28 October 2024
Attorney Ivan Pavlov on the extremes of the judicial system, the ban on his profession, and the inspiring minority who will always fight. And sometimes win
by Mira Livadina
Source: Novaya Gazeta Evropa
Over the last decade, Ivan Pavlov has created a successful community of lawyers and human rights activists specializing in state treason and espionage cases. Initially, law enforcement took a long hard look at Pavlov and his colleagues with their nonstandard thinking and confidence in trials. Then they could barely restrain themselves. And then they pushed them out of the country. Ivan Pavlov was forced to leave Russia back in autumn 2021, after a criminal case was opened against him for disclosing facts from the preliminary invesigation into the case against journalist Ivan Safronov for state treason. In addition, they added Pavlov to the registry of foreign agents, thereby depriving him—an attorney whose specialty is state secrets—of access to those very same state secrets. They also suspended his status as an attorney. Team 29, which Pavlov founded—the very association that helped those charged with state treason and espionage—was forced to shut down. True, soon after it was reborn as First Department, but Ivan Pavlov had already pulled back from its day-to-day administration.
Today he lives and works in emigration. This summer he was arrested in absentia over failure to comply with foreign agent legislation.
Novaya Gazeta Evropa spoke with Ivan Pavlov about political prisoners, law enforcement, the Russian courts, the ban on attorneys and journalists practicing their profession, the wonderful Russia of the future, and his dog Izzy, who is always with him.
— Ivan, the news literally just came in that the St. Petersburg Municipal Court has withdrawn the resolution to have you arrested in absentia in the case “on failure to comply with the responsibilities of a ‘foreign agent.’” What happened?
— Yes, it was an outburst of justice. Moreover, the decision has gone into effect. Certain mistakes were probably made initially that the investigator is going to try to correct. Whether he does so or not is impossible to say. I will be observing the situation’s development from a safe distance and following the proceedings continuously.
— Your Telegram channel is called “Pavlov’s Dog’s Channel” @kanalsobakipavlova. You often post photos with your black Labrador. Is she still in Russia?
— My dog died, unfortunately. Her name was Izzy. In 2021, she emigrated with me. She was 15 years old, a grown girl. She managed to see the world. I don’t think many people travel as much in their lifetime as she did. In 2021, she was driven from Petersburg to Tbilisi, and in 2023, we drove together from Tbilisi, through Turkey, and all the way across Europe to Prague. She was a very wise dog. She died here, in Prague. After her, the Telegram channel remained.
— And what have you been doing in these more than three years of forced emigration?
— You know, each person has to do what he can. If you leave and want to continue to be useful in the cause you served, then a place will be found for you in the ranks. A place was found for me, too. I continue to collaborate on the projects I founded, but I have really pulled back from the day-to-day administration. This is connected with the fact that many projects have in fact come up (not only First Department), plus I am actively continuing to consult and support the attorneys who are working inside Russia. As for my legal activities personally, formally I cannot be involved in them since my attorney status in Russia has been suspended, but this does not keep me from “coaching.” There is demand for the experience and knowledge I acquired over long years of working in the profession. I’ve been in it since 1995. Next year it will be 30 years. And for me it’s important now that this knowledge and experience are in demand by young people, that it’s being passed along. It’s another question that I, like many of my colleagues, cannot say openly right now which cases I am working on.
Today, 90 percent of the work of human rights activists and lawyers has switched from ‘public’ rails. We use a secure format, and we have stopped publicizing who we are defending. Right now, openness entails risks for those we are defending as well as for the attorneys themselves who are working in Russia on those cases where we figure as silent consultants and assistants. I repeat, I cannot cite examples of cases we are working on, but I will say that sometimes there are positive results. For example, recently we were able to wrest someone charged under Article 275 from the system’s clutches. His case is analogous to the well-known case of Ksenia Karelina, a U.S. citizen sentenced to 12 years who was detained when she went to visit her parents in Ekaterinburg. Right in the airport, they examined her phone and found on her banking app a transfer of $50 to the account of a Ukrainian fund. And on that basis they charged her with state treason and sentenced her to 12 years’ imprisonment. And now we have been able to save someone who transferred money for humanitarian purposes in exactly the same way from the same sentence. The day after we took him out of the country, they went to his home to do a search. Again, we’re not going to name names. This confidentiality, I repeat, is a pledge of safety not only for the people we are trying to defend but for everyone involved in their defense, primarily the lawyers and attorneys who are performing their professional duty while inside the country.
— One way or another, are all the cases you and your colleagues are working on connected with that avalanche of state treason cases that appeared after 24 February 2022?
— Yes, as before, we are attempting to defend people who are being tried in closed hearings. These are usually cases connected with state security, where the Chekists can commit total tyranny under cover of secrecy. The task of my First Department colleagues and me is to attempt to keep our hand on the pulse and follow closely those closed trials, of which there are getting to be more and more in Russia.
— By the way, here are fresh statistics from Important Stories on these kinds of cases: in 2024, the number of people convicted under the state treason article rose by a factor of 3.5, and right now this is 52 people. This is the most it’s been in the last nine years. It’s hard to surprise you, nonetheless, I will ask, which state treason case since February 2022 has shocked you personally most of all?
— The cases of donors to Ukrainian funds. Of course, this is the absolute bottom of the barrel. People are being handed monstrous sentences for a purely humanitarian initiative. Let me emphasize: not for donations for military purposes but when people simply want to support a Ukrainian humanitarian fund. One person transfers a thousand rubles, another, like Karelina, $50, and someone else some other sum. And for this, Russian citizens are simply sent to prison camp for many long years. The practice of imprisonment for donations shocks me perhaps most of all. This is a trend that has everything to do with the war, of course.
– Could you say that Article 275 is a ‘rubber’ law, like Article 159 on fraud was in its day?
– Yes and no. Article 275 has been a ‘rubber’ law since before the war. The thing is that the ‘rubber’ law didn’t always bend before the war. It is only in the last two-and-a-half years that its ‘rubberiness’ has served a purpose. It has now become crystal clear that the ‘rubber’ is in play because a third form of government treason has been introduced. We had previously warned all of our colleagues and journalists about this new legislation: ‘Look, this norm is bad news. It could come into force in the near future. The norm asserts: “High treason includes any assistance rendered to a foreign organisation in activities to the detriment of the Russian Federation”.’
In short, almost anything can get lumped into this classification. This is what the security officers have used to pile up their court cases.
It is however unlikely that Article 275 will become commonplace. We do, of course, hear about these cases often, but there can never be a huge quantity of them. It’s just that there’s currently a political demand; we are at war after all. There are external enemies, but the people need to be shown on TV that there are also internal enemies. And the demand for this fight against internal enemies, I must stress, comes from the top of the pyramid. The demand is satisfied by FSB agents, and it stands to reason that each individual supplying this demand is counting on a certain reward. If the number of cases were to balloon, then they would be a devaluation in terms of both those demanding them and those providing them. Therefore, there aren’t thousands of cases. Before the war started, we counted around 100 cases that had been commonly known about since the introduction of the Russian Criminal code in 1996. Over the course of the war, the number of cases has increased not tenfold, but certainly threefold. Over 100 cases have definitely been filed under Article 275.
– And the citizens arrested under Article 275 come from completely different sections of society: from students to elderly citizens.
– Yes, they come from all over the spectrum. That being said, academics crop up frequently. The scholarly demographic has always been and still remains an easy target for security forces. Academics are regularly sent to Lefortovo prison on a charge of government treason. This pre-war trend hasn’t changed since the war began.
– Over the last three years, the lives of legal practitioners and independent journalists – all those who are in some way connected to human rights – have changed dramatically. Many such as yourself work from abroad, and many have been arrested. Many have been labelled ‘foreign agents,’ and have lost the right to work in Russia. Many are under investigation, and many are wanted by the Russian government and have been arrested in absentia. Which social demographic has suffered the greatest loss over the last two-and-a-half years in your estimation?
– Information content-makers have suffered the most; people with their own audience who create and release information independent of the government. Journalism as a profession has taken a hit. Legal professionals have suffered who protected their clients by legal means as their position demands (and I would include appealing to mass media for help among those legal means). Lawyers who defended their clients in political trials have suffered. Lawyers who asked the authorities unusual questions and cast them in a bad light have suffered. Do you remember how they caught Putin lying about Ivan Safronov’s case? Safronov’s lawyers suffered as a result, causing the rest of the legal community to fear for themselves. The legal community is unfortunately not in the best shape right now. What’s clear is that if you constantly terrorise people, then out of fear they will stop what they were doing, and the majority will no longer participate in anything dangerous. But as with the journalistic profession, the legal profession’s worth lies in its active minority.
And that minority never ceases to inspire.
They might not be currently noticeable, but I see the tyro legals currently working in law and am sure that the profession has life in it yet. We just need to make it through these dark days. We are working with young people. I can already see the human foundations upon which the new legal profession of the wonderful Russia of the future will be built.
— Do you personally believe in the wonderful Russia of the future?
— You know, maybe. At least that’s how it seems to me. But every day I do something, every day I work to get closer to the moment when I will be able to return, maybe not to the wonderful Russia of the future, but at least to a Russia where we can all build this wonderful Russia of the future together.
— I saw a picture of you on Facebook. It was from 1997. You were appearing in court when there were still lay judges. Thirty years later, your peers who have remained in Russia are trying to do their work in the courts in totally unbearable conditions. Every second political trial on fabricated charges is held in camera. And if the proceedings are open, they’re always held in small rooms so only a handful of journalists and members of the public can attend. Video broadcasting, which used to be allowed, is now refused. And the recent practice in Moscow of publishing the Criminal Code articles under which citizens have been remanded in custody on the website of the Moscow courts has been abandoned for a month now. Meanwhile the courts’ press services simply refuse to tell journalists verbally what the articles are. What is your guess: what extremes will the judicial system in Russia reach?
— Sometimes we’re inclined to evaluate shades of gray. But I don’t want to. Before the war started, there were a great deal of questions and grievances regarding the Russian judicial system. But after the war started, everything has become clear. The courts became tribunals that rubber-stamp sentences to please those with political power. All these new offenses — fake news, discrediting, connections to undesirable organizations, foreign agent articles — they were all readily embraced by the courts. Their decisions are predetermined. What’s important for the citizen here is just to not be an easy target. If you want to fight, you have to stop the defeatist internal attitude of, ‘Just let them imprison me.’ No, you don’t need to be imprisoned.
If you want to be useful, continue being useful. You’ll find your place in the ranks. Staying and going to prison is an impermissible luxury for an activist today.
Of course, we will keep bringing you packages with food and other things, sending lawyers, and working to try and get you out. But these resources could be spent on something else. That’s what everyone who’s deciding whether to get put in jail or leave the country should consider. After you’ve crossed that line, you need to understand that you have to protect yourself as an active part of the fight. That’s why you need to leave the country and work from a distance. But, again, with one purpose — to hasten the moment when we all meet at departures at some foreign airport, to fly back to Russia.
— What advice would you give to journalists, activists, or even your colleagues, who often want to visit their relatives in Russia or take care of personal matters, and they enter the country — and there’s a surprise waiting for them in the form of a criminal case and arrest.
— First and foremost, of course, they should check to see if the authorities have anything on them. Nowadays there are multiple ways to do this. I’m not even going to single out just First Department, people are always contacting us. And please do, we don’t turn anyone away. There are many different human rights projects you can consult for advice regarding safe entry into Russia or urgent exit from the country. It’s best to reach out in advance so those with the information can provide thorough advice. After all, each individual case comes with its own risks. And these risks can be used to decide whether or not to travel to Russia. If you do, you need to prepare, which includes preparing your tech, your phones and computers, so that sensitive information won’t fall into the hands of the Russian intelligence services. All the security officers do is look for ‘kompromat’ [damaging information] on people; they look for information that could be grounds for initiating a criminal case. Remember: Russians living in other countries are of particular interest to border guards. The security officers wait for you at the border so they can take you into their office, talk to you, and find out, in minute detail, what you’ve been up to this whole time abroad.
There are human rights activists who are very familiar with the current border control process. I would strongly recommend that anyone who wants to visit relatives ask these activists for advice.
Just to get a realistic idea of whether or not it’s worth going. Sometimes it’s easier and safer to meet with relatives on neutral ground. Thank God there are still flights to Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan.
— Since this summer, new foreign agents have increasingly been fined for failing to request to be entered in the register of foreign agents. What’s going on here? Well, it seems you must a) inform on yourself and b) do so when you don’t even know you have been added to the register. How is that compliant with the law?
— Initially, the law on foreign agents did not include the obligation to inform on yourself. The first foreign agent was only recognised two years after the legislation on foreign agents was adopted. The law was passed in 2012, but its effect was only felt in 2014. This is due to systemic inertia. The system is quite unwieldy, and law enforcement practices don’t evolve particularly fast. And when an initiative does gain momentum, things start to happen like we’re seeing now with the fines. In this case, some egghead lawyer at the Ministry of Justice saw an opportunity in the foreign agent legislation, slapped his forehead, and exclaimed “Why on Earth didn’t we do this before? Let’s do it!” They started battering foreign agents as soon as they were recognised as such, on the very basis that they hadn’t asked to be entered in the register themselves. The courts took up this practice soon enough. In fact, it had previously been applied to organisations. When organisations were being recognised as foreign agents in 2015–2016, reports would likewise be drafted against them straight away, stating that they should have informed on themselves but did not do so. Now this is being extended to individuals. They were hesitant at first but then, as usual, some career-minded official brought the trap to their attention. And the rest is history.
— Have you been fined yet?
— Not me, no. I’ve been a foreign agent for ages already. It’s too late now. I was added to the register in November 2021, and the statute of limitations on not reporting myself have long since passed. But who knows? They may yet fine me if they want to. I wouldn’t be surprised. What does surprise me at the moment are the decisions that go the other way, like when they overturned the decision to take me into custody over non-compliance with the foreign agent laws. At the same time, I’m full of admiration for the professional work of my fellow lawyers and advocates. Even in such conditions and in cases like this, which many say are hopeless, they are able to eke out victory in the Russian courts. I tried to be like that myself when I practised inside Russia. I’m just so glad that such amazing professionals continue to work in Russia!
— The decision of the St Petersburg City Court almost coincided with the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights. You and 107 other citizens and organisations who had been declared “foreign agents” in Russia were each awarded 10,000 euros. Strasbourg recognised that in declaring you “foreign agents”, the Russian state had violated your right to freedom of expression.
— You know, I wasn’t surprised by the ECtHR decision. It was quite predictable, unlike the decision of the St Petersburg court.
— And what’s your response to sceptics who ask, what is the point of ECtHR decisions for Russian citizens, when they are not going to be implemented in their homeland anyway? It’s not that the money isn’t being paid, but rather the fact the decree itself isn’t being implemented.
— It isn’t about money, of course. It’s about the age-old question of what is fair and what isn’t. And the standard of justice here is an international tribunal. The fact that decisions aren’t being implemented right now is neither here nor there. It’s ok; we can wait. I am very much in favour of human progress. I believe that it – progress – cannot be stopped, and Russia will return to the European fold regardless. There have been instances where certain European states have left the jurisdiction of the ECtHR only to later return. Russia, I fear, is still going through its adolescent phase, when a teenager’s voice breaks, and the hormones play up. But when the adolescent grows up a little, everything will settle in their mind. The European Court and the European Convention on Human Rights will surely be returned to us, and all the decisions that weren’t being implemented will have to be implemented. A whole load of cases will have to be retried in the national courts, with no European judges. The rehabilitation process will be re-run completely anew.
We have been through all of this before at one point or another, it’s just that Russia keeps falling into the same hole. The current state of the country just goes to show that the government still isn’t sufficiently mature. I am convinced that one day, this will all change.
Translated by Marian Schwartz, Friedrich Berg, Nina dePalma and Lindsay Munford
