By Olha Chepil | 2025-01-29

KYIV -- Russia has dialed up the pressure on rights activists and lawyers, using its legal machinery to arrest and punish lawyers who defend targets of political persecution.

With every passing year in Russia, it is becoming harder to represent defendants in politically motivated trials, activists say.

The human rights organization OVD-Info is helping more than 100 defendants in such cases and about 300 lawyers across Russia, according to OVD-Info spokesman Dmitry Anisimov.

However, it has now become very difficult for such defense attorneys to do their work, said Anisimov.

Harassed by authorities, some of them are fleeing the country, while those who stay and fight run a high risk of being prosecuted themselves on phony charges.

"Attorneys can still work, but when they do, there's a slew of complications and risks that they face," Anisimov told Kontur.

Russia presently is holding 51 rights activists in prison, OVD-Info says.

"They're being persecuted because they defend political prisoners or because they speak out against the war or other actions by the authorities," Anisimov said.

Navalny's lawyers jailed

On January 17, a court in Vladimir province, Russia, issued prison sentences to three former lawyers of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in prison in 2024.

The sentences for Vadim Kobzev, Aleksei Liptser and Igor Sergunin ranged from three and a half years to five and a half years.

"Free speech in Russia is practically nonexistent. What happened to Navalny's lawyers confirms that yet again," Valeriya, an activist with the organization Put Domoi (The Way Home) who still lives in Russia and fears sharing her last name, told Kontur.

Put Domoi is a group of wives, mothers and other relatives of drafted soldiers working to bring them back to Russia.

The court convicted the trio of "participating in an extremist organization," the nature of which was delivering the imprisoned Navalny's letters to his family.

Valeriya called such actions by the Kremlin infuriating.

"How can anyone trust the legal institutions if they prosecute lawyers just for doing their jobs?" she said.

The supposed evidence against Navalny's attorneys depended on illegally filming their meetings with their late client, said Anisimov.

"They set up a bunch of hidden cameras... you could make out what they [the attorneys] were writing," Anisimov said.

The European Union and United States have appealed to the Russian authorities to immediately release the trio.

"This is yet another example of the persecution of defense lawyers by the Kremlin in its effort to undermine human rights, subvert the rule of law and suppress dissent," the US State Department said January 17. "We call on the Russian Government to release all political prisoners immediately."

Prosecution and other punishments

Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin are not the first lawyers to become defendants, said OVD-Info.

Others include Dmitry Talantov, sentenced to seven years in prison last November after he made some Facebook posts, and Ivan Pavlov, accused in absentia last July of failing to meet the obligations of so-called foreign agents.

Pavlov has lived abroad since the fall of 2021.

Many such stories exist, Anisimov said.

"There is no doubt that this is one of many warnings the authorities are sending to human rights lawyers, saying that the Russian authorities can lean on them and that they absolutely should be afraid," he said.

The Kremlin lashes out even after lawyers have fled abroad to escape persecution. In some cases like Pavlov's, it has taken away their legal licenses after they left.

Those who have remained struggle to do their jobs when the authorities bar them from meeting their clients or from accessing case materials at the right time.

"By targeting lawyers for merely doing their job, the Russian authorities are dismantling what remains of the right to legal defense and abusing what is a criminal justice system only in name," Marie Struthers, Amnesty International's Eastern Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement January 17 about the jailing of Navalny's lawyers.

A new 'Inquisition'

In addition to lawyers, all activists who criticize Kremlin policies are suffering persecution and pressure, say analysts.

On January 17, police searched the residence of the parents of exiled Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin. They interrogated his parents and demanded to know where he was, he wrote on Telegram.

That question was pointless. Yashin has openly lived in Germany since he was freed in a prisoner swap last August.

In December 2022, Yashin received a sentence of eight and a half years in prison on charges of spreading "fake news" about the Russian military's alleged crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

"Let's remember that the law on foreign agents is Nazi and that pressing the families of opposition figures is despicable, while the true foreign agent, who is turning our country into a Chinese gas pump, is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," Yashin said on Telegram.

Valeriya, the Put Domoi activist, told Kontur about her firsthand knowledge of this kind of pressure.

The majority of Put Domoi members have suffered harassment by security agencies, which regularly search them and their residences, she said.

Valeriya expects to leave Russia this year.

"The authorities are doing whatever they want, and no one will find out the truth about it," she said. "It reminds me somehow of the Inquisition ... even if there are no obvious reasons to make an arrest, that doesn't stop the security agencies."