here were three groups of people in Russia, three professions, who most actively resisted Putin’s regime. Opposition politicians, journalists, and lawyers. It would be appropriate to include both human rights activists and lawyers in this third group without paying much attention to their formal status – but more on that later.
First, Putin crushed the politicians. They were either killed, like the famous Russian politician Boris Nemtsov (killed near the Kremlin walls) and the flamboyant opposition leader Alexei Navalny (presumably killed in a pretrial detention center), jailed, like Vladimir Putin’s critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, or forced out of the country. At the least, they were simply labeled foreign agents and silenced.
Note that I am not talking about the quality of politicians now: They could be better or worse than Putin, like, say, Girkin-Strelkov (a Russian military and political figure, publicist), but nevertheless, they represented an alternative to him and fought him to the best of their ability.
At the same time, there was persecution of journalists. In the early 2010s, the expression “links of the fucking chain” appeared: This was a term for editorial offices that were closed due to political pressure. And after the editorial offices, the time came for specific journalists, and again, everything is known about this: murders, arrests, being forced out of the country, and being declared foreign agents.
At one time – for a very short time – it seemed that since there are more journalists and they are persecuted a little slower, journalism will replace politics for us. Yes, journalists will not fight for power, but they will at least start talking about what is normal, reminding that stealing and killing, even if you are a deputy or president, is still not allowed.
Alas, the illusion quickly dissipated. Politicians, of course, became journalists, rare among them did not start their own YouTube channel. But this did not help anyone: The repressions crushed both of them.
In Russia, there remained a third category – lawyers.
Arrests Of Lawyers And Their Declarations As Foreign Agents
Judge for yourself, this is very logical: politicians fight for a change of power, journalists talk about it, lawyers defend the two previous groups. This triangle should exist in any healthy society, this is how the opposition works. And that is why, as I said, they came for lawyers.
Let us start with lawyers themselves – that is, people who have a formal status that allows them not only to work in courts, but also to enjoy a certain protection from the state. A lawyer cannot simply be searched and jailed, the community will stand up for him (in theory). So it seemed until a certain moment.
And it is true: lawyers held out longer than anyone else. But they still fell victim to pressure from the authorities.
It all started with the fact that they were driven into the clutches of a professional corporation. After all, there is nothing to take away from a politician or a journalist – no one appoints them politicians or journalists. And the status of a lawyer is granted by the state, albeit indirectly – through the bar associations. Therefore, it turned out to be enough to write the law on advocacy in such a way that the leadership of the chambers would be vitally interested in pleasing not the lawyers, but the state. And that is what happened.
The irremovable leadership of lawyers in each of the regions of Russia sits for many years. What can we say about the federal leadership, which essentially elects itself? Corruption flourishes in such a closed system, and any freethinking lawyer turns out to be the main enemy – after all, he advocates for the change of power. And not only the state.
So, all those measures that were applied to politicians and journalists were also useful in relation to lawyers.
It turned out that it was very easy to put them in jail. It all started with a provincial lawyer: he was attacked by police officers in the late 2010s, and he himself was accused of the attack. Then there was imprisonment, but the pressure increased – and attempts at public support came to naught. As a result, the provincial lawyer was declared a foreign agent, stripped of his status, and forced out of the country.
After that, arrests of lawyers and their declarations as foreign agents followed one after another.
[…]
https://www.memri.org/reports/russia-now-theyve-come-lawyers
https://www.icj.org/russian-federation-authorities-must-immediately-release-lawyer-maria-bontsler/
https://www.avocatrus.org/en/post/we-demand-to-stop-persecution-and-release-lawyer-maria-bontsler
https://concert.navalny.com/en
