Kremlin critic killed in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region: reports

Anti-Kremlin activist Ildar Dadin, who was jailed in Russia for protests against Vladimir Putin, was killed on the front line in Ukraine where he fought alongside Kiev forces, his relatives and Russian media said on Sunday.

“It is with great regret that I inform you that Ildar Dadin – callsign Gandhi – died yesterday in combat in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine,” his exiled friend and former Russian lawmaker Ilia Ponomarev announced on Facebook.

He praised Dadin as a “fearless and determined fighter” who “went to the front to fight Putinism.”

Dadin, 42, had fought alongside Ukrainian forces in a “Siberian Battalion” and then in the “Russian Freedom Legion,” a group that claimed to be made up of Russians and was responsible for several incursions into the country, according to Ponomarev .

His death was confirmed on Telegram by Russian journalist Ksenia Larina and several other independent Russian media outlets.

He was imprisoned in a particularly harsh prison camp and condemned the torture and humiliation inflicted on him by his prison guards in a letter published by independent media Meduza in 2016.

Dadin was the first Russian citizen to be convicted under a 2014 law cracking down on protests in the country.