Ildar Dadin was killed in action in Ukraine, according to his recruiters. He was a well-known Russian activist fighting on the side Kyiv.
A spokeswoman from the Civic Council told the BBC that Dadin died, adding “he was and he still remains a hero”.
The activist-turned-fighter was killed when soldiers from his volunteer battalion, the Freedom of Russia Legion, came under Russian artillery fire in the Kharkiv region of north-eastern Ukraine.
There are no further details at this time, and the Legion will not comment while a military operation continues to be active.
Ilia Ponamarev is an exiled Russian politician who had previously been linked to the Legion. He told the BBC that he was “certain, but alas,” that Dadin was dead.
Another source clarified this was “confirmed” by those who fought with him.
The most recent messages I sent to his phone still show as “unread”.
Ildar Dadin was known in Russia for a decade for his persistence to stage peaceful protests in the face of increasing political repression.
He was the first person to be prosecuted for violating Russia’s increasingly strict rules on protests. This new Article 212.1, quickly dubbed Dadin’s Law, made it a crime in 2014.
In his case, it meant simply standing on the street of Moscow with a sign.
Dadin, who was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, was immediately placed in a punishment room and went on a hunger strike. His prison guards tortured him until he stopped.
In 2017, shortly after his release, I met him in Moscow. He described being hung by his wrists cuffed from a wall. The guards then threatened to rape him. He confessed that the brutality almost broke him.
When I found out that Dadin was fighting for Ukraine with a Russian volunteer battalion, I got in touch. We had a long series of exchanges earlier this year.
Dadin, who was as principled and as intense as I remembered, explained his decision to join the army by saying, “I can’t do nothing, so become an accomplice of Russian evil, its crimes.”
He had always considered himself to be a pacifist, but listed his reasons for picking up arms: “The mass killings, the torture, the rape, and the looting.” He chose to call himself Gandhi.
Dadin felt personally responsible for the Russian invasion of its neighbor.
He claimed that he, along with other Russians, had failed to stop Vladimir Putin. They were scared off the street by police violence and threats of prison.
Dadin wrote me one evening from near the frontline of Sumy, “The most important thing is to act according my conscience.”
He first joined the Siberian Battalion, which is part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in June 2023. Last winter he moved to the Freedom of Russia Legion.
The majority of recruits are Russian citizens, who hope that helping Ukraine to defeat Vladimir Putin is a first step in ending his rule at the Kremlin.
Their numbers and effectiveness as a combat force are not clear.
They have claimed a few successes, including an incursion across the border into Russia earlier this summer at the time of Putin’s reelection.
Dadin’s experience was not as he had hoped.
He felt that some missions sent to his unit were “pointless” from a military perspective.
He described a battle in which he was pinned down by Russian fire for eight hours in a bomb-crater. A drone tried to drop a weapon on him while a fellow volunteer soldier died.
Like many Ukrainian soldiers, he had been fighting for months with little time off, and was limping due to a hip injury.
I wondered if he would leave, but Dadin made it clear that his conscience wouldn’t allow him to “sit on the sidelines”.
He said that he would not do so “while Russian criminals” were killing Ukrainians.
“I tried to stop Russia, but did I succeed?” In one of our last conversations, he criticized himself for not doing enough. “And thousands have died because I didn’t do enough.”
Those who sent Ildar to fight are not in agreement. The Civic Council wrote: “Ildar was brave, principled, and honest.” “That’s what we should remember him as.”
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