The Bar Council of Ukraine (BAC) did not consider the appeal of the chairman of the board of the ZMINA Center for Human Rights, Tatyana Pechonchik, about the violation of the rules of lawyer ethics by a number of Ukrainian lawyers in occupied Crimea and refused to evaluate their actions.
Some current Ukrainian lawyers cooperate with the FSB investigation, do not protect their clients, do not pay attention to torture and worsen their situation. However, the NAAU subsequently leaves their lawyer’s certificates valid.
Among such lawyers is Oleg Glushko, who is accused of being involved in falsifying a criminal case about blowing up a gas pipeline in the Crimean village of Perevalnoye, in which the first deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Nariman Jelal, and the brothers Asan and Aziz Akhtemov were convicted. Human rights activists call the persecution of three Crimean Tatars politically motivated.
RAU also refused to comment during the war on the persecution of Crimean human rights lawyers by the occupation authorities.
In response to the SAU decision, lawyer and military man Ilya Kostin accused the SAU of working for the Russian Federation in his column on the ZMINA website.
The masks have finally come off.
For me and for those who followed my research, it was clear that the chairman of the National Bar Association of Ukraine (NAAU) Lydia Izovitova and her inner circle, for example, the secretary of the Bar Council of Ukraine Igor Kolesnikov, the chairman of the Bar Council of the Transcarpathian region Alexey Fazekosh, the chairman of the Bar Council Kherson region Inna Mokina and others are not patriots of our country.
Even then, their collective actions to protect lawyers who represent the occupation authorities in the Donetsk, Luhansk region and Crimea, and none of whom were brought to justice, were sufficient to initiate at least an operational search case. But society and our law enforcement officers were not interested in this.
“Understand your legal profession yourself” or “let grandma see it through to the end,” we heard very often from government officials.
But since February 24, 2022, everything has changed. A real full-scale war affected the entire society, and it became intolerant of any thought of impunity for Russian occupiers, traitors, collaborators and those who help them.
The leadership of the NAAU hid, went abroad, abandoned the lawyers of Ukraine, then came to its senses, moved all the meetings from Kyiv to Mukachevo and Uzhgorod and... it was fortunate that nothing happened.
There is not a single appeal to bring the Russian Federation to justice or condemnation of the actions of the aggressor on behalf of the leadership of NAAU. Moreover, actions began to help and protect traitors in the legal profession who collaborated with representatives of the occupying forces. For example, as happened with the chairman of the Council of Lawyers of the Kherson region, Inna Mokina. She was publicly supported and awarded, but there is evidence and video evidence of her active cooperation with the occupiers. At the same time, actions began to bring to justice lawyers who serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and did not stop their testimony.
And now, after this answer, everything is clear to the extraordinary citizen. The NAAU leadership is waiting to see who wins this war in order to decide whether to punish the traitors.
Thus, the leadership of the NAAU actually discredits the justice system of Ukraine, of which, according to the Constitution, the legal profession is a part.
Ilya Kostin, serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, lawyer
In June 2023, the human rights activist sent an appeal to the National Bar Association of Ukraine (NAAU) about violations of legal ethics by a number of Crimean lawyers, in particular Oleg Glushko. Crimean political prisoner Asan Akhtemov accused him of complicity in falsifying a criminal case about blowing up a gas pipeline in the Crimean village of Perevalnoye.
As is known, some Crimean lawyers, cooperating with the FSB investigation, do not protect their clients, do not pay attention to torture and worsen their situation. At that time, the NAAU leaves them as active lawyers in Ukraine.
During the torture, Oleg Glushko constantly persuaded Akhtemov to give “confession statements” prepared in advance by the FSB, and then he himself joined in the threats, saying that if he did not comply with their demands, he would continue to be tortured
This situation occurs at a time when a number of Ukrainian lawyers in Crimea, in particular Lilya Gemedzhi, Emine Avamileva, Aider Azamatov, Emil Kurbedinov, are subject to various forms of persecution by the occupation authorities due to their professional activities. The NAAU has not made public any position regarding the persecution of Ukrainian lawyers in Crimea, despite the fact that this is its responsibility under international standards and Ukrainian law.
In addition, in her address, Tatyana Pechonchik drew attention to the fact that individual Ukrainian lawyers joined the implementation of Russia’s policy of colonization of the Ukrainian Crimea and the creation and management of the “bar association of the Republic of Crimea” and the same in the city of Sevastopol under the occupation conditions. Sevastopol.
For example, Ukrainian lawyer Elena Kanchi has headed this formation since March 2017. In past years, among the Ukrainian lawyers, the “presidents of the Bar Association of the Republic of Crimea” were Marina Pavlova, Anatoly Zhernovoy and Yulia Marchuk.
According to research by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights and the Regional Center for Human Rights, during the temporary occupation of Crimea, at least 102 Russian lawyers from 42 constituent entities of the Russian Federation illegally moved to the territory of the peninsula. This is 10% of the total number of active lawyers in Ukrainian Crimea.
The human rights activist called on the NAAU to evaluate the activities of Oleg Glushko’s lawyers Oleg, Elena Kanchi, Anatoly Zhernovoy and Yulia Marchuk and deprive them of their Ukrainian lawyer certificates.
The SAU explained its decision by “the impossibility of putting pressure on lawyers under martial law and the need to provide explanations on issues of disciplinary responsibility in the context of assessing individual legal relations and the specific circumstances of the case.”
The council also explained its decision, in particular, by the presumption of innocence of the lawyer, the lack of “complete and reliable information when considering the appeal” and the impossibility of obtaining it under martial law.
Until the end of the war, the SAU, in particular, postponed providing an assessment of the persecution of human rights lawyers in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea by the occupation authorities.
SAU also ignored a request from a journalist from the publication ZMINA and did not inform about the date and place of consideration of the appeal of human rights activist Tatyana Pechonchik.
Human rights activist and expert of the Coalition “Ukraine. “Fifth Morning” Daria Sviridova is surprised by the reluctance of the NAAU to assess the persecution of Ukrainian lawyers in occupied Crimea.
“It is difficult to imagine what exactly prevents the NAAU from assessing the persecution of Ukrainian lawyers on the peninsula. And how could such an assessment and position of the NAAU, if it were expressed, put pressure on lawyers under martial law?” - asks the human rights activist.
She draws attention to the fact that for nine years since the beginning of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation and the occupation of Crimea, numerous interparliamentary organizations, human rights and international organizations, in particular the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, PACE, have repeatedly pointed out the facts of illegal persecution of independent Crimean lawyers.
Also, individual facts of illegal imprisonment of Ukrainian lawyers on the peninsula are being investigated by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
The human rights activist notes that after the de-occupation of the Crimean peninsula, the absence of positions on the part of the National Autonomous Law Agency can be trivially used “for dishonest purposes as evidence of the absence of any violations of the rights of lawyers during the occupation of Crimea.”
In addition, Daria Sviridova is also convinced that the “impossibility” of considering the issue of disciplinary liability of lawyer Glushko raises a whole layer of challenges and problems.
“We are talking not only about compliance with guarantees for the protection of a lawyer from charges brought forward, or the lack of explanations about the disciplinary responsibility of lawyers during the occupation during nine years of war, or the consequences of the non-resumption of the activities of the bodies of lawyer self-government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. The question arises of respecting the rights of clients of such Crimean lawyers: where exactly and how can they apply for their protection in the event of dishonest behavior or illegal actions of a lawyer?” - notes the human rights activist.
She is also convinced that this may become an obstacle to future lustration activities, during which it will be difficult to rely on an individual assessment of the actions of each lawyer. Such inactivity of the NAAU threatens that some unscrupulous lawyers, in particular, will end up after de-occupation in the restored bodies of lawyer self-government of Crimea and other territories of Ukraine.
Despite public information about gross violations of professional ethics among lawyers in the Ukrainian Crimea, the NAAU does not respond to such violations and such lawyers still remain in the register of Ukrainian lawyers, and their lawyer certificates are valid from the point of view of Ukraine.
Let us recall that in June 2023, the Representative Office of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea presented the priority steps of the state of Ukraine after the liberation of its citizens on the Crimean Peninsula.
Earlier, the “HONEST” Movement published material in which it described the significant influence on NAAU on the part of Vladimir Putin’s godfather, Viktor Medvedchuk. After all, this body of judicial self-government is headed by Lydia Izovitova, who is called Medvedchuk’s ally and friend.
