Treason season. Russia upgrades charges against lawyer Maria Bonzler and activist Alexei Sokolov over their human rights work

The prosecution made its request in Bonzler’s case during closing arguments at the Kaliningrad Regional Court. Slovo Zashchity, a project that supports people facing political prosecution, reported it, citing lawyer Ilya Sidorov, who visited her in pre-trial detention. Bonzler’s son confirmed the request to Sotavision.

Besides the prison term, the prosecutor asked for a fine of 10,000 roubles (about $120) and a period of “restriction of freedom”, a set of limits on movement after release. The prosecutor also asked that Bonzler be ordered to repay the cost of her court-appointed lawyer. Details of the Sokolov case became public after the newspaper Kommersant obtained the indictment.

The charges

Bonzler was detained on May 28, 2025, and remanded in custody the next day. She was first charged with “confidential cooperation with a foreign state”, the charge introduced in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is in essence a “treason-lite” offence.

Investigators later reclassified it as “treason” proper. They allege she gathered information about security officials who investigate cases against people “cooperating with an unfriendly state”. She allegedly passed it, along with details of criminal cases she learned of through her legal work, to “the special services of an unfriendly state”. The case file mentions correspondence with a person the security services describe as an “SBU agent”, meaning Ukraine’s Security Service. It later emerged that part of the information she is accused of passing on concerned cases heard in open court: prosecutions of Ivan Kveselevich, Elena Nikolaenkova, Vladimir Kushnirenko and Vitaly Matsyutsya, tried for “justification of terrorism”, “espionage” and “confidential cooperation with a foreign state”.

Alexei Sokolov was detained in December 2025, together with lawyer Roman Kachanov and legal specialist Larisa Zakharova of the same organisation. All three were first charged with organising the activities of an “undesirable” organisation—one of the more severe designations for organisations banned in Russia. The charge covered their links to the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Oslo-based Norwegian Helsinki Committee. Russia has designated both organisations under that label a decade apart; NED was the very first added when the list was created in 2015, while the Helsinki Committee was designated only in 2025.

According to the indictment, Sokolov began working with the Norwegian committee in April 2022, three years prior to its ban. It allegedly gave out grants to collect information on abuses in the Federal Penitentiary Service under the guise of “donations for providing legal consultations”. He received $30,000 for a project to protect seriously ill prisoners and to seek their release on health grounds. Investigators say he signed an agreement on “confidential cooperation” and agreed to document abuses in penal colonies and file complaints with state bodies and courts. They call his findings “unreliable” because they do not match official FSIN figures. The “treason”, in the prosecution’s version, is that his reports were used to “discredit the Russian authorities, justify sanctions and bring the Russian leadership to international account”.

The pressure

In both cases, colleagues have been drawn in. During Bonzler’s trial, Judge Alexander Marochkin removed the three lawyers she had chosen: Ilya Sidorov, Alexander Chauzov and Roman Morozov. The court cited a dispute over how they were to obtain clearance to see material classified as “state secrets”. The FSB had searched Morozov’s home in the days before Bonzler’s arrest.

Sokolov has confirmed working with the Norwegian committee alongside Kachanov and Zakharova but denies treason. He calls the case the prison service’s revenge for his human rights work, and describes his two colleagues as “hostages”.

Neither defender is facing prosecution for the first time. In July 2022 Bonzler was fined 30,000 roubles (about $500 at the time) twice for “discrediting” the army. The fines were over statements she made in court while defending clients charged under the same law. The judge ruled that “law and morality in the legal profession are above the will of the client”. Her clients have included Igor Baryshnikov, sentenced in 2023 to seven and a half years for “fake news” about the army, and journalist Mikhail Feldman, who received two years in a penal colony for “repeatedly discrediting” the armed forces.

In July 2026 Sokolov was sentenced to two years of forced labour for displaying “extremist symbols”, because his organisation’s publications linked to Facebook, whose owner Meta is banned as an “extremist organisation” in Russia.

Bonzler is due to give her final statement to the court on November 11.