Aleksey Ladin
Aleksey Ladin is a Russian human rights defender and lawyer. Since 2015 he has been working to provide legal aid to Ukrainians who have been persecuted by Russia on politically motivated charges. His human rights work has included representing human rights organisation Agora and working as an independent lawyer. In 2017 he moved from the city of Tumen to Russian-occupied Crimea to be closer to his clients who, at that point, mostly consisted of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar political prisoners in Russian-occupied Crimea, as well as Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians who were abducted and charged with criminal offences by the Russian authorities.
Since the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, HRDs who defend the rights of Crimean Tatars or ethnic Ukrainians, and those who monitor and document violations of human rights in the peninsula that is currently governed de facto by the Russian Federation, and those who work in Luhansk and Donetsk and have refused Russian citizenship became the main targets of systemic and severe intimidation and harassment. Thus, HRDs, journalists, lawyers, and bloggers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have been repeatedly harassed by security forces and subjected to abduction, physical attacks, home searches, surveillance, interrogation, unlawful detention, criminal prosecution, accusations of alleged terrorism and propagation of extremism, deprivation of the right to a fair trial, forced psychiatric examinations, and threats to family members. Several HRDs have been denied access to the peninsula.
