Brutal Russian reprisals against prominent lawyer defending Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners

Russia is continuing its repression against courageous lawyers representing Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners, with the victim this time Alexei Ladin.  The latter has stated that he will be appealing against this unwarranted ruling and that he will continue to represent his clients as much as he can.  Ladin is the fourth lawyer tirelessly defending victims of Russian repression in occupied Ukraine to be stripped of his licence, following similar reprisals against three Crimean Tatar lawyers, as well as repression against others.

Ladin, a Russian, registered as a defence lawyer with the Tyumen Bar Association, and it was the commission of that body which, on 25 July, deprived him of his status and, therefore, his ability to fully represent clients at all stages of criminal proceedings.   It was the Russian-controlled Crimean ‘police’ who, in October 2023, announced plans to get the lawyer stripped of his licence.  While they claimed, and the Tyumen commission accepted, that Ladin had ‘violated lawyer ethics’ because of the recent 14-year jail sentence and fine imposed over Facebook posts, there had been no justification for the latter.  It seems likely, in fact, that the prosecutions over social media posts were always merely a pretext with the aim from the outset to deprive political prisoners of another lawyer and to send a menacing message to other lawyers of what they will face if they carry out their duties properly. 

Ladin was detained on 13 October 2023, just after he arrived back from Rostov (Russia) where he was representing Yaroslav Zhuk, a Ukrainian civilian abducted from occupied Melitopol and Ukrainian POW Pavlo Zaporozhets who was illegally seized while Russia was occupying Kherson. 

Officers from Russia’s so-called ‘centre for countering extremism’ carried out a search of the lawyer’s apartment in Sevastopol, removing material containing information which should be strictly between Ladin and his clients and committing numerous other violations.

It was probably deliberate that the charges seemed so evidently absurd.  The pretext used to get Ladin jailed for 14 days was a reposted picture by Crmean Tatar political prisoner Ismail Ramazanov back in 2018.  Not only had the Russian occupation ‘enforcement bodies’ waited over five years to react to this, but they also came up with a demonstrably false claim to justify accusing Ladin of having posted the symbol of a ‘prohibited organization’ (under Article 20.3 § 1 of Russia’s code of administrative offences).  The image which Ramazanov had drawn while imprisoned intertwined the national symbols of Ukraine and of the Crimean Tatar people which even Russia has yet to ‘prohibit’.  In bringing the charge, Roman Filatov from the ‘Centre against extremism’ falsely claimed that this was the symbol of the Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, a peaceful, civilian and no longer active organization which Russia’s supreme court, without any grounds, declared ‘terrorist’ in June 2022.  The nonsensical nature of this charge is demonstrated in the fact that it was used against Ramazanov’s lawyer, five years later, but not against Ramazanov, although Russia’s persecution of alleged members of the Battalion began while Ramazanov was in custody.

Filatov also drew up a second administrative protocol under Article 20.3.3 § 1 of Russia’s administrative code, one of four new criminal and administrative charges rushed into law ten days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  This article claims to punish those who ‘discredit’ the Russian armed forces and others involved in Russia’s war against Ukraine.  It is, almost invariably, used as a silencing weapon against those who express anti-war and / or pro-Ukrainian views. The charge was over comments posted anonymously, although possibly from a lawyer in Moscow, about the war.  This mentions that there “are again reports that Ukrainian cities are being bombed. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have caught the pilot of one of Putin’s bomber planes.  He lies that he didn’t know what sites he was bombing. They show unexploded cluster munitions RS30 ‘Smerch’ and ‘Hurricane’, lying in the middle of Kharkiv. Their use is a war crime since they guarantee indiscriminate strikes in built-up city areas”.  This was reposted by Alexei Ladin in March 2022, under the hashtag #НЕТВОЙНЕ [#No to the war]. 

Ladin was brought before the occupation ‘Kievsky district court’ in Simferopol, with two separate ‘hearings’ during which ‘judges’ Alexei Mikitiuk and Yekaterina Chumachenko found him ‘guilty’ of both charges.  A reposted image from one of his clients was thus used to justify a 14-day term of administrative arrest, while Ladin was fined 45 thousand roubles over the above anti-war repost.

Russia has thus far prosecuted and, in almost all cases, briefly jailed six lawyers in occupied Crimea who actively defend Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners.  There have been four attempts to have these same lawyers stripped of their licence, with only the attempt against Emil Kurbedinov rejected.

Emil Kurbedinov was the first to be imprisoned back in 2017 on absurd charges over a video posted before Russia’s annexation of Crimea.  He has on a number of occasions since been detained or faced other forms of harassment, including once over the same video used to jail him in 2017. 

Edem Semedlyaev had also faced harassment earlier and was then, in November 2021, jailed on grotesque charges for 12 days (see  Crimean Tatar lawyer jailed and fined for defending client and refusing to strip naked ).  

The offensive against lawyers properly representing political prisoners has gained in intensity, with three Crimean Tatar lawyers – Lilia Hemedzhy; her husband Rustem Kyamilev and Nazim Sheikhmambetov all stripped of their licence in August 2022 (see: Russia strips three Crimean Tatar lawyers of their licence to prevent them defending political prisoners

The occupation regime is overtly seeking to silence one of the main sources of truthful information about its repression on occupied territory, while escalating the methods of terror and persecution.  Please help by publicising such methods and, if possible, contact lawyers’ organizations in your country.