Fearless in the land of fear

The sign of life lasted only four seconds. Maria Bontsler, a tall woman with curly blond hair, stands erect in the glass cage of the Kaliningrad regional court, pale as a sheet. Then the recording cuts off.

The footage was made in secret because filming in courtrooms is not allowed in Russia. It was posted on a Russian Telegram channel dedicated to human rights. What is not visible in the footage is that shortly afterwards Boncler could no longer stand and was taken to the hospital.

Boncler, 65, is a lawyer from Kaliningrad, in western Russia. After decades spent in courtrooms defending others, she has now been in prison herself since late May, almost completely cut off from the outside world. Local agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) claim that she secretly collaborated with the intelligence service of an "enemy country" - that's how the Kremlin refers to countries that have strongly criticized Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The lawyer faces a prison sentence of three to eight years, but her family and supporters fear that Boncler will not survive many years behind bars. Her health has been deteriorating since a heart attack three years ago, and she also suffers from high blood pressure. She collapsed in court in late July, and it wasn't the first time.

Lawyer by profession

Few Russian lawyers are willing to defend critics of President Vladimir Putin today. In regions far from Moscow, there are almost no lawyers willing to represent those labeled traitors or terrorists by security services.

Maria Boncler was one of the last to take the risk and defend such defendants, even though she knew that in the current Russian justice system they had minimal chances. Less than one percent of criminal cases in Russia end in an acquittal, and in "political trials" that percentage is even lower.

"She is a true human rights lawyer," says one Moscow lawyer. "She fights out of conviction for those she defends." Some clients respectfully call her "our BMW," not only for the symbolism of German quality, but also for the initials of her full name: Boncler Maria Vladimirovna. Others believe that, although an excellent lawyer, she is too emotional and harsh. "It would be better if she remained more restrained," they say. But they also add: "She is needed."

The repression carried out by the Putin regime has permeated all spheres of life. In the fourth year of the war, fear has paralyzed the regime's opponents. Almost daily, Telegram channels of human rights organizations and independent media in exile publish news of new arrests and convictions.

The arrest of Maria Bontsler in late May marked a new low. The FSB in Kaliningrad then released a video of her arrest, showing agents in camouflage uniforms leading her out of her apartment as if she were a dangerous criminal. A Kaliningrad portal, allegedly run by two local deputies, broadcast images of her arrest on digital billboards at bus stops. Ultra-patriotic channels celebrated the arrest of the “disgusting liberal lawyer and traitor.”

Boncler denies all charges, which are based on Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code, which refers to "secret cooperation with foreign states." The article was introduced after the invasion of Ukraine began as an additional tool to deal with the regime's domestic enemies. Its wording, however, is vague enough that any contact with someone from abroad could be interpreted as a criminal offense. It remains unclear exactly which "enemy" state Boncler was cooperating with last year, according to the FSB's allegations.

Her lawyers cannot comment on the charges. As is common in such trials in Russia, they had to sign silence agreements. Trials are generally held away from the public eye. One of Maria's close associates fled the country for fear of arrest after her home was searched.

"Revenge for her work"

Russian security services are becoming increasingly aggressive towards lawyers who advocate too much for their clients, says Russian human rights lawyer Karina Moskalenko, who has lived in France for several years. Before the war in Ukraine, she says, the state persecuted lawyers covertly, accusing them of financial misconduct, for example. Today, they are openly subjecting them to political trials, "in retaliation for their work." The message is clear, Moskalenko adds - lawyers should not get too involved in court proceedings.

Moskalenko, an international law expert, has won several judgments against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights - which the Russian authorities recognized until September 2022. Today, she can only put pressure on Russia through United Nations committees. The list of repressive measures against her colleagues in Russia, she says, is growing longer. Police officers physically attack lawyers, the services label them "foreign agents" and "extremists," and courts sentence them to long prison sentences.

In January, three lawyers who defended Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny were sentenced to several years in prison for allegedly working for an "extremist organization" - that's how the Russian regime labels his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Marija Boncler was aware of the risks she was taking because she had been warned beforehand, but she continued to defend the accused in court, as was the case in mid-January, just a few months before her own arrest.

That month, Boncler and her colleague Yekaterina Zelizarova walked the halls of St. Petersburg’s Third Court of Cassation, an 18th-century Baroque palace in the heart of the city. They had traveled from Kaliningrad for the appeal hearing of war opponent Mikhail Feldman. It was one of the few proceedings that lawyers were still allowed to attend. More and more trials are being closed to the public because, as Boncler says, “they can do whatever they want.”

The two of them, lawyers, were the only witnesses.

In courtroom 103 in St. Petersburg, their client is participating in the proceedings via video link from a penal colony near Kaliningrad. With a shaved head and a blue prison uniform, Feldman is almost unrecognizable behind bars. The video link keeps dropping out, and the sound is terrible.

Boncler has been representing Feldman for years. Back in 2014, he and others raised a German flag on the roof of the FSB garage in Kaliningrad, following Russia's annexation of Crimea. The indictment called it an "act of vandalism motivated by political hatred" because the flag allegedly symbolized a desire for Kaliningrad to secede and join the EU. After more than a year in pretrial detention, Boncler managed to secure the release of Feldman and the others.

Almost a decade later, he ended up in prison again, this time for "spreading false information about the Russian military." The censorship law was passed right after the war began. Feldman was sentenced to two years in prison for social media posts criticizing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the courtroom, Boncler speaks of "terrible legal violations" during the trial. He speaks loudly and freely, unlike the prosecutor and judge, who quietly read prepared statements.

It is still unclear what qualifications the experts who analyzed Feldman's posts had, says Boncler, looking straight at the judge, who does not look up from the documents in front of her. In addition, her client suffers from an incurable nervous system disease, and his condition is deteriorating in prison. This, Boncler says, was not taken into account in the verdict either. She is demanding that he be released. Less than 40 minutes later, the judge announces the decision: the verdict remains unchanged. Boncler listens expressionlessly to the pronouncement. She later said that her main goal was at least to document the injustice.

Waiting for a knock on the door

Was she afraid to continue doing her job? "Of course," she had said earlier during a visit. "Only a crazy person would say they weren't afraid." She doesn't want to give in to fear: Every morning, she says, she listens to see if someone is going to slam the door like a sledgehammer. She laughed briefly - dark humor. The FSB usually arrives early.

She says she has already been convicted twice for "discrediting the Russian military" - the first lawyer in Russia to be sentenced in such a way. This, she says, is a consequence of her work: she represented dozens of people protesting the invasion of Ukraine. During a presentation on behalf of her clients in 2022, she said that Russia had invaded Ukraine and used the word "war". She was fined a total of 60.000 rubles, which is about 600 euros.

More important than the money was the message - a warning to her. Boncler is convinced that the two judges reported her to the police. "They wanted me to bow my head and remain silent. I did the opposite." She went public about the charges against her and exhausted all legal avenues. However, in the end, she was unsuccessful.

She says she never paid the fine. "I don't want my money going to finance bombs that will fall on Ukrainian children."

Boncler comes from a family of mixed Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and German descent. Her grandfather, she says, was the illegitimate son of a baron named Boncler. She was originally a geographer by profession and worked as a researcher for the coast guard. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was among the founders of the Kaliningrad Oblast Civic Chamber, a truly committed body that represented the interests of citizens. She quickly gained a reputation for being uncompromising, even clashing with the governor.

During the First Chechen War, from 1994 to 1996, desperate mothers approached her. They feared for their sons, who had been sent to war as inexperienced conscripts. Many never returned, and their families often searched for their bodies themselves. Boncler says she never forgot those fates. She pulled photographs and obituaries from a folder. She described more than 230 cases in four books.

She founded the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers in the Kaliningrad region, fought for compensation for families, and helped young men avoid mobilization. She even gave some of them shelter in her three-room apartment.

She then went back to university, this time studying law, and graduated in 2007. She began representing people before military courts, as well as activists and opposition figures. She says that is "trivial" compared to what is happening today.

"The law no longer exists"

What else can a lawyer achieve in a country that is increasingly sinking into dictatorship? "Very little," says Boncler. "There is no law anymore. Less and less depends on our work. But I can be there for the people." The most important thing, she said, is not to remain silent.

In his apartment in Kaliningrad, he can talk for hours about clients and trials. "Why are these people imprisoned?" he asks, his voice rising. "They are innocent!"

One case in particular sticks in her mind. Like Feldman, opposition activist Igor Baryshnikov was convicted of “spreading false information” after a series of online posts about crimes committed by the Russian military. Baryshnikov, however, received a sentence of seven years and six months. He suffered from prostate cancer and was caring for his disabled mother. He also had a colostomy, which caused him severe pain and made it difficult to move. Boncler and her colleagues fought with the authorities for more than a year to allow the 66-year-old to undergo the necessary surgery. Permission only came after the UN Human Rights Committee got involved in the case.

The longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more aggressive the domestic intelligence service, the FSB, becomes. There are more and more arrests for allegedly planning terrorist attacks and treason.

Boncler cites the example of young men who carelessly commented on the war over the phone and thus attracted the attention of the services. Or the case of a man with a mental illness. According to them, explosives were planted on them or their phones were manipulated so that the FSB could claim that they were acting on the orders of the Ukrainian secret service. All of them, says Boncler, were subjected to enormous pressure to confess guilt, and some were even tortured with electric shocks. Some have already been sentenced by military courts to sentences of nine, 11 and 15 years, while others are awaiting trial with the threat of life imprisonment.

"They use these people as a Christmas tree to hang anything and everything on," says Bonzler. The local FSB, he explains, wants to show that it has control over the area and prove its effectiveness to Moscow. Kaliningrad, which is isolated from the rest of Russia and surrounded by NATO members Poland and Lithuania, is of strategic importance to the Kremlin.

Recently, Boncler tried to help a Ukrainian couple with a child who were allegedly trying to illegally cross the Russian border. The FSB later accused them of espionage.

In the fall of 2024, Boncler still believed she could take on sensitive cases. She had nothing left to lose, she says: her husband Vladimir had died of cancer, and in early 2018 she had lost her youngest son, Dmitry, who committed suicide at the age of 19. "He didn't want to live in this world anymore," she says. "Sometimes I can understand him."

Her two older sons do not share her political beliefs. "We don't talk about that," she said.

Despite everything, he still wants to stay in Russia. "I'm not going anywhere. Otherwise, who would take care of my people?"

And it has also had rare successes. In early January, it managed to free a 53-year-old nurse who had been in pretrial detention for five years. The FSB claimed that she was justifying terrorism because, under a pseudonym, she participated in a Telegram group chat in which she called members of the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps, who are fighting on the side of Kiev, "nice guys."

Without medicine and doctors

Her client Mikhail Feldman was also released in June. Due to an administrative error, he left the penal colony two and a half months early, which Bonzler learned about while she was already in custody.

In the first weeks of her imprisonment, Boncler received no letters from her family, no necessary medication, and was only allowed a few liters of drinking water per week. The prison doctor did not provide her with any medical care, according to numerous complaints she and her lawyers filed with the judicial authorities. They believe that the prison authorities are retaliating against her for her commitment to prisoners' rights.

Through her lawyer, Boncler also revealed that an FSB agent forced her to unlock her phone during her arrest. This, she said, is the same agent she has previously accused of torturing her clients. She says an FSB technician tampered with the phone in her presence, but it remains unknown what exactly was done to the device.

Her eldest son, Vyacheslav Medkov, says he called an ambulance for his mother while she was in court. He says she has vision and hearing problems due to high blood pressure. She was treated for several days in a clinic, under the supervision of guards and handcuffed to a bed. He is not allowed to visit her in the hospital. Her detention in pre-trial detention has been extended for another two months, in her absence.

Medkov says he always voted for Putin, which is why it wasn't always easy for him to get along with his mother. Today, however, he has begun to realize that she was right about many things. He told his eight-year-old daughter that her grandmother was on a trip. His sixteen-year-old son, who wants to study law, knows the real reason for her absence and now, Medkov says, he has changed his mind about his future profession.

"Some people tell me that the mother will give in under pressure and admit guilt. But they don't know how stubborn she is. She would rather die."

Translated and edited by: A. Š.