Diary of Jenny Kurpen

After May 6, journalist Jenny Kurpen was forced to escape from Russia

Diary of Jenny Kurpen

The suitcase with which journalist Jenny Kurpen fled from Russia

After May 6, journalist Jenny Kurpen was forced to escape from Russia and ask for political asylum in Ukraine. At the request of The New Times, all this time she kept diary entries
October 18. Kyiv
“Guys, now I’ll ruin your mood, probably,” the owner of the apartment hesed heavily on the pierced sofa next to us, “you will have to move.”
After that - two weeks of searches, the insanity of ads, the lack of options and money. Finally, here it is. It seems to be found.
- Three thousand? Are you sure?
- Girl, there will be another week there ... Can you do it yourself?
- Yes.
We are going to watch. 10 minutes from the metro, Dniprovsky district, the last floor of a 16-storey panel house, s/a separate, near the “buffet” (network universities.-The New Times).
A muddy guy in a leatherette jacket rises from the shop at the front line and leads us inside. We climb up the stairs hung with garlands of half -frenzied balloons, artificial flowers on the railing. Like on a cemetery fence. There was probably a holiday.
The phone calls.
- Pi*dez.
- What's the matter?
- The transport was stolen. Today. From the building UVKB*.
- Call Sasha from No Borders **. Do you know the numbers? - A dictated number, holding a folder with documents in the teeth.
The muddy guy is nervous.
- Will we look or what?
- Sasha, hello! Here is such a situation ... Yes, it’s clear. We are waiting.
*****

Jenny Cooper Kiev Shelter

The muddy guy presses on the doorbell.
The door timidly opens, the dead smells of dampness, smoldering, urine argue with the bright fragrance of boiling on the plate of the lean habits. The room is empty. Here are only rough scales of concrete, torn floorboards of parquet and a sofa strewn with cigarette ash.
“You see, I need money, but the furniture does not need furniture,” the hostess rests with a thin hand on the sticky oilcloth of the kitchen table and sways softly.
- Come on! It smells of death here, you can’t live here.
“It smells like a pitch here,” I open the door to the site and try to exhale the stink that filled the lungs.
May 6. Moscow, Tverskaya Street - Voikovskoye Internal Affairs Directorate
- Come on?
The dried up door of the apartment in the carriage slam slam shut, and the echo of Palesyak repeated this sound several times.
We silently walked through the quiet Moscow courtyards and lanes - the scenery of my thirty -year life. Here I was taken on a sled, and snow flakes swarled in the light of the lantern, here we were looking for our lost dog, and on that shop we drank a box of champagne for someone’s birthday ...
They turned on a deserted Petrovka-in some places they were already standing in shy flocks, garbage.
We reached Okhotny, with difficulty moving to the other side - everything was blocked. Falls, autosaks, riot police chains along the trampled lawns.
- Do not go.
- We will find ours and decide, where it is further ...
Mokhovaya is closed, we climb bypass. It is not clear where. In Georgievsky Lane we meet friends and go to the Duma on Tverskaya. In the marble sides of the transition, 50 people have already gathered, we see familiar faces; People talk, laugh, are glad to meet.

May 6. Tverskaya street. Moscow

*****
A Pepsov group *** is approaching from the corner, they are insinuating people to disperse. I turn on the camera. Reinforcement, holding metal turnstiles in front of you, crashes into the crowd. We retreat. I see the people who were distorted by the fear and hatred of the face in the form, fenced off themselves from life with bars with the knocked out inscription “ATC TsAO”. I see the engagement rings overwhelming in the evening sun, holding these bars.
***** - On her bus! What are you clicking on?
In a dark corner of Pazik, I aim at an empty seat by the window. Touching. I am considering the large population of the smelly twilight: four in a cage, the rest are crowded at two meters of a shaky dressing room - it is especially noticeable here that there are “we” and “they”. Two is shouted on the bus with shouts. At the site, a brawl is grabbing me.
- Calm, bl*d! - I return to the place by the window.
Handing riot police, guiltily shrugging his shoulders, turns away to the closing door.
- Commander, where are we going?
- "Voikovskoye."
Outside the window is dirty, fussing at any time Leningrad. We fly with siren to red. The radio, choking, hissing: “Knife, swamp, yes, employee riot police, is hospitalized ...”
- Turn off the camera!
- Why?
- It is forbidden to shoot in official vehicles.
- Stop the girl - turn off.
The knee in the shell drops from the red swollen cheek of the girl bent in half in the handcuffs fastened behind her back.
After a few minutes, I lower the camera with a dead eye to my knees.
“Tomorrow will be in the UK and CSB-material damage and excess,” I imperceptibly take out the CD with the material and hide it in the bra.
- What is so bold? Right now we’ll reach the department, and the screech is on you on the knife in the swamp!
- Go ahead, scum.
***** Pazik smoothly slows down at the Voikovskoye PACD ATS and is disconnected with a clang like a rusty chest.
- To the exit! You, yes.
- For what?
“You are a journalist, they said.” To the exit!
- I will not go out, make out like everyone else.
- Smoke out!
I jump from the footboard, my head is spinning from cool evening air and the first puff.
- Well, you are, why are you, huh?
- Why are you?
Three meters to the passage. In the opening door, cigarette smoke is visible, scattering in wet darkness. Lesha took shape earlier and came for me. Waiting in the rain. This is a victory - the last level of a stupid toy with the boards of honor in the dark labyrinths of the department, with ethnic operas, with Feesbashniki, with the filling of protocols, with swearing when issuing copies.
- Home?
- Let's go.
*****
The bed creaked - got comfortable.
- Do you understand what will happen next?
- Yes, x*th knows.
-212th*, wholesale, that's what.
June 13. Moscow. Basmanny court. Artem Savelov
In the narrow corridor of the Basmanny, they sit on the benches, on the floor, go back and forth, they are talking quietly, they set up equipment, different people are hastily hit on the keys of laptops-journalists, friends, activists, and defense witnesses. Stunned by what is happening. People who begin to understand what will happen next. The door of the meeting hall did not open that day.
We were already moving to the exit when we noticed in the corridor a low bewildered gray -haired person in heavy glasses with thick lenses, almost completely hiding the watery eyes; His trembling hands fiddled with a finely scribbled crumpled leaf ...
- Excuse me, maybe you will tell me ...
- What happened, how to help you?
- I have a son ... I am a father ... he was imprisoned ... Today is a trial ...
- What is his name? Let's see the meeting schedule ...
- Savelov Artem. I don’t know where, what time ... they say nothing ...
- Who is his lawyer?
- I do not know anything, I don’t know where he ... how they arrested, the last time I saw ...
- Now we will all find, do not worry.
- Farit? Murtazin, right? And what is Agora **?
- “Agora” is the best lawyers, they will really help you. Try to calm down, they will help.
- Thank you ... Thank you very much ... Thank you ...
We went out silently, like shell -shocked. Without remembering themselves, they wilted to the clean ones, they turned onto Rozhdestvensky ... There was a disheveled old man in front of his eyes, from whom his son was taken away.
June 14. Moscow. Basmanny court. Alexander Kamensky
We still entered the hall of the Basmanny Court. In the cage, horned and smiling bewildered, Sasha sat in handcuffs.
“The court issued a decision to choose a preventive measure previously not judged, unmarried, working as a Muscovite Alexander Kamensky in the form of detention. According to investigators, Kamensky, detained on May 6 on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, took part in the riots, and perhaps among the organizers. Due to the fact that Kamensky can hide and continue to engage in criminal activity, influence the participants in criminal proceedings and thereby prevent the proceedings on the case, the Basmanny City Court on June 14, 2012 granted the investigation to the arrest of the suspect, the meeting is considered closed, the decision may be appealed by the parties on the term of the time of the adoption, ” - the tongue twister was broken off and the tongue twist I hung in the air over our heads.
Sasha was detained on the other side of the same street where we were detained. Sasha was not on Bolotnaya. Sashin witnesses, detained with him, were not allowed into the hall.
Departure. Moscow - Kyiv
- Hello, I can talk with ... uh ... Kurpen Jenny ... uh ... Sri ... Niva.
- I'm listening. On what question?
- That's you, yes?
- Imagine.
- district Bochkarev. Can you come up to talk today?
“I have nothing to talk about with you.”
- Well, you were detained on May 6 in Bolotnaya, right? I am instructed to conduct a preventive conversation with you, talk about extremism ...
*****
The house is still sleeping; We throw off things, cook coffee, breakfast. In my head, a ball of questions: “How can she tell me? When? What next? Can we return? "
Okay, then, then.
*****
XXS sparkles with false gold of domes, the panorama looks like a shaky unwritten fresco; On the railing of the Patriarchal Bridge, the fragmented sticker “Freedom Pussy Riot!” is carelessly glued, in the dusk under the bridge the cylinder “freedom is a schoolboy!” ***. I would like to walk around each side, smoke on each shop. My city is especially beautiful today, because I see it for the last time.
*****
- Mom, we are leaving. For a long time. I'll write everything to you. After.
*****
- You are not sleeping? The border is coming soon? I'm worried about something.
- We already drove, you slept. We are in Ukraine.
- Come on?!
- Sleep. Everything is fine.
August 15. Kyiv. "You are not in Russia!"

Kyiv, Migration Service of Ukraine

On August 15, after almost two months from the moment of our departure, we finally managed to register our application for the status of political refugees. The organization of HIAS, partner of UNCB UN ****, helped to go through all the necessary procedures related to the collection of documents.
Then we went to the migration service. It turned out that the flow of refugees in Ukraine does not run out: Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Africans, Iranians. Of course, we were warned in advance that this state agency works in a very peculiar mode: receiving days only two a week - Monday and Wednesday, reception hours - from 10.00 to 13.00. In order to be at least the second or third in line, you need to get up at five in the morning and be in place no later than seven - over several reception hours, the service staff manage to “work out” no more than three people.
The department for work with refugees and stateless persons is located on an inconspicuous street ending with a deadlock with a pair of two -story houses of a ram type and a car wash. Above the wide porch, strewn with cigarette butts, next to the deaf metal door - the modest sign “The sovereign cometet decorate the right of nationalities. Management of Migraitziyni Service at metro Kievi. " The newcomer experiences the joy of the fact that he took the second line - for the smiling African. You are confident in yourself, and confidence gives you the strength to survive in the forty -degree heat these three hours before the opening. You look maliciously at the gradually tightening Iranians. They are cautiously standing in the distance and fingers in their hands with their folders with documents - do you not know that they arrived in vain today. You are the second in line, and that means you won.
Having clanged by the lock, the door with a creak opens, and you feel that you are a textbook example of natural selection: you are a surviving look, and now you need to win a fight. You find yourself in an unexpectedly small room (no more than ten square meters) with ragged walls, painted names, dates, numbers on a dozen languages ​​- from Russian to Farsi, with trampled carbon monoxide on the floor and forty -casantic closed glass window with mirror spraying. There are two rickety stools in the room, and a physiological desire to sit down for at least five minutes fights in you with a rational decision to stick to the window. Among the awaiting the vast majority are men; Those rare women who find themselves in this line manage to sit a little.

Kyiv pre -trial detention center on Lukyanovka

The window swings open, you cling your fingers into a small windowsill, on which your folder is already ready. The head in the window shouts some name, and it is not yours. And not even that African. It is Uzbek. The window closes, the excitement is growing, the room is filled with a dissatisfied murmur, you cling to the windowsill even more. You are ready for anything. The head announces that the Uzbek name has five children and he will be accepted without expectation. At first, you are furious, but suddenly you feel something similar to joy: you lost your natural selection and missed the Uzbek with children, because you are a person. And you won because you stayed.
*****

Announcement at a checkpoint near a pre-trial detention center

This time you are no longer a beginner. You are calm and ready for the fact that perhaps you will get up at five more than once and come to seven. You no longer peer into every competitor, wondering how many wives and children can have. After spending three hours outside, you habitually go into the room, occupy a chair and silently wait without much hope. You look indifferently like a large black beetle, stumbling in the dirty villi of the black carpet, runs somewhere, like a large female dark leg with a bright pedicure in sandals crushes it and casts it to the side. The window opens: “Russia! Surnames! " After another ten minutes, you are inside a bright clean office. Polite friendly people sit you on a chair and ask what language it is more convenient for you to communicate (regardless of your choice, you will speak a real surzhik *****). After about an hour, you are free, fingerprint and registered in the Migration Service of Ukraine.
*****
“I don’t know anything, I'm just a taxi driver,” a male voice says. I raise my head, I see a stooped back in a wet gray cloak, shreds of gray hair sticking out from under a shabby cap, so old that it can no longer be made out, the arches of heavy glasses behind the ears, a thin aluminum cane, fussyly and timidly feeling air, and a large road bag. “Blind, European, interesting,” I think absentmindedly.
“Hello ... help me, please. I don’t know how to do it more correctly ... I was born and raised in Ukraine, in the Soviet Union, then I lived in Germany for many years ... I, you see ... old. I arrived ... I want to die here. " The window choked and suffocated for a moment: "You are not here, you need to in the repatriation department, this is not here."
“You will be kind and tell me how to get there?”
- Certainly. Write down.
“He is blind,” someone tells with the Iranian accent.
- Yes, I'm sorry, I will write you myself.
“Can't you call me a taxi?” Yes. Right now. Take my phone.
- Excuse me, I have no right to take and use your property, this prohibits the rules.
An awkward silence lasts eternity. I have not a penny on the phone, and I feel disgusting.
"I! I will call you a taxi! Repeat the address ” - from a group of Iranians, which has lost in the corner, a low thin guy is separated. This is Hamri, he is an anti -Islamist. He dials a number and repeats the operator with interrogative intonation: “After 10? Yes? 41 hryvnia? Thank you".
The car comes. Supporting his grandfather’s arms, Iranians carefully lower him from a slippery porch. We approach the "DEU" with checkers and, without saying a word, we get the money. The hearing of the blind is incredibly developed. “What did you think of yourself?! I have everything, I don't need anything. Thank you for helping, but I have money. "
The Dau slowly unfolds and gradually hides from sight, rustling with fragments of broken gravel and wet sand. We remain in the rain: Iranians, Africans, Russians, looking after a citizen of the Soviet Union, who came to die of his homeland, who is no longer there.
Autumn. Kyiv. 6 hryvnias

To earn money, Kurpen gives out beer bottles in Kyiv

- Nothing at all?
“Let's see,” the black wallet bought on the Tel Aviv Barakhok spit contestly scornfully to the hryvnia seventy-five.
-Hmm. Plan "B"?
I free the wires, the charges and books of a sports bag, I get a backpack. On the balcony, Lesha already rings with colorful glass of bottles.
-Listen, there are some kind of dulled at all ...
- It doesn't matter, I will wash it.
Sand and wet labels cover the bottom of a yellowed bath. “Chernihiv”, “Rogan”, “Berdichevskoye”, “Obolon”, “Zhigulevskoye” Obolonskoye, “Zhigulevskoye” Uman, “White Leo”, “Barley Kolos”.
The entrance door shut behind us. Thunder glasses in bags, stumbling on a rare crushed stone, walked along a tram canvas, awkwardly moved along a crushed bald grass from the embankment, linked with sneakers in a dummy with a groove dust. We pass through the bazaar row to the pile of piled garbage at the exit. At an open body, a broken Gazelka lined up a fortress of multi -colored plastic boxes already filled with containers. Between the boxes, a businesslike old woman scurrys. Seeing us, warmly smiles at the toothless mouth and bangs a couple of free ones to the ground.
- Do you have Skilki? We’ll damn it.
Skillfully spreads the contents of our bauls through the cells and hastily climbs into a greasy apron on a round abdomen.
- Fuck you! Put the Shche! - A dirty wrinkled hand with black nails holds out six hryvnias.

*Office of the UN Supreme Commissioner for Refugees.
** No borders Network - International Movement for Freedom of Movement and Migrant Rights.
*** PPS employees, patrol service.

*Article 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - "Mass riots."
** The Interregional Association of Human Rights Procedure Organizations "Agora". The lawyers collaborating with her Svetlana Sidorkina, Farit Murtazin and Dmitry Dinze defend three accused in the “swamp case” - Andrei Barabanov, Artem Saveelov and Denis Lutskevich.
*** Alexey Olesinov (schoolbar) - anti -fascist, in 2009 he was sentenced to a year of imprisonment under Art. 213 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism). Olesinova was defended by lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in the same year. Currently, the schoolbar (and two more activists of Antif) is again in custody of a similar charges.
**** Hias (Hias) - Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, "Society for Assisting Jewish Immigrants."
***** The conversational mixture of Russian and Ukrainian.

Photos by Jenny Kurpen