Ilya Ponomarev

Ponomarev in March 2012

In 2012, Ponomarev and fellow MP Dmitry G. Gudkov took a leadership role in street protests against Putin's rule.[6] Following the 4 March presidential election, in which Putin was elected for his third term as president, Ponomarev accused the government of rigging the election, claiming that it should have been close enough for a runoff.[21] In May, Ponomarev criticized Putin's decision to retain Igor Shuvalov in his cabinet despite a corruption scandal.[22] The following month, Ponomarev and Gudkov led a filibuster against a bill by Putin's United Russia party which allowed large fines to be imposed on anti-government protesters; though the filibuster was unsuccessful, the action attracted widespread attention.[6] Later, Ponomarev joined other political leaders in a successful challenge to the legislation before the Constitutional Court, overturning some of its provisions.

In June 2012, Ponomarev made a speech in the Duma in which he called United Russia members "crooks and thieves", a phrase originally used by anti-corruption activist Aleksei Navalny. In September of that year, Duma members voted to censure Ponomarev and bar him from speaking for one month. United Russia members also proposed charging him with defamation.[23]

In July, he strongly criticized the government response to the widespread flooding in Southern Russia Krymsk, which killed 172 people.[24] Together with several other civil activists, including Alyona Popova, Mitya Aleshkovsky, Danila Lindele and Maria Baronova, he organized a nationwide fundraising campaign which generated almost one million dollars in small donations to aid flood victims.

In December 2012, Ponomarev was the most vocal critic of the Dima Yakovlev Law, which restricted international adoption of Russian orphans (he was the only MP to vote against the bill in the first reading, and one of only eight opponents during the final reading). In 2013, Ponomarev was the only MP who refused to support the gay propaganda law. On 20 March 2014, Ponomarev was the only State Duma member to vote against the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation following the 2014 Crimean crisis.[25]

In 2012, Ponomarev supported[26][27] the Internet Restriction Bill, with the stated purpose of fighting online child pornography and drug sales, introduced by fellow Just Russia parliamentarian Yelena Mizulina. Critics compared the results to those of the Chinese Internet firewall:[28][29] a RosKomCenzura blocklist of censored pages, domain names, and IP addresses. Ponomarev claimed that he wished to ultimately limit government involvement in Internet regulation and allow more self-regulation,[30] but Maxim "Parker" Kononenko (a Russian blogger and journalist) accused[28][31] Ponomarev of acting in the commercial interests of a technology company which had Ponomarev's father Vladimir as a member of the board of directors[32] According to the law, all Internet providers are obliged to install expensive DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) hardware, which it was believed would be sold by said company. However, the company ultimately never sold any DPI servers , and Vladimir Ponomarev resigned from the board to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

In July 2013, Ponomarev stated during a meeting of the Russian Pirate Party that his support for Mizulina's bill had been a mistake[33]; he later voted against new initiatives by the Russian government to restrict Internet freedom, and became instrumental in the campaign against the "Russian version of SOPA".[34] Despite this, Ponomarev is portrayed by some other opposition activists (such as Alexey Navalny and Leonid Volkov) as a "censorship lobbyist", which Ponomarev claims is due to unrelated political disagreements and the struggle for influence over the Russian Internet community.[35]

In October 2012, the pro-government news channel NTV aired a documentary which accused Ponomarev's aide Leonid Razvozzhayev of arranging a meeting between a former opposition leader, the Left Front's Sergei Udaltsov, and Givi Targamadze, a Georgian official, for the purpose of overthrowing President Vladimir Putin.[36] A spokesman for Russian investigators stated that the government was considering terrorism charges against Udaltsov,[36] and Razvozzhayev, Udaltsov, and Konstantin Lebedev, an assistant of Udaltsov's, were charged with "plotting mass riots".[37] Razvozzhayev fled to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he applied for asylum from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but disappeared after leaving the office for lunch.[36] He resurfaced in Moscow three days later, where the website Life News recording him leaving a Moscow courthouse, shouting that he had been abducted and tortured.[36][38] A spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee claimed that Razvozzhayev had not been abducted, but had turned himself in freely and volunteered a confession of his conspiracy with Udaltsov and Lebedev to cause widespread rioting.[36]

Vladimir Burmatov, a United Russia MP, called on Ponomarev to resign from the State Duma for his association with Razvozzhayev.[39]

In August 2014, both Udaltsov and Razvozzhayev were sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Ponomarev was the only member of the State Duma to vote against annexation of Crimea during the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[2][1] Despite his criticism of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution as being driven by an alliance of neoliberals and nationalists, he justified his position in the Duma by saying that it was necessary to maintain friendly relations with the "brotherly Ukrainian nation" and avoid military confrontation, and argued that Russia's actions in Crimea would push Ukraine outside the traditional sphere of Russian influence and possibly provoke further expansion of NATO.[40] After the 445-1 vote, many people called for his resignation. He was also threatened with censure and expulsion, but responded that deputies cannot be prosecuted or removed because of the way they vote, and the parliament took no further action regarding the status of Ponomarev as deputy.[41] In August 2014, while he was in California, federal bailiffs froze Ponomarev's bank accounts and announced that they would not allow him to return to Russia, due to an ongoing investigation. He began living in San Jose, California,[42] but since 2016 is a permanent resident of Ukraine's capital Kyiv,[3][4] effectively in exile.[43] In April 2015, the Duma attempted to revoke his constitutional protection from criminal prosecution.[44]

Russian investigators claimed Ponomarev had embezzled 22 million rubles earmarked for the Skolkovo technology hub, an accusation Ponomarev describes as politically motivated. Russian investigators alleged that Skolkovo Vice-President Aleksey Beltyukov had paid Ponomarev about $750,000 for ten lectures and one research paper; . Ponomarev was initially not prosecuted for this because of his parliamentary immunity, but a court ordered him to return a part of the money. However, later in 2015, the Moscow Bauman Court heard Ponomaryov's case in absentia and decided to arrest him, issuing an international warrant. Despite not residing in Russia, Ponomarev continued to hold his parliamentary position, and would technically have remained an active member of the Duma until the September 2016 Duma election.[45][46]

On 10 June 2016, the State Duma impeached Ponomarev for truancy and not performing his duties. It was the first application of the controversial 2016 law that allows Duma to impeach its deputies.[47][48]