Three legal professionals stood in entrance of a decide in a small courtroom in Petushk, Russia, on Jan. 17. That they had spent years in related courtrooms defending their shopper Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition chief who died in a Siberian penal colony lower than one yr prior.
This present day, nevertheless, they weren’t engaged on behalf of a shopper—the lawyers themselves were on trial.
Held behind a big steel cage, as is widespread in Russian courts, Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser, and Igor Sergunin have been accused of “taking part in an extremist group” for delivering messages from Navalny to the skin world.
Every of those males was sentenced to a number of years in jail—5 and a half for Kobzev, 5 for Liptser, and three and a half for Sergunin. Their sentencing set a brand new precedent, the place legal professionals could be accused of working for extremist organizations and probably imprisoned for his or her work.
International Coverage spoke on the situation of anonymity with a number of human rights legal professionals who’ve labored in Russia, utilizing pseudonyms as a result of fears of state retribution. Because the Kremlin intensifies its efforts to silence political opposition, these legal professionals fear that the road between them and the folks they signify is starting to blur.
Alexander, a lawyer in Moscow, has labored on human rights circumstances for seven years, together with many high-profile ones. All through his profession, he has remained steadfast in his alternative of occupation, at the same time as political repression has ratcheted upward. However with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the focusing on of human rights legal professionals turned harsher and extra frequent.
Based on Dmitrii Anisimov, a spokesperson for OVD-Data, an unbiased Russian human rights monitoring mission that works instantly with legal professionals inside Russia, legal professionals are continuously being denied entry to their shoppers in police departments and different state premises, that are additionally stopping some from freely taking notes throughout conferences with shoppers and threatening to revoke the licenses of others.
This type of obstruction was at all times current in Russia for sure politically motivated circumstances, however now, Alexander stated, “the very idea of attorney-client privilege has disappeared.”
A January report from OVD-Info detailed situations from the yr prior of bodily pressure or threats of violence getting used in opposition to legal professionals and defenders, in addition to situations of Russian legislation enforcement conducting searches, interrogations, and seizures of their tools, and even hacking into legal professionals’ units.
Within the aftermath of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, remedy of human rights legal professionals worsened, with harassment, elevated surveillance, and smear campaigns in state-controlled media retailers. But obstruction of human rights legal professionals’ work is a long-standing actuality in Russia. In Soviet occasions, authorized illustration was by no means unbiased from the state; a lawyer’s position was to help the federal government slightly than defend residents in opposition to it.
In the course of the Chechen wars that started within the Nineteen Nineties, human rights legal professionals represented the households of people that had been killed, tortured, or disappeared by the hands of Russia. These legal professionals have been routinely denied entry to their shoppers, positioned beneath surveillance by the International Safety Service, and threatened for his or her work. One distinguished case got here in 2009, when a prime human rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was assassinated in Moscow for his work defending opponents of Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin authorities.
Nonetheless, prosecuting legal professionals has remained uncommon. They’re “not but a routine apply,” Anisimov stated. However situations are growing: Based on OVD-Data, in 2024, 22 human rights defenders in Russia confronted politically motivated prison fees, some for talking out concerning the battle in Ukraine, others only for performing their duties, together with representing political prisoners and negotiating their honest remedy in penal colonies. The whole situations of imprisonment in 2024 elevated by 25 p.c in comparison with 2023, whereas the variety of folks taken to pretrial detention elevated by 185 p.c.
One of the widespread prison fees that the Kremlin makes use of in opposition to its critics, together with legal professionals, is spreading “false information” concerning the Russian navy. In impact, the cost is used to punish anybody who criticizes the navy or speaks truthfully concerning the battle in Ukraine.
Final November, a court docket in Udmurtia, Russia, sentenced lawyer Dmitry Talantov beneath “false data” fees for talking out in opposition to the battle on social media. Talantov was the longtime chair of a regional affiliation of legal professionals in Russia’s central Udmurtia republic and was additionally a part of the protection for the high-profile case in opposition to now-imprisoned journalist Ivan Safronov.
In Might, Anastasia Burakova, a lawyer who based a corporation that helps Russian anti-war emigrants, was sentenced in absentia to greater than seven years in jail, additionally for spreading “false data.” She believes that she was focused for delivering a speech at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2023, when she talked concerning the shelling of Ukrainian cities and the deaths of civilians in Ukraine.
A worrisome new precedent was set earlier this yr. For the primary time, a Russian protection lawyer, Maria Bontsler, was arrested and detained for “confidential cooperation with a overseas state with the intention of undermining the nationwide safety of the Russian Federation,” a cost that carries as much as eight years in jail. Bontsler, who led a now-disbanded group that defended the authorized rights of conscripts, can be recognized for defending shoppers in politically motivated circumstances, together with the distinguished political prisoner Igor Baryshnikov.
Human rights legal professionals all through Russia now concern that they’ll not apply freely—and will probably be prosecuted for his or her work.
“Nobody will assist us if we come into battle with legislation enforcement,” Alexander stated. “Working with the opposition can now result in being thought-about an opposition member and handled as a political opponent.”
He added that the arrest of Navalny’s legal professionals, all of whom he personally knew, prompted fears for the way forward for his work.
“I don’t want to abandon this line of labor, however I admit many will,” Alexander stated.
As fewer legal professionals are keen to tackle circumstances associated to human rights violations and political oppression, demand for such illustration has solely elevated.
Based on OVD-Data, as of Dec. 9, 2024, 2,976 folks in Russia and the annexed Ukrainian cities of Crimea and Sevastopol confronted prosecution for political causes, whereas 1,407 folks have been detained or incarcerated for political causes at the moment.
These numbers, nevertheless, don’t embrace the tens of hundreds of Russian prisoners of battle. For the previous three and a half years, Alexander has been one of many few human rights legal professionals in Russia representing Ukrainian prisoners of battle—a apply that he fears may result in him being accused of treason. He’s sought out by households which might be nonetheless in Ukraine need to know the standing and whereabouts of their family members, lots of whom are shocked to have a lawyer from Russia on their aspect.
One other vital class of human rights legal professionals’ wartime shoppers are political prisoners. For these detained by the Kremlin, legal professionals function an important hyperlink between them and the skin world.
It’s “essential” that individuals have a lawyer to show to the administration “that you’re not [the] just one” defending their case, stated Andrei Pivovarov, a political activist who was imprisoned in 2021 for his work because the director of Open Russia, a political group that sought to guard human rights in Russia.
Pivovarov spoke to International Coverage from his residence in Berlin, the place he has lived since he was freed final August within the largest prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia because the Chilly Struggle.
Whereas in jail, Pivovarov’s legal professionals served as a lifeline for him, arguing for a shorter sentence, entry to medical care, and fruit and veggies, and passing alongside messages to his spouse and interior circle. With out his legal professionals, Pivovarov wouldn’t have been capable of inform his spouse that he was being transferred from St. Petersburg to the Karelia penal colony, situated greater than 800 miles away in Mordovia—among the many harshest jail programs in Russia.
“It’s troublesome to strain you in jail you probably have a lawyer, you probably have a whole lot of assist out of your staff,” Pivovarov stated. “It’s like a safety bubble, which can assist you. As a result of within the colony, they perceive you probably have a lawyer, you’ve some assist.”
One other uptick in political prosecutions has come from anti-war protesters. In 2022, OVD-Data documented greater than 18,900 arrests made throughout anti-war demonstrations within the nation. Stanislav, a human rights lawyer in St. Petersburg, started working in that capability the day that Russia started its full-scale invasion as a strategy to assist the anti-war protests.
Defending these circumstances “was very arduous,” Stanislav stated, “since you see lots of people who share your views, who’ve the identical values, and also you see how they’re being persecuted. It’s powerful, however what helped me is as a result of I managed to assist them quite a bit.”
On most events, Stanislav stated that the police who arrested anti-war protesters tried to course of their prison proceedings rapidly, which regularly resulted in errors. With the ability to level out these errors helped his shoppers keep away from jail sentences; most have been capable of get off with solely paying a small high quality.
For the primary three years of the battle, Stanislav felt that he was secure doing his work in Russia. Though he was representing circumstances associated to political dissidents, he believed that within the eyes of the Kremlin, there was a distinction between his work and that of his shoppers.
Stanislav not believes that’s the case. He stated that Bontsler’s imprisonment has prompted him to concern for his security and behave extra rigorously than ever earlier than.
“Now, I feel twice earlier than sharing any details about my circumstances with whomever, and I up to date directions to my shut circle in case of my arrest,” he stated. “I’ve a VPN. I’m fairly positive that my telephone and laptop computer are safe, however you by no means know. There’s a saying that in the event you assume you might be beneath surveillance, you most likely are,” Stanislav added.
Stanislav stated that he’s conscious of some dozen human rights legal professionals in St. Petersburg who proceed to apply regardless of the dangers. He stated that their work reveals him that “Russia is just not misplaced.”
Regardless of all that has transpired, he doesn’t need to go away Russia.
“That is my nation, it’s my motherland, and I hope for the perfect for it,” he stated. “I hope that whereas I’m a really small determine, I is likely to be helpful, and I nonetheless hope for change. I need to be a part of the change in Russia.”
