Exiled Russian dissident says stripped of citizenship

Exiled Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin said Monday that authorities had revoked his Russian citizenship, citing court documents seen by his lawyer.

Yashin, a former city lawmaker in Moscow and a longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin, was jailed in 2022 after criticising Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

He was released last year as part of a major prisoner swap with the West.

Documents in a new criminal case in Moscow, published by Yashin on social media, showed that Russia's interior ministry had classified him a "stateless person".

"I have been assigned the status of a stateless person who is prohibited from entering the territory" of Russia, Yashin posted.

"In other words... I have been deprived of Russian citizenship," he said.

"If this information provided to the court by the interior ministry is confirmed, then we are dealing with a major new precedent and a new round of arbitrariness," he added.

Independent Russian media outlets reported that the judge reviewing the case Monday asked prosecutors to explain what thedocuments meant at a hearing set for next week.

Yashin was a close ally of late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison colony last year in unclear circumstances.

When he was sent to Europe last year in the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War, Yashin said he had never asked to be exchanged.

He also said that people who criticise the regime had more influence if they stay in Russia, instead of in exile.

Russia's opposition, historically marred by in-fighting, has struggled for relevance at home after the death of Navalny, amid military censorship and an intensifying crackdown by the Kremlin.

Almost every high-profile opposition figure has been jailed or fled into exile since Putin escalated his decade-long targeting of opponents after sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia's constitution technically forbids Russians being stripped of their citizenship though hawkish politicians have repeatedly called for "traitors" to have their citizenship revoked amid the invasion.