Russian Authorities Detain Opposition Leader Aleksei Navalny’s Lawyers

Three of Alexei Navalny’s lawyers were detained on accusations of extremism (Wikimedia Commons).

Russian authorities detained three lawyers on October 13 who defended Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny in court. Russian authorities are investigating the lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Aleksei Liptser, for participating in an extremist community, providing legal assistance to an extremist community, and ensuring regular transfers of information between leaders and participants of an extremist community. Russian police also raided the offices of the law firm where another one of Navalny’s lawyers, Olga Mikhailova, works, but she is currently outside of Russia. A fifth lawyer currently defending Navalny, Aleksandr Fedulov, fled Russia following the news of his colleagues’ arrests.

The three arrested lawyers are currently being held in pre-trial detention as the investigation against them unfolds. Authorities thoroughly searched the lawyers’ homes for anything related to Navalny. Liptser, one of Navalny’s lawyers, was arrested despite the fact he stopped representing Navalny in summer 2022.

Putin has been trying to silence Navalny by any means necessary for years. In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in what Navalny and Western leaders called an assassination attempt by the Russian government. Navalny was arrested in January 2021 when he returned to Russia after being treated for the poisoning in Germany. Soon after, his political organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was outlawed and authorities began targeting its activists.

However, Navalny got messages out while in prison through his lawyers. This was his only means of doing so, since authorities censored letters and did not always let them through, banned Navalny from having phone calls, and stopped anyone except his lawyers from visiting him. 

Many supporters of Navalny argue the government is purposely trying to isolate Navalny from the outside world, since without his legal team, he cannot get information into or out of his penal colony. Authorities even turned off the radio in his cell to isolate him further.

Navalny’s lawyers helped him file lawsuits against the Russian government and legal challenges to the conditions he was subjected to in prison. Now he is left without legal assistance in the cases currently pending against him. For example, there is currently a court case seeking to transfer Navalny to a “special-regime” penal colony, which is the highest security level in Russian prisons.

The arrests also sparked concerns among Russia’s legal community, with over 200 defense lawyers signing a petition denouncing the climate of fear the Russian government was imposing on them. Lawyers across Russia plan to hold a strike from October 25-27 to protest the arrests. Though persecuting defense lawyers of political prisoners is new for Russia, neighboring Belarus has employed the practice for much longer. In fact, nearly a quarter of Belarusian lawyers had their licenses arbitrarily revoked from 2020 to August 2023 under the country’s strict laws. Some lawyers worry the same decimation of the legal profession may soon come to Russia.

Navalny himself compared Putin’s policies to those of the USSR, saying, “As during the Soviet times, they persecute not only political activists and turn them into political prisoners, but also their lawyers.”