Lawyers defending chronically ill political prisoner undergo searches in Kaliningrad

Three defence lawyers in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea were subjected to searches on Wednesday, sources have told Novaya Europe.

It is not yet clear why the lawyers — Maria Bontsler, Roman Morozov and a third, who has not been named — were searched or whether they now face criminal charges.

According to the regional liberal Yabloko party, which Morozov is a member of, Bontsler was “suspected of treason”, while Morozov had his home searched as the investigation said he was Bontsler’s “partner”.

The investigators also asked Morozov about his alleged ties to Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group that was liquidated in December 2021, just months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Morozov plans to contest the search in court.

Bontsler and Morozov have a high public profile for defending activist and pensioner, Igor Baryshnikov, who was convicted of spreading “false information” about the Russian military in June 2023.

Baryshnikov was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, despite being in critically poor health. His 96-year-old mother, a Holocaust survivor whom Baryshnikov took care of, died within two months of his arrest. He was not given permission to attend her funeral.

Bontsler is one of the few lawyers in Kaliningrad willing to defend clients facing politically motivated prosecution. She was fined 60,000 rubles (€850) in June 2022, for spreading “false information” about the military army for two speeches she had made in court in March in which she defended people who had been detained at anti-war rallies and spoke out against Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

In 2024, Morozov was nominated to stand as governor for the liberal Yabloko party at elections in the Kaliningrad region. Prior to moving to Kaliningrad, Morozov had lived in the city of Vologda, in northwestern Russia, where he organised protests as an activist, including in support of murdered opposition politician Alexey Navalny.