Kaliningrad lawyer Maria Bunzler was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Her lawyer told a RusNews reporter about it.
Kaliningrad human rights activist Maria Bunzler, who has been in pre-trial detention since May 2025, has been charged with "treason" for her advocacy work, although the information attributed to her has previously been revealed in open trials and in the media. A seriously ill lawyer remains in the pre-trial detention center in a life-threatening condition. Due to crises of hypertension, diabetes and ulcers, Bunzler repeatedly lost consciousness while the prison administration sabotaged medical treatment.
Yesterday she was asked to serve 15 years in prison. The hearings are held behind closed doors, and the lawyers were removed from the case by consent.
Last year, RusNews published "secret" details about Bunzler's case - she allegedly entered into secret cooperation with an SBU officer and gave him information about her clients. A criminal case was opened against "this employee's cousin", citizen of Russia and Ukraine Ivan Kovalevich, within the same article about secret cooperation with a foreign country, and he was sentenced to only 2.5 years in prison. He apparently took a plea deal and testified against Bunzler.
The defense had reason to believe that "the SBU officer who appeared in the case named Diachuk does not exist, and the case was a provocation by the security forces. In the correspondence, according to the investigators, the man presented himself as an SBU employee, which is unlikely in reality.
At the same time, Maria stated that FSB officer Kirill Takhtov was taking revenge on her personally - she, in particular, published that he brutally tortured her client journalist Igor Rudnikov. When Marya herself was arrested, she too was tortured by the same Tahtov.
Archive photo from RusNews.