Prisoner of conscience

Dadin’s Law

Born in the town of Zheleznodorozhny, outside Moscow, in 1982, Dadin had an unremarkable upbringing, with nothing to suggest the radical path he would follow later in life. After studying metallurgy at the Moscow State Institute of Steel and Alloys, Dadin completed his compulsory military service in the Russian Navy, after which he lived in Moscow with his family.

Looking back on his politicisation during the mass protests against Putin’s return to the presidency in 2011–12, Dadin himself admitted that prior to those events he had been “completely unaware that there was a protest movement in Russia”. 

However, after United Russia won the 2011 parliamentary election by employing what Dadin described as “powerful electoral fraud”, he “began taking part in opposition protests and volunteered to be an election monitor”. 

It was during the 2012 Russian presidential election, which ultimately saw Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency, that Dadin experienced first hand the state-sanctioned violence that has always underpinned Putin’s rule. Along with his other election observers, Dadin was removed from a polling station by police and beaten. In the following two years, Dadin was charged with 30 administrative offences lodged against him for organising protests. 

In December 2014, Dadin organised a pro-Ukrainian rally in Moscow, which later formed part of his indictment under a repressive new law that introduced prison sentences for those attending “unauthorised” rallies and protests. 

After several months of house arrest, Dadin was found guilty and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a penal colony in December 2015, becoming the first person ever to be convicted under the legislation. Russian Human Rights NGO Memorial Human Rights Centre and Amnesty International both recognised Dadin as a prisoner of conscience, while the article under which he was charged has since then been dubbed “Dadin’s Law”. 

On the inside

While serving his sentence in a prison colony in Karelia, a republic in northwestern Russia, Dadin went on a hunger strike to protest the torture and bullying to which prisoners were subjected. In a letter to his wife published by Russian independent outlet Meduza in autumn 2016, Dadin described the prison staff as a “mafia” and accused the entire colony administration of being complicit in the torture of prisoners, which he said happened “regularly, several times a day”.

In the letter, Dadin detailed his own experiences of torture during his imprisonment: “The staff came, shackled my hands behind my back and hung me by my handcuffs. Being suspended caused terrible pain in my wrists, my elbow joints twisted, and I felt wild back pain. I hung there for half an hour. Then they took off my underwear and said that they would bring in another prisoner to rape me if unless I agreed to end my hunger strike.” 

Following the publication of Dadin’s letter, the Federal Penitentiary Service confirmed to Novaya Gazeta that physical force had indeed been used against Dadin as he had “rudely refused to leave his cell or to position himself for a search and began manhandling prison staff”.

Though an investigation into Dadin’s Karelian prison colony found no evidence of wrongdoing, its warden Sergey Kossiev was later prosecuted and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Dadin was transferred to another penal colony in southern Siberia’s remote Altai region. 

Although Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the article under which Dadin has been charged did not violate the constitution, the country’s Supreme Court ultimately overturned his conviction in February 2017, setting Dadin free after 15 months in prison.

As unbelievable a move as that now sounds in today’s Russia, a Moscow court then went on to award Dadin 2.2 million rubles (around €34,000 at the time) in damages for his wrongful prosecution. 

Crossing over

Following his release, Dadin remained in Moscow until March 2022, when he moved to Poland shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There, he attempted to enlist in the Siberian Battalion, a volunteer unit within the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which took over a year to accept him into its ranks. He reportedly joined the Freedom of Russia Legion in December of the same year. 

“I decided to volunteer because at the moment, this is the only opportunity for me to join the Ukrainian army to directly confront Russian fascism with a weapon in my hands,” Dadin told Novaya Gazeta Europe at the time, adding that in doing so he was also attempting to atone for “the crimes of my country, for which I am responsible as a Russian citizen.”

Recognising that Russia had “criminally, completely unreasonably and unfairly attacked Ukraine”, Dadin attributed his decision to join the AFU to his growing conviction that armed resistance was “the only effective remaining way for any decent person, and for a Russian in particular, to resist Russian crimes”.

“I’ve realised that that’s it, I can’t do it anymore. I have no moral strength to try to achieve something peacefully,” Dadin told independent news outlet Mediazona. “I realised that the only thing left for me was either to go out there, and let them kill or imprison me in Russia … or to go to Ukraine and confront this terrible evil with a weapon in my hands.”

Dadin, who was often referred to by his call sign, Gandhi, whom he told Mediazona had inspired him as a symbol of nonviolent resistance. Explaining the apparent contradiction, Dadin said that while he had initially been against violence, he had taken up arms as “a last resort” to stop Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.

“The last resort taken to stop a murderer is killing the murderer,” he said. “Otherwise, if I don’t stop the murders, I will be an accomplice.”

Nevertheless, Dadin said that he was “generally against murder”, preferring to capture Russian soldiers and pro-Russia mercenaries rather than killing them because “they can be exchanged” and as it was possible to “save very good people” in Russian captivity.

Hoping to inspire anyone wishing to fight the Putin regime by taking up arms, Dadin told Novaya Gazeta Europe that he planned to establish a workable mechanism that would allow Russians to serve with the AFU, noting, however, that the AFU was generally “reluctant to permit Russians to fight on their behalf”.

Dadin argued that very few Russians fought on behalf of Ukraine, “not because of the initial lack of people who are willing to do so” but because it was nearly impossible for Russians to enter Ukraine. “Those wishing to fight for Ukraine actually managing to reach Ukraine remains the exception rather than the rule,” he explained.

In his last message to Novaya Gazeta Europe before his death, Dadin wrote: “The most important thing is that I was and am still a human being, who acted and continues to act according to my conscience. Everything else is secondary.”