The organization that recruited Ildar Dadin, a well-known Russian opposition activist who was fighting alongside Kyiv in Ukraine, claims that he was killed in action.
Dadin passed away, and a representative for the Civic Council informed the BBC that “he was, and he remains a hero.”
In the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, the activist-turned-fighter was killed by Russian artillery fire when his volunteer battalion, the Freedom of Russia Legion, was engaged in combat.
As of right now, no additional information is available, and the Legion will not comment while maintaining the status of a military operation.
Yet, exiled Russian opposition lawmaker Ilia Ponamarev, who had ties to the Legion in the past, told the BBC he is “certain, alas” that Dadin is dead.
That this was “confirmed by those who were with him in battle” was made clear by another source.
The most recent texts I sent to his phone remain in the “unread” category.
A decade ago, when political repression in Russia grew more intense, Ildar Dadin gained notoriety for his tenacity in organizing nonviolent demonstrations.
He was the first individual to face charges under the new Article 212.1, sometimes known as Dadin’s Law, which was passed in 2014 and makes it illegal to repeatedly violate Russia’s increasingly stringent protest laws.
For him, that meant just holding a banner while strolling through Moscow’s streets.
Dadin was given a two and a half-year sentence, put in a punishment cell, and began on a hunger strike right away. After that, his jail guards tortured him to get him to stop.
Ildar Dadin, a Ukrainian soldier who was released in 2017, was brutally assaulted by Russian guards and threatened with rape. He joined a battalion of Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine, feeling personally responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dadin initially signed up with the Siberian Battalion in June 2023 before moving to the Freedom of Russia Legion last winter.
The volunteers are mostly Russian citizens who hope to help Ukraine defeat Vladimir Putin as a first step towards ending his rule in the Kremlin. Their numbers are not clear, but they have claimed some successes, including a cross-border incursion into Russia earlier this year at the time of Putin’s re-election.
For Dadin, some missions his unit were sent on were “pointless” in any military sense. He described one battle where he was pinned down for eight hours by Russian fire in a bomb crater, with a drone trying to drop a grenade on him. Dadin was exhausted, fighting with barely any days off, and limping from a wound to his hip.
Despite his concerns about his conscience, Dadin refused to sit “on the sidelines” while Ukrainians were being killed by Russian criminals. He berated himself in one of our last chats, saying that he tried to stop Russia but did not do enough. The Civic Council wrote that “Ildar was strong, brave, principled and honest,” which is how they should remember him.
(BBC)
