An Izhevsk District Court has fined a local lawyer 30,000 rubles (€360) over “discreditation” of the Russian army after the women she was consulting recorded their conversation and handed the recording over to the police, Adv Street reports.
Izhevsk residents Olga Dyageleva and Elena Scherbakova had a free consultation with the lawyer on 21 December 2022. They previously lost contact with their loved ones who were serving time in local penal colonies and the women thought that they could have been recruited by PMC Wagner.
The women decided to consult with a lawyer — they wanted to find out what could be done. They recorded their consultation with the woman to “relisten to it later on and remember what we talked about”.
However, during the consultation the lawyer expressed her negative opinion about the war in Ukraine, so the women handed the recording over to the police.
As a result, a protocol under the article on “discrediting” the Russian army was drawn up against the lawyer for her statement, “Go on then after your patriot [Putin — translator’s note]… to hell. Everyone from Russia who goes to the war — they’re murderers. Defending one’s Homeland. What Homeland?! Is this Homeland of yours in another country? Are you defending it? How?”
The lawyer herself told media outlet Adv Street that she does not remember making these specific remarks. “I was under stress, in shock, and I had low energy — due to the fact that I can’t actually help people. They tell me — how can this happen, there has to be a law… And I have to explain to them that there are no laws, there’s nothing,” she said.
The defence insisted that the lawyer’s office is not a public space, so the woman cannot be held liable. However, the court ruled that in theory anyone could have entered the office and heard her statements.
“If ‘kitchen talks’ will be legalised as public statements — that will lead to a very negative tendency. Everyone has their own thoughts. You shared them during a friendly conversation, someone recorded them — and here are public remarks. And there’s already a case drawn up against you,” lawyer Roman Kachanov, who represented the woman in court, says.
On 17 February, the Krasnodar region Council of the Lawyer Chamber removed Mikhail Benyash’s lawyer status. The formal reasoning were two posts on his Telegram channel — the first one about the lack of turnover when it comes to presidents of lawyer chambers and the second about the Justice Ministry’s actions when it comes to the “foreign agent” law.
According to the Justice Ministry, the posts are designed to “destabilise the socio-political situation”. The Qualification Commission and the Council of the Lawyer Chamber ruled that Benyash’s Telegram posts are connected to his lawyer activities and undermine the authority and trust towards advocacy.
Furthermore, the Krasnodar region Justice Ministry Directorate proposed the Lawyer Chamber strip Benyash of his status as a lawyer because of a post with “an analogy between Hitler and the Russian president”.
