On October 13, 2023, Russian authorities detained lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Aleksei Liptser and Igor Sergunin in Moscow. All three had represented Alexei Navalny at different stages of his imprisonment. In January 2025, a court convicted them of participation in an “extremist community.” On the third anniversary of their arrests, two are still serving prison sentences. The third has been released after completing his term.
The verdict came on January 17, 2025, fifteen months after the arrests. Navalny was already dead: Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced his death at a prison colony in Kharp on February 16, 2024. The criminal prosecution of his former defense lawyers continued.
Why the lawyers were arrested
Kobzev had represented Navalny since 2011. Liptser and Sergunin visited the opposition politician at a prison colony in Pokrov in 2021–2022; neither was still acting as his lawyer when he was arrested in October 2023. Searches on October 13 included the offices of the Dalet law association. That same day, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ordered all three held in pretrial detention.
They were charged under Part 2 of Article 282.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which criminalizes participation in an extremist community and carries penalties including two to six years in prison. Investigators alleged that the lawyers used their access to Navalny to pass messages to his associates, enabling him to continue directing a network that Russian authorities had designated extremist. Prosecutors treated the transmission of information from prison as the lawyers’ own participation in that community.
Memorial’s Support for Political Prisoners project recognized Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin as political prisoners. The group described the prosecution as an attempt to equate lawyers with their client and to exert pressure on independent legal professionals. FACTUM lists the case among cases involving Navalny and Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) supporters.
A trial behind closed doors
On November 16, 2023, the lawyers were added to Rosfinmonitoring’s register of terrorists and extremists. In June 2024, they were transferred from a Moscow detention center to Vladimir Region. Their defense teams sought to have the case heard in Moscow, but the trial proceeded in Petushki.
On September 12, 2024, the Petushinsky District Court began hearing the case on its merits. Judge Yulia Shilova granted a prosecution request to exclude journalists and the public. The justification was a letter from the Interior Ministry’s Center for Combating Extremism alleging that ACF representatives might stage provocations. Defense lawyers objected that the asserted threat was unsupported by specific evidence.
As a result, the public could not observe the examination of evidence or witness testimony firsthand. The defendants also took different positions: Sergunin admitted guilt and testified, while Kobzev and Liptser sought acquittal. The defense challenged the use of correspondence recovered from Sergunin’s phone and covert recordings of Navalny’s meetings with his lawyers, arguing that the material was protected by attorney–client confidentiality.
On January 17, 2025, Kobzev received five years and six months in a general-regime penal colony, Liptser five years, and Sergunin three years and six months. The court also barred all three from providing legal services for three years after their release.
What the defense challenged
During the appeal, Liptser’s lawyer Andrei Orlov raised a point central to the prosecution’s timeline: his client had last met Navalny on June 8, 2022, at Penal Colony No. 2 in Pokrov, and had never visited him at Penal Colony No. 6 in Melekhovo. Yet the indictment alleged that Liptser’s participation in the supposed community continued until October 2023. Orlov also invoked the provision attached to Article 282.1 concerning voluntary withdrawal from an extremist community. The court did not accept that argument.
The defense also disputed the claim that the messages themselves were extremist. According to Orlov, the communications covered everyday matters as well as social and political issues; an expert who testified in court did not identify signs of extremism in them. Prosecutors, by contrast, cited letters containing instructions to associates as evidence that Navalny continued to lead the group. How those communications established knowing participation by each individual lawyer remained central to the defense appeals.
Covert recordings of Navalny’s consultations with his lawyers generated a separate dispute. The defense argued that authorization to monitor Navalny did not nullify the confidentiality of his meetings with counsel. Prosecutors countered that the surveillance had targeted Navalny rather than the lawyers. The court did not consider the defense objections sufficient grounds to overturn the convictions.
Appeal, Sergunin’s release and cassation review
On September 22, 2025, the Vladimir Regional Court upheld the prison terms. Prosecutors had sought harsher sentences; the defense had asked for acquittals. The appellate court narrowed the additional professional ban: instead of prohibiting all legal services, it barred the three men specifically from practicing as lawyers for three years after release. It also reduced the periods of additional restrictions on freedom.
On April 23, 2026, the human rights project Pervy Otdel (First Department) reported that Sergunin had been released after serving his sentence. He left Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 in Vladimir Region. His release was not an acquittal or a reversal of the judgment, and the professional ban remained in place.
On June 22, 2026, the Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in Moscow refused to overturn the convictions of Kobzev and Liptser. Sergunin had not filed a cassation appeal. Kobzev participated remotely from Penal Colony No. 5 in Kirov Region; Liptser was connected from Penal Colony No. 35 in Khakassia. Their lawyers again challenged the covert recording of attorney consultations and argued that the conduct established by the evidence did not amount to participation in an extremist community.
In a statement dated October 13, 2026, the Human Rights Foundation renewed its demand for the immediate release of both imprisoned lawyers. Citing Liptser’s family, it also reported a serious deterioration in his health. Memorial had previously described Liptser’s chronic medical conditions, his transfer to a prison hospital in April 2025, and a court’s refusal to let him attend his mother’s funeral that September.
Why the case raises questions about lawyers’ rights
Being a lawyer does not confer immunity from criminal liability for a crime the lawyer personally commits. But representing a client accused of extremism does not, by itself, make counsel a participant in the client’s alleged criminal activity. A conviction under Part 2 of Article 282.1 requires proof that the lawyer’s own conduct meets the elements of participation in an extremist community, including the necessary intent. Memorial and the International Commission of Jurists identify the treatment of professional legal work as such participation as the central defect in this case.
Article 8 of Russia’s Federal Law No. 63-FZ, On Advocacy and the Legal Profession in the Russian Federation, protects information obtained in the course of providing legal assistance. Investigative and operational-search measures directed at lawyers require a judicial decision, and the law places separate limits on the use of materials from a lawyer’s case files as prosecution evidence. Article 18 prohibits interference with lawful legal practice.
Part 4 of Article 89 of Russia’s Penal Enforcement Code provides an even more specific safeguard: meetings between a convicted prisoner and legal counsel must take place privately, beyond the hearing of third parties and without technical eavesdropping equipment. Kobzev’s and Liptser’s defense teams argued that using secretly recorded conversations violated this protection. Whether such recordings are admissible is a legal issue in its own right, regardless of what the correspondence said.
The United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers require governments to ensure that lawyers can perform their professional functions free from intimidation and improper interference. Principle 18 states that lawyers must not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes. Principle 22 protects the confidentiality of professional communications. The Basic Principles set an international standard; they are not a separate binding treaty.
Russia remains a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 14 provides fair-trial safeguards, including the right to legal assistance. The UN Human Rights Committee has explained that consultations and communications with counsel must be confidential. The International Commission of Jurists assessed the prosecution of Navalny’s lawyers as a violation of protections for liberty, a fair trial and the independence of the legal profession, and called for their convictions to be quashed.
The prosecution extends beyond the three lawyers
Two other former Navalny lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov, are also being prosecuted in absentia over alleged participation in an extremist community. Both are outside Russia. International human rights organizations place these cases in the broader context of pressure on lawyers representing political defendants.
Other cases connected to the ACF have raised similar questions about the boundary between professional work and alleged criminal activity. FACTUM has reported on the conviction of journalist Antonina Favorskaya for alleged participation in an extremist community through her reporting, and on the prosecution of ornithologist Sofya Rozenfeld over donations to the ACF. Those proceedings are not identical to the lawyers’ case, but they fall within the wider set of prosecutions linked to Navalny and his organizations.
What happens next
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have connected the verdicts with pressure on the right to legal defense. On January 17, 2026, the Human Rights Foundation submitted the cases of Kobzev and Liptser to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, seeking a finding that their imprisonment is arbitrary. Its October 13 statement referred to that submission, not to a decision issued by the Working Group.
Three years after the arrests, the convictions remain in force. Sergunin has been released, while Kobzev and Liptser continue to serve their sentences. Human rights organizations have cited the case as an example of lawyers facing criminal prosecution for acts connected with their representation of a client, with confidential lawyer–client communications used as evidence against the defense itself.
This article is based on publicly available sources as of October 14, 2026.