Ukraine’s lawyer for Russians accused of war crimes — and why he takes the cases
Russian soldier Mykhailo Romanov, commander of a tank regiment, has been accused by Ukrainian prosecutors of shooting a resident of the village of Bohdanivka and then raping his wife three times in 2022. He is represented in court by Andrii Domanskyi, a lawyer from Vorzel, a suburb of Kyiv, who defends about a hundred Russians accused of war crimes. Frontliner found out why he defends people who pointed a gun at him during the occupation.
The courtroom of the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv is not much different from a university lecture hall: brown linoleum, cheap furniture, painted windowsills. The judge, lawyer, and prosecutor are late due to traffic. No witnesses or journalists are expected, and the defendant will not appear.
The hearing bears little resemblance to the procedures seen in movies. The prosecutor and lawyer do not engage in eloquent speeches to capture the attention of the judge and jury. Everything is more mundane. The judge asks whether measures were taken to summon the defendant to the hearing. The prosecutor says that the Ukrainian side sent a summons to the Russian Constitutional Court by email, but no response was received.
The Russian Constitutional Court responded to Ukrainian lawyers even after 2014, when accusations of violations of the rules of war in Donbas were sent by mail. After the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the Russians stopped responding. That was the case in this proceeding, when the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office brought charges against Russian General Yevhen Poplavskyi. He is suspected of violating Articles 110 and 437 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — encroachment on the territorial integrity of the country and waging and conducting an aggressive war.
The defendant’s lawyer was also unable to reach him. He informs the judge that he tried to contact his client several times. The lawyer’s name is Andrii Domanskyi, and he is used to the fact that almost all of his approximately 100 clients accused of violations of the rules of war will not appear in court. In essence, he is defending an empty seat, because trials of Russian military personnel are almost always conducted in absentia — proceedings held without the defendant present (in this case, because he could not be taken into custody.
After hearing the defense and the prosecution, the judge goes to the deliberation room – whether the Russian will be convicted or acquitted will be known in 20 minutes.
The on-call lawyer for Russians
In 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko opened a case about the deportation of Crimean Tatars. The accused was 141-year-old Joseph Stalin (who died in 1953), named posthumously in a symbolic case. Domanskyi volunteered to defend the Soviet leader.
Domanskyi’s name has already appeared in publications about high-profile court cases. Previously, he defended the editor-in-chief of “RIA Novosti Ukraina,” (the Ukrainian arm of Russia’s state news agency) Kyrylo Vyshynskyi, who was accused of treason and later exchanged by the Kremlin for Ukrainian prisoners. He would later defend “Hitler” — Oles Cherniak, the alleged leader of a neo-Nazi group that, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), promoted the Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto and called for attacks; in January 2021 a Kyiv court placed him under night house arrest.
Later, during the full-scale invasion, he represented the interests of Metropolitan Pavlo, better known as Pasha Mercedes (accused of denying Russia’s armed aggression), former head of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region Roman Dudin (charged with treason and unauthorized abandonment of a military unit), and Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Over the past two years of the war, the lawyer has expanded his client base: in addition to pro-Russian figures, he has begun to defend Russians themselves.
Knowing that Domanskyi represented the interests of millionaires Viktor Medvedchuk and Metropolitan Pavel, one might expect his office to resemble that of a wealthy lawyer from a movie: oak furniture, Persian rugs, alcohol in crystal decanters. But in reality, Domanskyi’s office resembles a storage room. Small, about seven square meters (about 75 square feet), the room is littered with boxes and heavy-duty plastic sacks.
The only thing that attracts attention in the room is a painting depicting a hybrid of a hippopotamus, a crocodile, and a lion devouring a heart that has just been removed from the scales. This is Ammit, a monster from Egyptian mythology who is fed the hearts of those found guilty by divine judgment. After explaining the meaning of the painting, Domanskyi sits down in a chair in the corner.
He is 45 years old, but looks older due to his long gray beard and chronic lack of sleep. The reason for his lack of sleep is the white bags. Most of them contain cases of crimes committed by Russian military personnel. In 2024, Domanskyi took on 50 cases related to violations of the rules of war, roughly the same number as in 2023. If you stack the folders on top of each other, says the lawyer, you will have four columns reaching the ceiling.
Not every lawyer will take on this category of court cases. They carry reputational risk, client attrition, and threats. In most cases, lawyers refuse such cases, but if they agree, they file a motion with the court to bar journalists from the proceedings because they do not want their photos and names to appear in the media.
Lawyers for Russian military personnel are provided free of charge by the Secondary Legal Aid Center. When a case is filed, the center’s dispatchers look at the list of lawyers who cooperate with the institution. Under the terms of the contract between the Center and the lawyer, the latter undertakes to take on 8 to 12 cases per month. When it comes to defending Russian military personnel, it is often impossible to find lawyers who agree to represent the invaders. In such cases, they call the “Duty Officer.” This is what the Center’s dispatchers call Domanskyi, because he defends Russians more often than many of his colleagues.
Reputational risks of defending the occupiers
Domanskyi represents the interests of those whom most people would call scum. Among them is a looter from Russia’s National Guard unit No. 6720, identified after investigators reviewed CCTV from a CDEK courier office in Mozyr, Belarus, where soldiers mailed boxes of goods stolen from homes in the village of Blystavytsia in Kyiv Oblast, according to Ukrainian police and court materials. The same list includes a Russian soldier accused of raping a child in Bucha, as well as a commander of a unit in the 239th Tank Regiment charged with shooting a resident of the village of Bohdanivka and raped his wife three times.
Does Domanskyi sympathize with the occupiers if he is not afraid of ruining his reputation? Instead of answering, he recounts a hypothetical he says he heard from an American colleague: doctors resuscitate a condemned prisoner after a stabbing; three weeks later, the state carries out the execution.
Should the doctors have refused to help the killer, especially knowing that he was doomed anyway? Or did they see only a patient in front of them, and all the stories of his life were irrelevant to them, unless they were part of his medical history? Domanskyi, the son of a surgeon and an obstetrician, says he sees a medical principle in the legal profession. According to him, he is not facing an executioner from Bucha, not a Russian, but a client, and he is defending not so much Russians as the right to legal representation for all. However, not all of his colleagues agree with him.
According to the press service of the Secondary Legal Aid Center, lawyers are more likely to refuse cases involving rapists and Russian military personnel. The Center acknowledges that there is indeed a risk to their professional reputation, which is why not all lawyers are willing to defend Russians.
“And if they do take on such cases, they refuse to talk to the press,” says Tetiana Kozak, editor in chief of Graty, a media outlet that covers court proceedings in Ukraine. “I tried to get comments from about 10 lawyers who defend Russian soldiers. All of them refuse to talk.”
Domanskyi does not avoid journalists. Because the lawyer openly talks to the media about his position, he has become an object of contempt and hatred for many. In the Getcontact app, where you can see how your number is listed in other subscribers’ contact books, he saw that he was listed as a “f**k”, “scum” and “louse”. Domanskyi received about 20 threatening phone calls from Polish, Hungarian and Georgian numbers. He says he understands this, but complains that people do not understand what he is fighting for.
Ukraine is a democratic and law-abiding state. But if we do not guarantee rights for everyone, what are our boys fighting for?
The boys from the front do not always agree with him. Four Ukrainian soldiers refused Andrii Domanskyi’s services because they did not want to share a lawyer with those who are trying to seize their country.
Domanskyi’s activities, in his own words, irritate the prosecutor’s office, primarily because he has repeatedly pointed out to the court the insufficiency of the prosecution’s evidence.
“The cases are transparently fabricated. The prosecutor’s office has low standards for accepting evidence; they consider accounts of events from third parties who were not present at the scene to be sufficient. The court accepts them due to bias and pressure from society, which wants convictions for the occupiers,” says the lawyer.
According to Domanskyi, prosecutors have repeatedly threatened in private conversations to set the TCC on him, Ukraine’s Territorial Centers for Recruitment and Social Support, i.e., a threat that he would be drafted. Unlike prosecutors, investigators, and judges, lawyers are not exempt from mobilization.
Domanskyi says he is driven by a desire to help every defendant. When asked why many of his clients are pro-Russian figures and Russians, he replies:
“There are two people who will always treat you positively — your mother and your lawyer.”
Cases against Russians or Medvedchuk attract attention
According to journalists covering the trials of Russian military personnel, Domanskyi works not only because of his keen sense of justice.
“Domanskyi comments on cases that other lawyers would not want to comment on. It is clear that Domanskyi likes to be a figure in high-profile trials.” says journalist Oleksii Arunian.
He likes being in the spotlight. Cases involving Russians or pro-Russian figures such as Medvedchuk or Vyshynskyi attract attention.
After 2022, the trials of Russian military personnel can hardly be called high-profile. First of all, because the Russians are not brought to court, which would guarantee media coverage. Domanskyi has seen about 15 accused Russian military personnel face to face — their cases were quickly closed in order to carry out a prisoner exchange with Russia. So far, the trials of Russians have been nominal – they are charged but cannot be brought to justice.
The occupiers decided not to shoot the lawyer
Andrii Domanskyi says he has never been a fan of the “Russian world.” Three years ago, he came face to face with the occupiers.
On February 26, 2022, after the occupation of Vorzel, five Chechens entered Domanskyi’s house to conduct an inspection, he recalls. One of them pulled the safety catch on his Kalashnikov and aimed it at the lawyer while one of the soldiers searched for his name on the internet. One of the first search results was an article about Domanskyi defending editor-in-chief Kirill Vyshinsky, the Kremlin’s prisoner No. 1 in the 2010s, who was accused of treason. The next result was news that in 2017 he had been Stalin’s lawyer. This saved Domanskyi. But the fact that he was not shot increased his neighbors’ hostility and the number of his haters — they are convinced that only traitors come out alive after talking to Russians.
On February 27, 2022, Domanskyi continues, he received a call from a dispatcher asking him to come to Kyiv to become the lawyer for the first prisoners of war detained during the storming of the Ukrainian capital.
“I would love to, but I can’t. I have an important reason,” the lawyer said at the time, looking out the window at the fence of his house, in front of which stood a Russian tank.
An acquittal is almost impossible
The judge of the Shevchenkivskyi District Court returns with a proposal to combine General Poplavskyi’s case with similar criminal proceedings in order to save time in the future. With 99 percent certainty, he will be found guilty.
Most likely, the rest of the cases in the bags from Domanskyi’s office will end the same way. He has yet to win a single case involving the Russian military.
Andrii Domanskyi says that currently, the number of acquittals in Ukraine is 0.3-0.4%. According to the lawyer, this indicates the obsolescence and inflexibility of the judicial system, which is overly opportunistic. For example, in Canada, 38% of defendants receive acquittals, in Britain – 20%, and in the US – 10%. Ukraine ranks alongside Russia and China, where less than 1% of defendants are acquitted.
Domanskyi sees populism and dubious practical value in such a large number of charges. Although the court finds the accused Russians guilty, it will not be possible to bring them to justice in the near future: Domanskyi says Interpol does not always include the names of those convicted by Ukrainian courts on its wanted list, as it considers the cases to be political in nature, and Ukrainians themselves are not always able to arrest Russian military personnel and high-ranking officials.
Andrii Domanskyi says that his goal is to exonerate at least one Russian who has been accused of a war crime that he did not commit. On that day, the lawyer will choose his favorite yellow talisman tie, which he always wears when he knows that the judge will say, “Not guilty.”
Text: Danyl Lekhovitser
Photos: Mykhaylo Palinchak
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