The motions were sent to the Moscow Bar Association, First Department reported, citing a source in the chamber. Human rights advocates have identified only one of the six: Nikolai Polozov.
Polozov represented the Pussy Riot members, Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, politician Sergei Udaltsov and Crimean Tatar activists in Russian courts.
According to Justice Ministry documents, Polozov left for Turkey in March 2022 and spent more than a year abroad. He now lives in Ukraine, practices law there and sits on the Council of the Free Russia Forum.
In December 2024 the Justice Ministry added Polozov to its register of "foreign agents." In 2025 he was placed on a wanted list and added to Rosfinmonitoring's list of "terrorists and extremists." In February he was sentenced in absentia to 8.5 years in a penal colony in a case over military "fakes," opened because of an interview about Bucha. Prosecutors also sought to open a case against him for failing to fulfill the duties of a "foreign agent."
The ministry's demands rest on amendments to the law on legal practice that Vladimir Putin signed in April 2024. They allow a lawyer to be stripped of status if he has lived outside Russia for more than a year.
In August 2025 the FSB sent the Justice Ministry a list of eight such lawyers. Besides Polozov, it included First Department lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, whose status the court began hearing a claim to terminate in early October. First Department founder Ivan Pavlov said that if bar associations do not comply with the ministry's demand, the agency pursues the loss of status through the courts.
In May the Justice Ministry for the first time won a license revocation through the courts despite a bar association's decision. The case concerned Moscow lawyers Yulia Tai, Dmitry Provodin and Alexei Basistov. Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, noted that Basistov left Russia for treatment, while Provodin and Tai left because of criminal threats.
Novaya Gazeta Europe previously found that 133 lawyers became defendants in criminal cases in Russia in 2025. Over five years their number has grown by more than one and a half times.