On July 12, “Criminal Ukraine” published an investigation devoted to both abuses in the occupied Crimea of persons who received Ukrainian lawyer status before 2014, and to violations of the rights of Crimean residents to legal assistance.
Among other things, the situation was studied on the example of Oleg Glushko, who received the status of a lawyer from the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Bar of the AR of Crimea in 2005 and, among other things, criminally served the “charge” as a “lawyer by appointment” in the case of aggressor’s reressions against a journalist and a public organization “Nefes” member Asan Akhtemov.
The investigation also points to the activities of Elena Kancha, Yulia Marchuk and Anatoly Zhernovy, who received the status of a lawyer until 2014, involved by the occupiers in the criminal role of “the leadership of the Chamber of Lawyers of the Republic of Crimea”, and mentions the fact of illegal activity on the occupied peninsula of more than a hundred “Russian lawyers from 42 subjects”.
At the same time, self-governing bodies of Crimean lawyers have not been recreated in the controlled territory of Ukraine, and the National Bar Association of Ukraine, NBAU which, in particular, maintains a register of lawyers, issues lawyer certificates and performs the duties of defending them, actually ignores the “Crimean issue”.
As the investigation points out, “during the nine years of the Russian-Ukrainian war, at the time of publication of this article, the NBAU did not publish any messages or positions on its official resources regarding the persecution of Ukrainian lawyers and obstruction of their professional activities in the temporarily occupied Crimea, although this is its duty under international standards and legislation of Ukraine”, referring to Viktor Medvedchuk’s allegedly significant influence on the NBAU and his connections with Lydia Izovitova, the permanent head of the NBAU.
