Judge Alexander Marochkin handed down the verdict, with time spent in pre-trial detention counted day for day. Bontsler, 66, has been in custody since May 2025.
After the sentence was read out, Bontsler said she does not admit guilt. She said that convicting an innocent person is a terrible crime and that she would pray for her executioners.
Asked about her health, the lawyer said she is holding on only through self-respect. Her legs are giving out, and no medical examinations are planned, she said.
The trial was held behind closed doors. The judge removed Bontsler from the courtroom, allowing her to speak only in a final statement, and barred all three defense lawyers retained under agreement — Ilya Sidorov, Alexander Chauzov and Roman Morozov. The reason was a dispute over the procedure for access to materials the court considers to contain state secrets. Bontsler and the lawyers insisted there was no classified information in the case.
The prosecutor also accused Morozov of illegally recording the closed hearing. After the defense lawyers were barred, the court appointed Bontsler a state lawyer, Anastasia Richter. Bontsler asked for the hearing at which she gave her final statement to be held in public, but the court refused.
According to the investigation, in 2024 Bontsler passed Ukraine's intelligence service information about officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate for the Kaliningrad Region. Those officers investigated cases of espionage, treason, terrorism and confidential cooperation with foreigners in which Bontsler defended the accused. Lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, representing Bontsler's interests, maintained that the information was not classified and had been voiced at open court hearings.
The case was opened under the article on confidential cooperation with a foreign state (Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code). In March 2026 the charge was reclassified to treason. According to Current Time, the basis was an expert assessment by the Kaliningrad FSB directorate — which, in the words of lawyer Sidorov, contained no new facts.
The pretext for the prosecution was cited as correspondence with a person the FSB considers an employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Bontsler said she did not know of his possible ties to the security services and that their communication could only have been connected to her legal work. The content of the correspondence and the expert assessment were not shown to the defense.
In her final statement, Bontsler said the prosecution was driven by her human rights and legal work. She said she had exposed torture and falsification of evidence by FSB directorate officers, and that the trial had become a reprisal for defending people regardless of the labels the state had attached to them.
According to OVD-Info, Bontsler has been diagnosed in pre-trial detention with hypertensive disease affecting the heart and a high risk of stroke. The defense said the lawyer nearly died because of inconsistent prescriptions of the medicines she was given. In July 2025 the UN Human Rights Committee demanded that she be provided with medical care.
Maria Bontsler has worked in human rights for more than 30 years. In 1995 she founded the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of the Kaliningrad Region. Among her clients was Igor Baryshnikov, who received seven and a half years in a penal colony in a case over military "fakes". In 2022 Bontsler herself was fined twice for "discrediting" the army — for statements in court in which she called the war a war.