He had chosen to take up arms against his own country to defend Ukraine. And his death on the front, in the Kharkiv region, aroused immense emotion in the ranks of the Russian opposition. Ildar Dadin was in fact an emblematic figure in the fight against Vladimir Putin, from the first demonstrations against electoral fraud to the refusal of war in Ukraine.
Died with weapons in his hands against the soldiers of his own country, Ildar Dadine had become a symbol of the Russian opposition many years earlier. In 2015, he was the first to be sentenced to a prison sentence simply for protesting in the streets of Moscow. Two and a half years in prison under an article of the Russian criminal code adopted under pressure from Vladimir Putin. The arrest and conviction of Ildar Dadine will be the harbinger of the repressive machine which would gradually crush the Russian opposition.
“ Ildar Dadin was a fierce activist against injustice and in defense of rights and freedoms in Russia », Testifies Olga Prokopieva, president of the Russia-Libertés association. “ And for having demonstrated on several occasions he was sentenced to several years in prison. For us, he embodied non-violent resistance to electoral fraud and the repressive drift of the Putin regime. » The symbol is such that article 212.1, which allows the courts to condemn an individual for having demonstrated several times without prior authorization, will be nicknamed “Dadin law” by opponents and the Russian media.
Rape threats and simulated drowning
Born in April 1982 in the Moscow region, Ildar Dadine became a security agent after his military service and began activism in the early 2010s. As he himself recounts in an interview given years later to the NGO Russian OVD-Info, it is the electoral fraud that pushes him to get involved. “ I demonstrated for the first time on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, in December 2011… I was outraged by the fraudulent victory of United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, and I realized that we were being deceived by those in power “.
This commitment took him to prison where he was beaten and tortured – simulated drowning and threats of rape, abuse which he denounced publicly. “ HAS At that time, mistreatment mainly applied to common law prisoners, who had little access to lawyers and even less access to the media », Explains Anne Le Huérou, lecturer at the University of Nanterre, and specialist in Russia. “ Ildar Dadine was already a little known, he knew that organizations existed that they could contact, like the Committee against Torture… He was not afraid, he managed to make his case visible and to describe in a very precise manner everything of which he was a victim “.
“Kill the Killer”
His detention and the abuse inflicted on him did not break his determination and his will to resist the Putin regime. And he will continue to campaign and demonstrate in the years following his release. Then, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion ofUkraine. Like many opponents of the war, who now face the risk of being sentenced to several years in prison, he resolves to flee Russia. He passed through Poland then went to Ukraine where he enlisted, under the pseudonym “Ghandi”, in the Russian volunteer battalions.
“ He took up arms while saying that he was a pacifist, that he hated the idea of killing someone, but that he had to oppose in the most effective way possible an evil as immense as that represented by Russia when it attacks Ukraine, points out Cécile Vaissié, professor of Russian studies at the University of Rennes-II. “ And he had this sentence: “the only way I see to oppose the crimes committed by Russia, is unfortunately to kill the killer”… He could have remained peacefully in immigration, he could have stayed in Warsaw as others still do now. But he said he had to defend the weakest, including when it comes to fighting against his own troops.tat “.
Strategic divergences
To fight, Ildar Dadine joins the Siberian Battalion then he joins the Russian Freedom Legion, a group of Russian volunteers who want to defend Ukraine of course but who also want to prepare the fall of Vladimir Putin. In their eyes, only a military defeat of Russia will be able to overthrow the Russian president and his regime – and the war in Ukraine would from this point of view only be the prelude to this armed struggle on Russian soil. A strategy which sparks lively debate within the opposition in exile – which adds to the divisions which contribute to weakening it.
“Some opposition leaders have positioned themselves to support this armed struggle – including financially for those who can afford it – and this is the meaning of the appeal recently launched by Gary Kasparovdeciphers Anne Le Huérou, from the University of Nanterre. “ But others are resolutely against, and believe that there would be nothing worse than adding a civil war to this war of aggression that Russia is waging. They consider that it is simply not possible today to defeat Vladimir Putin’s regime through armed resistance. “.This is particularly the case for supporters of Alexeï Navalny. Died in prison in February 2024, the opponent had always refused to launch calls for violent action and advocated a peaceful challenge to the power in place. Far from the debates and dissensions that agitate the Russian opposition in exile today, Ildar Dadine had chosen to act, at the risk of his life. His journey as an activist took him from the peaceful rallies of the winter of 2011-2012 to the trenches of the war in Ukraine – a tragic and emblematic shortcut of what Russian activists experienced, in less than a decade. anti-Putin opposition.
Also readWar in Ukraine: death of Russian opponent Ildar Dadine who fought with kyiv forces