EXILES is a community of lawyers from Russia who were stripped of their professional status for political reasons and now defend others living in exile in the EU. Our clients are migrants from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, among them human rights defenders, journalists and activists, who lose residence permits, documents and bank accounts through administrative decisions or are declared security threats on spurious grounds. We provide legal aid in Russian language, document these violations and take strategic cases to national courts and the European Court of Human Rights.

Our founders have themselves won more than a dozen judgments in Strasbourg, and we know these procedures from both sides — as applicants and as counsel.

Campaign #Free120 is the campaign for the release of critically ill political prisoners. Hundreds of political prisoners with serious illnesses are being held in Russian prisons and detention centres. They are denied medical care despite serious diagnoses ranging from diabetes and cancer to the effects of stroke.‍

Many of them have been sentenced to years or decades in prison for peaceful activism. They are being deprived not only of their freedom, but also of their right to life. We demand the immediate release of these people on humanitarian grounds. 

Our goal is to draw public and international attention, to put pressure on the Russian authorities, and to save lives.