Anti-Kremlin activist Ildar Dadin killed while fighting for Ukraine

Ildar Dadin, a Russian opposition activist who was fighting on the side of Ukraine, has been killed in action on the frontline, the Freedom of Russia Legion, a volunteer battalion within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) that Dadin was part of, confirmed to Russian independent outlet The Insider on Sunday.

Dadin’s death was first reported on Saturday by Russian journalist Ksenia Larina, who said he had died in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region. A spokeswoman for the Civic Council, an organisation that recruited Dadin to fight for the AFU, told the BBC on Sunday that Dadin “was, and he remains a hero”.

Dadin was the first person prosecuted for repeatedly violating peaceful assembly rules, under a repressive law introduced in Russia in 2014 which has since become known as “the Dadin Law”. In his final statement to court, Dadin said that he was born “a free man”, and “no thuggish officials enacting unconstitutional, criminal political laws” would apply them to him.

Dadin was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2015, but was released after serving fifteen months in February 2017 after the Russian Supreme Court overturned the conviction. Dadin went on hunger strike in prison, where he said he was tortured and beaten by guards.

In 2023, Dadin left for Ukraine to join the AFU, saying in an interview with Russian independent media outlet Mediazona that he no longer saw the point in peaceful protest in Russia.

“The fact that Russia unleashed the war against Ukraine, starting in 2014, is a consequence of people in Russia not taking the chance for peaceful non-violent protest,” Dadin told Mediazona, adding that there were “real opportunities” to “crush the Kremlin’s regime” in 2011–2012. “I now believe that the only effective way left is armed resistance,” Dadin said.