Russian investigators Wednesday asked a Moscow court to keep one of the country's last remaining opposition figures in jail until his trial for "discrediting" the Russian army fighting in Ukraine.
Ilya Yashin, a Moscow city councillor and staunch Kremlin critic, faces up to 10 years behind bars over "spreading false information" about Russia's armed forces.
"The investigation asks to choose a preventative measure (in the form of detention) until September 12, 2022," Russian media cited Moscow's Basmanny court press service as saying.
Authorities launched the case against Yashin on Tuesday evening, hours before he was set to be released from a 15-day arrest for disobeying police orders.
The 39-year-old refused to leave Russia after President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February and has since then regularly denounced the move.
Almost all of Putin's well-known political opponents have either fled the country or are in jail.
The reason for the probe was an April YouTube stream in which Yashin spoke about the "murder of civilians in Bucha", the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces have been accused of war crimes.
He called it a "massacre".
Yashin has regularly condemned the Kremlin's offensive on his YouTube channel which has 1.3 million subscribers.
He was a key figure in Moscow's mass anti-Putin protests in 2011-12 and a close associate of assassinated politician Boris Nemtsov.
Russia's military campaign was followed by an unprecedented crackdown on voices of dissent at home, with Moscow adopting laws imposing sentences of up to 15 years for spreading information about the military deemed false by the authorities.
Last week, another Moscow councillor -- also from Yashin's Krasnoselsky district -- was sentenced to seven years in prison for denouncing the Ukraine offensive.
