”, who played the eldest daughter of the main character in the series “Sonka the Golden Hand, continuation of the legend.” She is his friend ex-girlfriend Vilkova (they are “friends” on social networks), but they were introduced by a mutual friend from theater circles. They try not to advertise their relationship.
According to media reports, Ilya loves to read - he reread Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” three times, calling this novel one of the books that influenced his personal development. As a child, the politician read the works of Alexandre Dumas “The Three Musketeers”, “Queen Margot” and others.
Ilya Yashin today
In 2010, the activist spoke at an anti-government rally of 10 thousand people in Kaliningrad, which was later recognized as the largest protest event in history. recent years. He signed the appeal “Putin must go,” which, according to the campaign organizers, was signed by more than 80 thousand people.Detention of Ilya Yashin, representative of the Parnas party
The politician was repeatedly subject to such types of administrative penalties as fines and arrest - for holding a picket calling for the resignation of the head of state at the Government House, for attempting to break the chain of law enforcement officers during a rally on Triumfalnaya Square in support of the constitutional right to freedom of assembly.
In 2011, he and Navalny were detained and sentenced to 15 days of arrest for marching to the Central Election Commission building after a rally on Chistoprudny Boulevard. The European Court of Human Rights, where they filed a complaint against these actions of the authorities, declared the detention illegal and ordered the Russian Federation to compensate both plaintiffs for the damage caused by paying 26,000 euros each.
The politician, who has proven himself to be a prominent leader, is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta, the author of the book “Street Protest,” dedicated to the problems of political struggle and forms of civil pressure on the authorities, and co-author of Boris Nemtsov’s acclaimed opus “Putin. War”, containing allegations about the illegality of the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the participation of Russian armed forces in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Ilya Yashin about Ramzan Kadyrov “Threat to National Security”
The well-known works of the oppositionist were also his works, published in 2016, about the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov “Threat to National Security” with evidence of the need for his resignation and “Party of Criminal Russia”, which collected facts about the connection of members of “United Russia” with various types of crimes.
Ilya Yashin is a prominent oppositionist and social activist, who has shown by personal example what it means to have the courage to have your own opinion about what is happening in the country, regardless of public condemnation and persecution of the official authorities.
The biography of the future politician began in Moscow. Ilya Yashin was born on June 29, 1983. There is practically no information about Ilya’s parents. It is known that Yashin’s father was in the past the director of the Petersburg Telephone Network, and his mother was a member of the management of the Peter-Service company. Ilya grew up with his sister Natalya. At school, Yashin studied literature and the Russian language in depth, and in 2000 he entered the University of Ecology and Political Science.
Policy
At the same time, Ilya Yashin became a member of the Yabloko political party. The young man is keenly interested in politics and does not miss a single activist event. Ilya supports student protest movements and is constantly interested in innovations and laws proposed by deputies. After graduating from university, Yashin receives the long-awaited specialty of political scientist. It should be noted that, already as a sophomore, Ilya worked as an assistant to Yevgeny Bunimovich, a deputy of the Moscow Duma.
From the very beginning of his political career, Ilya Yashin was distinguished by his courage and tendency to shock. For example, using special climbing equipment, Yashin stretched a poster over the Moscow River demanding the return of municipal elections. Also, Ilya Yashin committed conditional self-immolation, protesting against the authorities.
Yashin was not left alone: soon the man met the charming actress Varvara Shcherbakova. Yashin kept the details of this relationship secret; it is only known that they never ended in a marriage.
And in February 2020 it became known that, the lead singer of the group "". A photo of the happy couple appeared on the couple's Twitter.
Besides personal life The oppositionist, fans and simply curious people are also interested in Yashin’s nationality. Some believe that Yashin is Jewish, while others believe that Ilya is Russian. The young man himself does not comment on this aspect.
Ilya Yashin now
Now Ilya Yashin continues to participate in the political life of the country, criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin and other politicians. In 2017, Yashin was elected as a deputy from the Krasnoselsky district of the capital. In addition, Yashin is working on the creation of a congress of independent deputies of the city of Moscow.
Yashin constantly keeps like-minded people informed of what is happening, posting posts on