The defense lawyer Ilya Novikov moved from Russia to Ukraine in 2019. Back in Russia, Novikov has been sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for spreading “fake news,” labeled as a “foreign agent,” added to the registry of “terrorists and extremists,” and put on a wanted list in a separate criminal case on treason charges for fighting on Ukraine’s side. Now, as a Ukrainian lawyer, Novikov is defending Serhii Kuznetsov, a Ukrainian citizen who was detained in connection with the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and later extradited to Germany. Novikov is also handling several cases for former President Petro Poroshenko and he is a critic of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s policies. (Zelensky and Poroshenko have a long-running feud.)
Meduza asked Novikov about his criticisms of Zelensky and his administration, and why he thinks Ukraine’s government imposed sanctions on Poroshenko. ‘Most Kyivans have developed an unhealthy fatalism. What’s the situation in Kyiv right now?
In Kyiv, things that should never be normal have been normalized. The missiles usually come in toward morning — around 5 or 6 a.m. Before that, all night long, they launch Shaheds [drones] to wear down our air defenses; there are several hundred of them for every few dozen missiles.
Kyivans have learned to live this way. An air raid alert can sound at any hour of the day or night. And by now, everyone knows what they’ll do when it does — whether to stop working or not. Obviously, you can’t get any work done if you go to a shelter every single time. So most people have developed an unhealthy fatalism: we live our lives, and whether something hits us or not is up to God. You don’t go to the shelters? It varies. Mostly not, of course, because you can’t work that way. At least not during the daytime.
Do you believe negotiations with Putin are possible? Or how do you think this could all end? A ceasefire, once Putin is ready for one, may or may not be formalized through negotiations. Talks are more likely than not, but there’s no possibility of reaching a compromise that will actually hold afterward. It’s not about whether Zelensky wants to make peace or not. It’s not that Trump isn’t trying hard enough. It’s that Putin still believes he can keep trying to break us. In the notorious Mala Tokmachka, what’s being decided right now isn’t who gets Mala Tokmachka. What’s being decided there is who gets Kyiv and Odesa. This is an all-or-nothing gamble. This isn’t a question of a few square kilometers on a map — it’s about Ukraine’s existence. And, in the end, a question of Russia’s existence in its current form. Because if, thanks to our allies’ help, we hold out longer than Putin and the Russian army, there’s a chance it will set off a far-reaching chain reaction. That could end in Putin’s overthrow — and not by benevolent democratic forces but by ghouls just like him. And the mechanism of Russia’s disintegration would start in some peripheral region where the bonds are weakest. Where the process would stop in that case is impossible to say. For Ukraine, this is a matter of survival. A nominal ceasefire, followed by an end to Western partners’ aid and a creeping disarmament of Ukraine, could mean our total annihilation. Because Putin certainly won’t disarm. We won’t survive a second round. And the people who think a compromise is possible under those conditions simply don’t understand the world we live in.
Smoke over Kyiv after the attack, June 15, 2026 ‘It was a crime to build and operate it in the first place.’ As a lawyer, you’re defending Ukrainian citizen Serhii Kuznetsov in the Nord Stream bombing case. What are the latest developments? In May, Kuznetsov’s initial detention term expired — six months in custody in Germany. Before that, while the extradition hearings were underway, he spent several more months in Italy. He was brought to Hamburg on November 27, 2025. The investigation is still ongoing, and [Germany’s] federal court will once again decide whether to extend his detention. It’s extremely likely the detention will be extended. The case is already politicized and high-profile. The explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea occurred overnight on September 28, 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported that the operation was conceived in May 2022 by a group of Ukrainian officers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly demanded that the operation be stopped, but Valery Zaluzhny, then the commander in chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, ignored the order. Kuznetsov is the first person detained in the case. He was arrested in August 2025 in Italy, where he had come on vacation with his family. In addition, in August 2024 it emerged that Germany had issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian diver Volodymyr Zhuravlov, suspected of involvement in the explosions. The warrant was sent to Poland, where the suspect was living, but Polish authorities never responded to the request, and the diver had probably already managed to leave for Ukraine. Kuznetsov is being held in a pretrial detention facility in Hamburg, confined to a unit usually reserved for terrorism suspects and defendants accused of serious violent offenses. Prosecutors put him there because they believe he may not have acted alone but “in the interests of a foreign state,” meaning Ukraine. Never mind there’s no terrorism charge against him. What’s the maximum sentence he could face? It’s still unclear. We’ll be able to say for sure only once there’s an indictment because the charges he was arrested on aren’t final. There were three counts in all. One of them, Section 88, involves an attack on Germany’s constitutional order. And that one will apparently be dropped because the German federal court has already expressed doubt about its applicability. It’s still unclear exactly which charges will go into the indictment. But in any case, it will probably include something in the serious-crime category. According to The Wall Street Journal, German investigators believe the Nord Stream bombing was carried out under the direction of Valery Zaluzhny, then the commander in chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. What’s your response to that? The official indictment that will be brought before the court could appear within weeks, if not days. There’s a good chance it will be signed before the end of June. Then we’ll be able to speak about it with more certainty because the official documents we’ve seen so far aren’t the court’s final ruling. The defense has had a chance to review the German federal court’s response to the appeal Kuznetsov’s lawyers filed against his detention. It’s a document dated December 10, 2025, which ruled that his detention from November 27, 2025, to May 27, 2026, could not be appealed. Among other things, it lays out the investigation’s position. Valery Zaluzhny doesn’t appear in the document. But it does say that Kuznetsov was an officer in a special-operations unit of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and that “the act of sabotage was presumably initiated and directed by Ukrainian state authorities.” 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. Serhii Kuznetsov 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 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. Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Rostov courtroom, with attorneys Nikolai Polozov and Ilya Novikov in the foreground. February 1, 2016 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. Ilya Novikov and Petro Poroshenko during a hearing challenging the sanctions imposed on the former president of Ukraine. Kyiv, 2025 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