When choosing education and a profession, we choose our way of life. Having chosen legal education, we chose lawand justice. Every lawyer, regardless of profession and specialization, is expected to work for the benefit of society, the establishment of order and peace in the country and the world, and the protection of the rule of law and human rights.

But can those who support Russia's criminal government be called lawyers? Do those who support the genocide of Ukrainians have the right to hold the title of a lawyer? Can the legal community be led by someone who says that Russia came to Ukraine in peace to end the war, when Ukrainians are brutally killed in their homeland?

On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale military operation against Ukraine. Since the Russian illegal invasion, more than 4 million Ukrainians crossed the border in pursuit of safety, and almost 7 million relocated to other regions of Ukraine.

According to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, as of April 11, 182 children have been killed and 342 wounded as a result of Russian hostilities. And these figures are not final.

Since the beginning of the large-scale military invasion of Russia on the territory of Ukraine, 48,243 explosive devices and 417.4 kg of explosives, including 1,926 aircraft bombs, have been neutralized (according to the SES of Ukraine).

During 45 days of the war, the Ukrainian people experienced events that are difficult to imagine in the XXI century. However, despite confirmed killings of civilians, torture and rape of children and women, Russia's shelling of civilian infrastructure, and the forced deportation of Ukrainians from the occupied territories to Russia or Belarus, Russian lawyers have actively supported Russia's criminal government.

In the first days of the war, the Ukrainian Bar Association, together with the Supreme Court, appealed to Russian lawyers to publicly oppose Russian aggression, as Russia's actions violated all norms and principles of international law.

Throughout this initiative, the UBA launched a special project "Lawyers of the Putin regime" to show the world the ideologues and inspirers of the Kremlin.

We call your attention to the list of leading Russian lawyers who support and strengthen the regime's rhetoric.

Volodin Vyacheslav Viktorovich, Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Honored Lawyer of Russian Federation.

• “If only [we] had not launched a special peacekeeping operation, all this would have led to tragic consequences. For everyone.”
• “The President of [Ukraine] makes all decisions under the dictation of Washington. He does not think about his citizens. He actually surrendered the country to NATO and made it a springboard. NATO, in violation of all agreements, began to move closer to our borders.”
• “Tens of thousands of soldiers who for eight years exterminated the people living in these two republics [DPR/LPR]. And now the refugees are coming, we start talking to them, the kids ask the question: what is a theater and what is a circus? They have been in the basements around the clock for all these eight years. But at the same time, the world community is deaf and dumb.”
• “If the operation had not started, a NATO operation would have started literally the next day, but only at the hands of the banderas, the neo-Nazis of Ukraine. We made it in time, which means we saved hundreds of thousands of lives”.
• “Biden has made it clear that they are now imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation, the only alternative to which is World War III. Just think about it! That is, Ukraine was chosen as a springboard for the fight against the Russian Federation”.
• “They [the Kiev authorities] are not independent, all orders are given by Washington and Brussels. The special operation does not threaten civilians. We are one people. Think of our common history. We have common victories. One culture, one faith”.
• “A special peacekeeping operation has been going on for four days. We all understand that it is the only way to defend the world, stop the genocide of the Russian people, prevent massacres and full-scale war, ensure the security of our country in the future”.
• “The United States, expanding NATO to the east, crossed out the agreements and treaties of previous years. All our fears were confirmed after Zelensky’s statements about his desire to have nuclear capabilities. It was Washington that created a situation in which the world would inevitably resolve a major war. This cannot be allowed. Given that Washington and Brussels have rejected Russia’s proposals on global security, and Kiev has been refusing to implement the Minsk agreements for eight years, the demilitarization of Ukraine is the only way left. A way to prevent war in Europe. The only way to stop the massacre and humanitarian catastrophe”.

Patrushev Nikolai Platonovich, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Law.

• “It has become obvious that it is the American advisers who encourage and help the Kiev regime in the creation of biological and nuclear weapons. Ukraine has everything for this – competencies, technologies, raw materials, means of delivery”.
• “We could not allow frenzied, unruly nationalists to have nuclear weapons”.
• “Under the current conditions, we were forced to take preventive measures to ensure the security of Russia and its citizens.
• “They really have something to fear. And it is not surprising that outbreaks of infectious diseases observed in a number of countries can be directly related to the activities of biological laboratories in Ukraine”.
• “At present, the military operation is proceeding according to plan. The Russian military during the hostilities in Ukraine, in which the peoples of the North Caucasus, including the Chechen Republic, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and other regions, take an active part, show courage, heroism, and self-sacrifice in protecting national security and national interests of Russia”.

Klishas Andrei Aleksandrovich, Chairman of the Committee of the Federation Council on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Law.

• “The President of the Russian Federation acts in accordance with the Russian constitution, the resolution of the Federation Council and the norms of international law. In order to maintain peace and security, in order to counter extremism and neo-Nazism in all its manifestations”.
• “Treaties guarantee the protection of the rights of citizens living in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, create a legal basis for the presence in these territories of Russian military units, which is necessary to maintain peace in the region”.

Kovler Anatoliy Ivanovich, Chairman of the RPL Standing Committee on Civic Participation in the Development of the Judicial System, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Law, Former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights.

“This is a tragedy for all of us. In recent days, there has been a vile tactic of the Ukrainian side, provoking Russia. If you think from the point of view of international law, then we are talking about a classic humanitarian intervention that the West carried out in Kosovo by bombing Belgrade and the positions of the Serbs. All this was justified as a humanitarian intervention. The same was in Somalia, Haiti, and quote-unquote in Libya, and so on”.

Stepashin Sergei Vadimovich, Chairman of the Association of Lawyers of Russia, Doctor of Law.

• “We signed the Minsk agreements. For seven years they have been brainwashing, destroying people. It was the genocide in the Donbass. Thousands of people died”.
• “Why don’t they say “war” now? Because it’s an operation. Do you know what war is? The Americans used carpet bombing in Vietnam. They hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, bombed all of Iraq. This is war. We cannot fight like that, our population is there, our people are there. Throughout Ukraine, our people, except for banderas and the Nazis. Russia came to Ukraine to end the war”.

Piskarev Vasiliy Ivanovich, Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

• “This morning our Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Russian President Vladimir Putin, announced the launch of a special military operation in support of Donbass. This is a forced but necessary measure, fully consistent with international law. Our citizens, compatriots live in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, against whom Ukraine has beenconducting a punitive operation for eight years now”.
• “Today, the Investigative Committee of Russia has more than 400 criminal cases on war crimes related to the shelling of cities and villages and the death of civilians in the Donbass. Persons involved in them are officials and leaders of nationalist formations, on whose personal participation in crimes against the inhabitants of Donbass a large evidence base has been collected. And they will not succeed in escaping responsibility, no matter where they try to escape”.
• “The Kiev regime, encouraged and armed from abroad, which came to power eight years ago as a result of a coup that can only be called fascist, is to blame for what happened. What is happening today is not the occupation of Ukraine, but denazification and demilitarization, liberation from the terror unleashed by the last of Hitler and Bandera. And, finally, it is the protection of the Fatherland from obvious military threats”.
• “The situation is such that these measures need to be applied the sooner the better because for 8 years the residents of the DPR and LPR have been subjected to terrorist attacks, repressions, bombings. The leaders of Western countries, not a single NGO have said anything over the years in support of the inhabitants of these republics, but if they don’t give a damn about them, then we do because they are our brothers”.
• “The regime of Ukraine will be forced to stop attacks on our fraternal republics, and peace will be restored there. Nobody wants war, and neither do we, but if we left our citizens without attention and support, it would be a crime”.
• “We must show solidarity with the President [of the Russian Federation], support the armed forces – they do not fight the civilians, they only fight war criminals”.

These lawyers support the Kremlin’s rhetoric and deliberately distort the principles and values ​​of international law. These lawyers call the aggressive war “collective security”, a blatant violation of the sovereignty of a democratic country – “demilitarization measures”. Lawyers who must uphold and defend the rule of law and human rights find justification for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They must be punished, together with the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation, because they are accomplices and ideologues of the regime.