Meet Ilya Novikov, the Russian-born lawyer and sharp Zelensky critic helping to defend the Ukrainian man accused of bombing the Nord Stream pipeline

The investigators’ current position is laid out there, and the court quotes it. As for what survives into the final version, we’ll find out in the coming weeks. Whether Zaluzhny’s name will be in it, I don’t know. That depends on whether prosecutors find the evidence the investigators gathered solid enough to take to court.

Do you think it’s possible that a criminal case will be opened against Zaluzhny in Europe?

A lawyer involved in the case shouldn’t be making predictions like that. It’s not a matter of what I want; it’s a matter of my obligations as an attorney.

Is Kuznetsov’s position that he didn’t carry out the bombing?

Kuznetsov’s position isn’t denial; it’s silence. Those are different things.

He’s taking the position most advantageous to a defendant in a system that operates by normal standards. If there’s a presumption of innocence, one of the most inconvenient positions for the prosecution is staying silent. As in: I know my rights — go ahead and prove whatever you want. The moment you put out a specific story, the prosecution throws everything into knocking it down. Stay quiet and suddenly they’re stuck doing all the work.

The Ukrainian outlet European Pravda, citing the Italian news agency ANSA, reported that Kuznetsov “rejected the accusations, saying that at the time of the bombing he was in Ukraine.” Addressing reporters in the courtyard outside the courthouse, he held up three fingers, making the gesture of a trident. So does that mean the information from ANSA and European Pravda is inaccurate?

I wasn’t yet his lawyer at the time of the hearings in Italy, and I didn’t see that scene myself. “Rejected the accusations” is a reasonably accurate description of his position, in the sense that he didn’t plead guilty. In the German investigation, his strategy of remaining silent has been consistent from the very start.

At what point did you join Kuznetsov’s defense?

In December 2025, when he was already in Germany. Kuznetsov is being defended by an international team of lawyers, including Ukrainians. We don’t appear in the courts that issue the rulings — in this case, Italy and Germany — but we help our colleagues obtain the materials they need for their work and understand how Ukrainian law functions. That matters too.

What are your maximum and minimum objectives in this case?

The maximum objective is getting Serhii cleared of the charges completely, which could take various forms. The case could be dismissed at any moment.

It’s not my place to tell the German chancellor what to say about it. Especially since the chancellor is in a very vulnerable position: Putin’s friends in the AfD are using this case to argue that “Putin is good, let’s be friends with him, and it was evil Ukraine that blew up our wonderful Nord Stream, which gave us such cheap Russian gas.”

And of course it would be a very difficult decision for the chancellor to intervene in the case directly. But the chancellor does, in fact, have the right to decide that continuing a particular criminal case runs counter to Germany’s interests. I believe it does — precisely because it gives Russia’s friends, both covert and overt, a platform to exploit it for their own purposes and for Putin’s.

A conviction would also exonerate the German politicians and officials who helped build and launch Nord Stream. Because if the court hands down a guilty verdict and says the bombing of the pipeline was a crime, that effectively sets aside the question of whether it was a crime to build and operate it in the first place. My answer to that question is yes, it was.

If the case does go to trial and isn’t dismissed there, then we’ll have to work toward an acquittal. That, too, falls within the maximum objective.

And the minimum objective?

Everything else. Any improvement in Serhii’s situation that we can help bring about.

‘Poroshenko and I see a lot of things the same way’

How do you choose your clients? You’ve got such an interesting roster: Memorial, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Nadiya Savchenko, Poroshenko.

It’s the clients who choose me. I do, of course, put in some effort — when it comes to maintaining my reputation.

The first case in my Ukrainian portfolio was the Savchenko case. I became a lawyer in late 2011. In 2012, I had cases connected to street protests in Russia. And then, in 2014, when the Ukrainian saga began [Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the occupation of Donbas], it was clear that my sympathies were on the Ukrainian side. I could already read Ukrainian by then, though I couldn’t yet speak it.

Joining the Savchenko case was my own initiative. The three of us worked on it together back then — me, Mark Feygin, and Nikolai Polozov.

After that, the cases found me on their own. Although when I took on the Kuznetsov case, for instance, it turned out I already knew some of the people involved. They’re people from the same part of Ukrainian society as me, with similar views and ideas about what kind of war this is and how it’s being fought.

I didn’t choose this case, but I agreed to take it. And that, in my view, is the right arrangement: The client decides who they need, and the lawyer decides whether to take the case.

And how did you end up working with Petro Poroshenko?

I met Poroshenko in March 2016, when Savchenko’s lawyers were invited to a meeting at the administration of the president of Ukraine — back then it still wasn’t called the Office of the President. That case was very important for Ukraine.

Then, when Poroshenko was given the chance to speak with Savchenko by phone in 2016, I saw him again. It was part of the negotiation process over her release, and I was there for that, too.

The next time we met was in September 2019 — in connection with the treason case against Petro Poroshenko over his time as president. The crux of the accusation was that, as president, Poroshenko had sent Ukrainian gunboats into the Kerch Strait, where they were fired on and seized by the Russian navy.

The alleged treason supposedly lay in a cunning plan to provoke Russia into military action, declare martial law, postpone the presidential election scheduled for 2019 indefinitely, and thereby usurp power, trampling the constitutional order. The whole package, basically.

It sounds absurd. And it sounds especially funny now, given Zelensky’s own presidency, which has dragged on because of martial law.

I was invited to join Poroshenko’s defense back then because I knew the details of the sailors’ case as a lawyer who had worked on it from the Russian side. I was defending one of the commanders, who was being held at the time in Lefortovo. That made me someone worth turning to on a matter like this.

At that point, I was listed in Ukraine’s registry of attorneys as a foreign lawyer permitted to practice in Ukraine. Later, in 2021, I passed the Ukrainian bar exam, and in 2022 I became a full-fledged Ukrainian lawyer.

Really, the entire second half of 2019, after Zelensky’s inauguration as president, was Poroshenko being summoned for questioning at Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation once a week, sometimes more, on case after case after case.

Once Petro Poroshenko and I started talking, we quickly hit it off. It turned out we saw a lot of things the same way. So when people call me a Porokhobot, it’s not an exaggeration. I really am a Porokhobot. That’s what supporters of Petro Poroshenko are called in Ukraine.

It’s interesting that you’d say that.

What’s strange about it?

I thought the word had a negative connotation.

People in the other camp can certainly read a negative meaning into it, sure. We don’t. For me, it isn’t like that.

In short, Poroshenko and I managed to work well together. I represented him in other cases too, and there were many of them. Portnov alone was personally behind something like 15 complaints. And all told, there were more than 100 different criminal proceedings targeting Poroshenko. That number is partly inflated, because some of them were dead on arrival.

There was one local crackpot in Poltava who filed some 20 complaints. That’s not a problem in itself — local crackpots file complaints like that pretty much everywhere. The symptom of the problem was that the cases based on those complaints stayed open for a long time.

‘The next election will be one big khaki parade’

On February 12, 2025, Zelensky imposed sanctions against Poroshenko. Can you talk about their consequences in the context of the upcoming election?

No one knows when that election will take place. But I’m absolutely convinced that when Zelensky imposed the sanctions, he assumed the vote would come soon. Back in February 2025, it looked like Trump might secure a ceasefire before long.

Afterward, Zelensky’s office had to abandon the idea of holding an election in 2025 for reasons outside its control — there’s going to be no quick peace for us. The sanctions decree against Poroshenko includes, among other things, a clause that had not appeared in this form before and has not since.

Which one?

A ban on entering into contracts and conducting transactions. The mechanism itself had been used before and has been since. But in this decree it was imposed with no time limit.

Absolutely identical in form, the sanctions applied to five people. I think this was done so that, when asked why he had sanctioned his political opponent, Zelensky could answer that these were broadly anti-oligarch measures.

The sanctions block participation in an election right at the start of a campaign. A ban on any transactions means that if you want to register as a candidate in a presidential or parliamentary election, you won’t be able to open a dedicated campaign account — the bank isn’t allowed to open one because of the sanctions. To say nothing of the fact that you can’t finance a campaign when money is barred from moving through your accounts. And, of course, the sanctions make it easier to attack a political opponent.

That is why the European Parliament and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, in discussing Ukraine’s movement toward the EU, have pointed out that sanctions in Ukraine have become a tool of political pressure on the opposition.

Naturally, we filed a lawsuit challenging the decision to impose the sanctions — three weeks after the decree was published. The court has been considering the case ever since.

Is Poroshenko in Ukraine right now?

Right now, as we speak, he’s on a work trip. But he lives in Ukraine. The next court hearing in Kyiv, which we’ll both attend, is on June 25. Every time he goes somewhere, he comes back. These are his official trips as a member of parliament.

Does he have any trouble leaving the country?

Yes, because Zelensky arranged that for him. The first such situation arose in December 2023. In 2022, Ukraine’s government issued a decree changing the rules for entering and leaving the country. Under it, 55 categories of people, including members of the Verkhovna Rada, are allowed to travel abroad only on official business trips.

After that, it’s straightforward, since the speaker of the Rada is always a member of Servant of the People [Zelensky’s party]. Whether Poroshenko or any other deputy travels abroad or not depends on the goodwill of the Rada’s speaker.

In December 2023, Poroshenko was set to attend international meetings in the United States and Poland, where he’d been invited as a featured speaker. Someone in Zelensky’s circle got scared that Poroshenko might go to Washington and talk to the Americans on his own, separately. So the already-signed travel authorization was annulled in the Rada’s electronic database. The border guards wouldn’t let him out.

We’ve been litigating since 2023, and this past November we won our case against the government. The travel ban on deputies was found unlawful. Then the government pulled a fast one. Four days later, it filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court, which froze the ruling. And since November 2025, not a single hearing has been held in the case. So the government keeps the situation in limbo and the deputies on the hook — simply by not holding the proceedings.

Formally, Zelensky himself has nothing to do with it — formally, these are decisions made by the government and the Verkhovna Rada. But given the makeup of the government and the Rada, it’s clear that these are the president’s people and the president’s decisions.

When did Ukrainian law first include a provision allowing sanctions against the country’s own citizens?

There is still no such norm in Ukrainian law. Legislation was passed in 2014, on Poroshenko’s initiative, no less. It lists five categories against which sanctions can be imposed.

Those are foreign citizens, stateless persons, foreign legal entities, foreign states — Russia, for example — and also “persons engaged in terrorist activity.”

That fifth category was long used to include Ukrainian citizens sanctioned under Zelensky. The position the Supreme Court accepted at one point was that Ukrainian citizens, too, could be engaged in terrorist activity.

Our opponents argue that Poroshenko, when he was president, imposed sanctions on people who at some point in their lives held Ukrainian passports — for example, on people who became officials of the “DNR,” the “LNR,” and Crimea. That’s not the same as sanctioning a person whose only citizenship is Ukrainian and who continues to live in the country.

Can you sense any quiet preparation for an election in Ukraine?

Well, first of all, there’s the so-called telethon. It’s one giant campaign ad. It serves no other purpose. On the telethon, Zelensky gets nothing but praise. And the channels that were unsympathetic to Zelensky before February 2022 were simply taken off the air, the way TV Rain once was in Russia.

The decree creating the telethon was signed in March 2022, when Kyiv was effectively a frontline city. The idea was that, under those conditions, a special arrangement was needed to keep broadcasts on the air as newsroom staff left and so on. Everything has changed since then, but that round-the-clock campaign spot about us still being alive thanks to Zelensky has been running for all four years.

Zelensky both wants to hold an election and is afraid to. By the way, when it comes to elections, it’s important to understand that it doesn’t all come down to the question of who will be the next president.

Zelensky’s current configuration of power is unique even setting martial law aside — no Ukrainian president has ever had a one-party majority in parliament the way he does. Poroshenko had to work with a coalition, to negotiate with Avakov and Yatsenyuk, to share power with them, to coordinate certain decisions — he never had absolute power. Even Yanukovych didn’t have absolute power. Zelensky does.

Without that factor, the situation looks completely different. If he loses control of parliament — that is, if he allows new parliamentary elections and no longer holds a single-party majority — Zelensky will, in all likelihood, face criminal prosecution himself.

If he’s still president, he’ll have immunity as head of state, which will buy him some time. Right now, NABU is the only body conducting investigations that are sensitive for Zelensky. When there was an attempt to gut NABU last July, street protests outside the Office of the President and some very loud phone calls from Brussels forced Zelensky to roll it all back. If he no longer has parliament, investigations like these will be conducted not just by NABU but also by the SBI and, possibly, the SBU. And all of it will be much harder on him than it is now. So if only out of concern for his personal safety and self-preservation, he can’t simply give up his majority in parliament. And any parliamentary election would mean losing that majority.

So when we talk about elections, we have to keep in mind not just the personal poll numbers of Zelensky and Zaluzhny but the situation in parliament as well.

After ”Mindichgate,” any unfreezing of the election question carries, for Zelensky, the predominant risk of losing both the presidency — and with it his immunity — along with his control of parliament. And if the choice is between winning another five-year term and stretching out the current arrangement indefinitely, I’d rate the second option as the only feasible one.

Even so, I’ve twice seen clear signs that Ukraine’s polytykum [political elite] believes an election could be held soon. Both times it turned out to be a false alarm.

In February 2025, they figured Trump was about to arrive, a ceasefire would be reached, and that would lift martial law and, with it, clear the way for elections. In January 2026, apparently spooked by the sense that Western partners and a NABU investigation had forced out Yermak — and that if not now, then never — they felt they had to act. But then it turned out a decision could be put off after all. You can tell all this not just from the conversations — you can see how the content of the billboards on Kyiv’s streets keeps changing.

The next election, whenever it happens, is going to be one big khaki parade. The frontmen for every party will be soldiers. They’re all over the billboards as it is. But you can see the style shifting — from a call to “serve in my brigade” to something like “together toward a bright future.”

There are stretches when the anticipation of an election is in the air. And there are times when the mood is more like: “Well, not this month, not next month — we can catch our breath for now. We’ll see after that.” Right now we’re in more of a lull. But that’s my own read.

‘It’s too late for me to choose personal safety and comfort over the ability to say what I think’

Do you represent Poroshenko as a lawyer on specific cases? Or is it full legal representation?

I work on the cases I’ve been retained to work on. That is, I’m not his spokesman or press secretary. When I speak as Poroshenko’s lawyer, I always make clear that I’m saying it as his attorney in the context of a specific case. Otherwise, I’m speaking only for myself.

Should your statements about Ukrainian politics be taken as those of a participant in the political process or of an outside observer?

Well, that’s a strange dichotomy. I’m not a politician — in the sense that I’m not a member of parliament and I’ve never run in any election in Ukraine. I only obtained Ukrainian citizenship in 2024, and we haven’t had any elections since then.

On the other hand, it would be foolish to claim that a lawyer who works on obviously political cases isn’t a political actor at all. That’s not how it works.

When I say that Zelensky is doing a poor job as president or that he’s incompetent, that’s my personal opinion. It’s not Poroshenko’s opinion, and he isn’t responsible for my words in that sense. Still, belonging to a particular camp probably leaves some mark.

If someone wants to think that, without Poroshenko, I’d be for Zelensky like all normal people, but that since Poroshenko pays me I force myself to hate Zelensky — that’s a pretty strange point of view. What I say about Zelensky is genuine. I think that if I were less informed and didn’t work on these cases, I’d know less about how he runs the country. But I can’t pretend not to know what I know.

Do you currently hold two passports, Russian and Ukrainian?

No. The process of obtaining Ukrainian citizenship requires renouncing Russian citizenship. So I renounced it.

You’re probably still associated with Russia in Ukraine? Aren’t you afraid to voice criticism of Ukraine’s president in wartime?

I wasn’t afraid to say far harsher things about Putin back when I was not only a Russian citizen but also living in Russia. It would be strange to be afraid of Zelensky. If Zelensky wants to make my life difficult somehow, he probably has the means to do it. But that’s no reason to stay quiet.

At this point, it’s too late for me to choose personal safety and comfort over the ability to say what I think. If someone doesn’t like that, that’s their problem.

There’s this nasty cliché among the so-called good Russians: “I’m on Ukraine’s side, but since I have a Russian passport, I can’t criticize Zelensky — it’s an internal Ukrainian matter, and I have no right to.”

I think it’s an ugly position, because if you’re on Ukraine’s side, presumably you’re not on the side of some abstract, made-up Ukraine. You’re on the side of living people who were attacked. And if you see that these people are being led badly, that they’re dying…

It’s painful to say, but more of them are dying than would otherwise, because the leadership isn’t up to the task. If you see that and don’t dare to talk about it because you have a Russian passport, you’re throwing those people under the bus — just to keep yourself clean and to make sure no one calls you bad.

That position isn’t ethical or moral — it’s just cowardly. To you, the people who are dying are expendable, the price of keeping your hands clean. It’s awful. You should never, ever do that.

You served for a while in the Territorial Defense. Was there a moment during your service when you were truly afraid?

Looking back, it’s clear the fear wasn’t very well-founded. Sometime in the second week of the war, I was picking up military equipment right near the ring road, in the direction of Bucha. It was far from Bucha, but the area was already getting hit.

You get used to the sound of explosions fast. But then I hear that shooting has started, and I think: “Aha, is someone coming this way? And what am I going to do? How will I react?” Things like that. Later you realize there was actually nothing to be scared of. But when you’re new to it, of course you get scared.

Otherwise, the whole time I was in Kyiv and the surrounding area. I didn’t take part in any firefights. I mostly worked as a driver, because it turned out back then that the most valuable thing in wartime is a pickup truck. I hauled whatever was needed — food, some ammunition. It wasn’t dangerous duty so much as a job. These days volunteers handle this, not the military.

There was nothing heroic about it; you just had to decide one way or another whether you were leaving Kyiv or not. And if you weren’t leaving, you had to decide what to do — sit tight or try to be useful. I chose to stay and do something.

Do you see a career in Ukrainian politics as a possibility for yourself?

I don’t know. I’m already involved in politics through my legal work as it is.

You can’t handle a Poroshenko-versus-Zelensky case and not be part of the political process at the same time. But as for whether I’ll run for president of Ukraine… I think that’s crazy. When [Ukrainian world boxing champion Oleksandr] Usyk says, “I’m such an amazing boxer, I want to be president” — to me that sounds like pure cringe. I don’t want any part of that cringe fest.

You don’t have to run for president right off the bat, though…

Public service has always struck me as pretty burdensome. If you really serve, bust your hump, and don’t take bribes on top of it, it’s a fairly thankless occupation. Maybe I’m not altruistic enough to do it.

I think practicing law is a good enough line of work to stay in for most of my life.

‘I don’t dream about Moscow anymore’

Do you think you’ll ever get to visit Russia again?

For one thing, there’s no guarantee that I’ll physically survive this war. Once you get used to that idea, you just say it out loud. Though, in reality, there’s nothing simple about it… At some point, probably, for a combination of reasons, I’ll be taken off the [Russian] wanted list and the sentence will be overturned. Which means that, formally, at some point there will be no obstacle to my going there — provided I live to see it.

To come back to Moscow, to start living there permanently, to walk those streets — right now I have no desire to do that at all. It would mean walking the streets alongside the [pro-war] “Z” crowd; they aren’t going anywhere. It’s not as if all the “war correspondents” will be shot, or everyone who liked posts along the lines of “let’s slaughter all the khokhly [a slur for Ukrainians]” will be locked up.

Walking around knowing that I’m surrounded by people like that, among others, would be unpleasant for me. Let alone living next door to them, smiling at them without knowing who they are. Why should I want to be in the same city as these people?

Otherwise, it would probably be interesting, many years from now, assuming I live that long, to see how the city where I was born and raised has changed. But don’t confuse tourism with immigration.

Do you miss Moscow?

For the first couple of years after 2022, I had recurring dreams; then they stopped. I know a lot of other people have them too.

The dream always has the same basic setup. It’s this spy-thriller kind of thing: I’ve somehow ended up in Moscow, I know it was a mistake, and I need to get out. The rest is me working out different ways to do that. It’s not exactly scary — more like a mystery where I’m plotting my escape. I don’t have that dream anymore.

Very relatable.

Otherwise, nostalgia doesn’t really torment me.

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