Volgograd lawyer remanded in custody on charge of repeated discrediting of the army
Lawyer Roman Melnichenko has been remanded in custody on a charge of repeated discrediting of the Russian Armed Forces under Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Russian Criminal Code, the Central District Court of Volgograd announced.
The criminal case was opened in connection with videos which, according to the investigation, ‘evaluate the actions of the Russian Armed Forces carried out in the course of the special military operation as criminal and aggressive’ and ‘contain a negative assessment of, and deny, the claim that the Russian Armed Forces are being used to maintain peace and security.’ Roman Melnichenko allegedly published the videos on his VK page and on an unspecified video hosting platform in September 2025.
He was detained on 21 July. Local police published footage of the arrest, the outlet Volgograd Online confirmed the individual detained was Roman Melnichenko.
In 2024, Roman Melnichenko was found administratively liable for discrediting the army under Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences. The administrative offence report was drawn up following an interview he gave to TV Rain, in which he said: ‘…but in general Russia has drones in its arsenal. And Russia, as far as I know, is actively using these drones in the special military operation and is killing Ukrainians with them. So that’s that.’ He was fined 30,000 roubles (≈€335). The day before, he had been held for three days on a charge of disobeying a police officer under Part 1 of Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences.
Roman Melnichenko was dismissed from academic posts twice for his anti-war views. The first time was in 2014, from the Russian Presidential Academy of Public Administration, following a video in which he analysed the annexation of Crimea from the perspective of international law. The second was in 2022, from Volgograd State University, where he held the position of associate professor in the department of constitutional and municipal law. ‘The prosecutor’s office sent a document to the university addressed to the rector, essentially saying: “Either your job or Melnichenko.” I doubt the rector spent long thinking about it — I was dismissed,’ he told OVD-Info in 2024.
After the start of the full-scale war, Roman Melnichenko established a group in Volgograd called ‘Ukrainians of the Don’, where anyone interested could study Ukrainian. He also began actively working on the rights of prisoners of war, giving lectures and organising events on the subject, running an online course entitled The Law of War, and teaching other subjects online. He visited Ruslan Nurushev, who had been arrested under the ‘fakes’ legislation, and publicly described the conditions of his detention.
