Russian opposition figure Ildar Dadin, who was imprisoned in 2010 for protests against Vladimir Putin, was killed on the front line in Russia’s Ukraine, where he was fighting alongside kyiv’s forces, relatives and Russian media announced on Sunday.
“It is with deep regret that I must inform you that Ildar Dadin, in Gandhi’s nom de guerre, died yesterday in the fighting in the Kharkiv region”, in northeastern Ukraine, announced on Facebook the former Russian MP and opponent Ilia Ponomarev, his friend who lives in exile in kyiv.
He praised a “intrepid and determined fighter” who had gone “to the front to fight Putinism”.
According to Mr. Ponomarev, Ildar Dadin fought alongside the Ukrainian armed forces within a “Siberian battalion” then the “Russian Freedom Legion”, a group which claims to be composed of Russians and at the origin of several incursions in Russia.
His death was confirmed on Telegram by Russian journalist Ksenia Larina and several independent Russian media outlets.
Ildar Dadine was sentenced in 2015 to two and a half years in prison in Russia for organizing solo protests against the authorities.
Detained in a particularly harsh penitentiary camp, he denounced in 2016 in a letter published in the media Meduza the torture and humiliation that his guards subjected him to.
Mr. Dadin was the first Russian citizen sentenced to prison under a law that came into force in 2014 and cracks down on protests that have not been previously authorized by the authorities.
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