The Moscow Chamber of Lawyers has stripped Ilya Novikov of his lawyer status. In the text of the decisionpublished on the website of the chamber, the lawyer is called N., but TASS claims that it is about Novikov.
As follows from the decision, he was deprived of the status of a lawyer for "indecent behavior" and violation of "professional ethics". In particular, we are talking about an interview published in May 2022, in which Novikov stated that “the only language in which you can speak with Putin is the explosions there in all sorts of Russian warehouses near Belgorod, near Perm. All bridges that collapsed suddenly, all ships that sank.”
The document also cites Novikov's statement in connection with the intention to deprive him of his status:
“I am a Ukrainian lawyer, I have been living in Kyiv since 2019, I passed the exam two years ago. My practice is a lawyer, <…> it is Ukrainian, it is completely independent of the Russian one. <…> My practice in Russia ended on February 24 [2022].”
Ilya Novikov, who at various times defended the Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, director Oleg Sentsov, ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, was included in the list of "foreign agents" by the Russian Ministry of Justice in November last year. In December, the Interior Ministry put the lawyer on the wanted list in a criminal case. What exactly he was accused of was not specified.