Yuri Schmidt

Yuri Markovich Schmidt (; 10 May 1937 – 12 January 2013) was a Russian human rights lawyer.

Schmidt was born in Leningrad.

Early life Yuri Schmidt was born in Leningrad on May 10, 1937, while the USSR was going through the period of the Stalinist great purge. His father, declared as the "enemy of the people", was imprisoned in the gulag for 19 years shortly after Schmidt was born.

He began representing prisoners charged with political crimes in the late 1980s. His clients included jailed leaders of political independence movements in the ethnic enclaves of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, a journalist charged with defaming President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. His most resounding victory was the acquittal of Aleksandr Nikitin, a former Soviet submarine captain who had been charged with espionage and high treason after he wrote a series of reports detailing radioactive pollution by Russia’s navy. He was a member of the Mikhail Khodorkovsky defense team from 2004, and headed the legal team for several years.