A Russian lawyer has said he will defend 12 national guardsmen who were fired for refusing to go to war in Ukraine.
Hundreds of Russian nationals have signaled doubts about fighting in Ukraine, according to a Russian lawyer representing several members who refused an order to go into the country. Mikhail Benyash told the Financial Times, in an article published on Friday, that since he said he would defend 12 national guardsmen who were fired for refusing to go to war in Ukraine, about 1,000 people have contacted his team. All 12 have filed wrongful dismissal suits. « A lot of people don’t want to go and fight, » Benyash told the newspaper. According to human rights lawyer Pavel Chikhov, Captain Farid Chitav, and 11 of his subordinates were members of Rosgvardia—the National Guard which mainly has a policing role in Russia—and refused to enter neighboring Ukraine on February 25, saying that the orders were « illegal. » « None of them was informed about a business trip to the territory of Ukraine to participate in a special military operation nor about the tasks and conditions of this operation, and as a result, they did not give consent to it, » Chikhov said in a post on the Telegram messaging service.
