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Three lawyers stood in front of a judge in a small courtroom in Petushk, Russia, on Jan. 17. They had spent years in similar courtrooms defending their client Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in a Siberian penal colony less than one year prior.<\/p>\n
This day, however, they were not working on behalf of a client\u2014the lawyers themselves were on trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n Held behind a large metal cage, as is common in Russian courts, Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser, and Igor Sergunin were accused of \u201cparticipating in an extremist organization\u201d for delivering messages from Navalny to the outside world.<\/p>\n Each of these men was sentenced to multiple years in prison\u2014five and a half for Kobzev, five for Liptser, and three and a half for Sergunin. Their sentencing set a new precedent, where lawyers can be accused of working for extremist organizations and potentially imprisoned for their work.<\/p>\n Foreign Policy<\/em> spoke on the condition of anonymity with several human rights lawyers who have worked in Russia, using pseudonyms due to fears of state retribution. As the Kremlin intensifies its efforts to silence political opposition, these lawyers worry that the line between them and the people they represent is beginning to blur.<\/p>\n Alexander, a lawyer in Moscow,<\/span> has worked on human rights cases for seven years, including many high-profile ones. Throughout his career, he has remained steadfast in his choice of occupation, even as political repression has ratcheted upward. But with Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the targeting of human rights lawyers became harsher and more frequent.<\/p>\n According to Dmitrii Anisimov, a spokesperson for OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights monitoring mission that works directly with lawyers inside of Russia, lawyers are frequently being denied access to their clients in police departments and other state premises, which are also preventing some from freely taking notes during meetings with clients and threatening to revoke the licenses of others.<\/p>\n This kind of obstruction was always present in Russia for certain politically motivated cases, but now, Alexander said, \u201cthe very concept of attorney-client privilege has disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n A January report from OVD-Info<\/a> detailed instances from the year prior of physical force or threats of violence being used against lawyers and defenders, as well as instances of Russian law enforcement conducting searches, interrogations, and seizures of their equipment, and even hacking into lawyers\u2019 devices.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of Russia\u2019s 2014 invasion of Ukraine<\/a>, treatment of human rights lawyers worsened, with harassment, increased surveillance, and smear campaigns in state-controlled media outlets. Yet obstruction of human rights lawyers\u2019 work is a long-standing reality in Russia. In Soviet times, legal representation was never independent from the state; a lawyer\u2019s role was to assist the government rather than defend citizens against it.<\/p>\n During the Chechen wars that began in the 1990s, human rights lawyers represented the families of people who had been killed, tortured, or disappeared at the hands of Russia. These lawyers were routinely denied access to their clients, placed under surveillance by the Foreign Security Service, and threatened for their work. One prominent case came in 2009, when a top human rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was assassinated in Moscow<\/a> for his work defending opponents of Chechnya\u2019s pro-Kremlin government.<\/p>\n Still, prosecuting lawyers has remained rare. They\u2019re \u201cnot yet a routine practice,\u201d Anisimov said. But instances are increasing: According to OVD-Info, in 2024, 22 human rights defenders in Russia faced politically motivated criminal charges, some for speaking out about the war in Ukraine, others just for performing their duties, including representing political prisoners and negotiating their fair treatment in penal colonies. The total instances of imprisonment in 2024 increased by 25 percent compared to 2023, while the number of people taken to pretrial detention increased by 185 percent.<\/p>\n One of the most common criminal charges that the Kremlin uses against its critics, including lawyers, is spreading \u201cfalse information\u201d<\/a> about the Russian military. In effect, the charge is used to punish anyone who criticizes the military or speaks honestly about the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Last November, a court in Udmurtia, Russia, sentenced<\/a> lawyer Dmitry Talantov<\/a> under \u201cfalse information\u201d charges for speaking out against the war on social media. Talantov was the longtime chair of a regional association of lawyers in Russia\u2019s central Udmurtia republic and was also part of the defense for the high-profile case against now-imprisoned journalist Ivan Safronov.<\/p>\n In May, Anastasia Burakova, a lawyer who founded an organization that supports Russian anti-war emigrants, was sentenced<\/a> in absentia to more than seven years in prison, also for spreading \u201cfalse information.\u201d She believes that she was targeted for delivering a speech at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2023, when she talked about the shelling of Ukrainian cities and the deaths of civilians in Ukraine.<\/p>\n A worrisome new precedent was set earlier this year. For the first time, a Russian defense lawyer, Maria Bontsler, was arrested and detained<\/a> for \u201cconfidential cooperation with a foreign state with the aim of undermining the national security of the Russian Federation,\u201d a charge that carries up to eight years in prison. Bontsler, who led a now-disbanded group that defended the legal rights of conscripts, is also known for defending clients in politically motivated cases, including the prominent political prisoner Igor Baryshnikov<\/a>.<\/p>\n Human rights lawyers throughout Russia now fear that they can no longer practice freely\u2014and could potentially be prosecuted for their work.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one will help us if we come into conflict with law enforcement,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWorking with the opposition can now lead to being considered an opposition member and treated as a political opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that the arrest of Navalny\u2019s lawyers, all of whom he personally knew, caused fears for the future of his work.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not wish to abandon this line of work, but I admit many will,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n As fewer lawyers<\/span> are willing to take on cases related to human rights violations and political oppression, demand for such representation has only increased.<\/p>\n According to OVD-Info, as of Dec. 9, 2024, 2,976 people in Russia and the annexed Ukrainian cities of Crimea and Sevastopol faced prosecution for political reasons, while 1,407 people were detained or incarcerated for political reasons at that time.<\/p>\n These numbers, however, do not include the tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war. For the past three and a half years, Alexander has been one of the few human rights lawyers in Russia representing Ukrainian prisoners of war\u2014a practice that he fears could lead to him being accused of treason. He is sought out by families that are still in Ukraine want to know the status and whereabouts of their loved ones, many of whom are surprised to have a lawyer from Russia on their side.<\/p>\n Another significant category of human rights lawyers\u2019 wartime clients are political prisoners. For those detained by the Kremlin, lawyers serve as a crucial link between them and the outside world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s \u201cvery important\u201d that people have a lawyer to prove to the administration \u201cthat you are not [the] only one\u201d defending their case, said Andrei Pivovarov, a political activist who was imprisoned in 2021 for his work as the director of Open Russia, a political organization that sought to protect human rights in Russia.<\/p>\n Pivovarov spoke to Foreign Policy<\/em> from his home in Berlin, where he has lived since he was freed last August in the largest prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia<\/a> since the Cold War.<\/p>\n While in prison, Pivovarov\u2019s lawyers served as a lifeline for him, arguing for a shorter sentence, access to medical care, and fruits and vegetables, and passing along messages to his wife and inner circle. Without his lawyers, Pivovarov would not have been able to tell his wife that he was being transferred from St. Petersburg to the Karelia penal colony<\/a>, located more than 800 miles away in Mordovia\u2014among the harshest prison systems in Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to pressure you in prison if you have a lawyer, if you have a lot of help from your team,\u201d Pivovarov said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a security bubble, which can help you. Because in the colony, they understand if you have a lawyer, you have some support.\u201d<\/p>\n
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