Earlier today, Kaliningrad Regional Court Judge Alexander Marochkin sentenced 66-year-old lawyer Maria Bontsler to 12 years in prison after finding her guilty of treason, according to a report by independent media and legal rights advocacy project Slovo Zashchite (lit. “Word to the Defense”). The court also ordered her phone to be reset to factory settings and to be confiscated by the state; her SIM card is to be destroyed.
The case was heard behind closed doors, with the judge excluding Bontsler herself from the proceedings. She was allowed to appear only to deliver her final statement; the court denied her request to make that statement publicly. Bontsler’s lawyers were removed from the case over a dispute about access to classified materials, even though Bontsler has said the case contains no state secrets. She is now represented by court-appointed lawyer Anastasia Rikhter.
Bontsler, herself a lawyer, is known for her representation of clients facing politically motivated charges — Igor Baryshnikov, Vadim Khairullin, and Evgenia Fedulova prominent among them. She was detained in May 2025 under Russia’s law on “confidential cooperation with a foreign state,” and the charge was later upgraded to treason. Bontsler said she suffered cardiac arrest and hypertensive crises while in pretrial detention. Lawyer Roman Morozov said her health worsened because of a noise-generating device used during court hearings, but his lawsuit against the judge was rejected.
Bontsler’s son, Vyacheslav Medkov, previously told Slovo Zashchite that security officers had demanded that his mother testify against a fellow lawyer, threatening to upgrade the case against her to treason if she refused. In exchange, he said, they offered her a sentence of around 2.5 years instead of the 15 prosecutors were asking for. Bontsler refused.
