Translated material
"Terrorist" from Simferopol
On April 9, the Moscow City Court extended for a month, until May 16, the arrest of Alexander Kolchenko.
According to the FSB, he is a participant in the anti -Russian underground in the Crimea, and together with three more detained residents of the peninsula is accused of terrorism. What evidence collected in almost a year is the charge, how the Russian special services entered the Crimea and how the Simferopol residents relate to the relatives of the detainees - the New Times understood the 
During the arson of the building of the “Russian community of Crimea” on the night of April 14, 2014, the front door, the porch and the visor were injured. A few days later, the “Molotov cocktail” flew into the reception window of United Russia. The damage from the burnout of a five -meter kitchen was estimated at 200 thousand rubles. Hooliganism? But on March 31, 2015, Kolchenko was accused of participating in the terrorist community and the committing of terrorist stergo. Then, in Berlin, Bremen, Kyiv, Minsk, Paris, Strasbourg and Tunisia, shares of solidarity with the detainee under the slogan “Return the tundra to the Crimea” were held. “Tundra” is the nickname Kolchenko in the activist party of the peninsula.
“Dates are allowed only to those who cooperate” the leader of the Bandera underground in the Crimea, according to the FSB, is director Oleg Sentsov, who, together with the teacher of the Department of Military History of Crimean University of Culture, Alexei Chirniy, is accused under Art. 205 Part 2 of the Criminal Code ("Terrorist") and under Art. 205.4 Part 2 ("Organization of the terrorist community"). In early February, Sentsov added Art. 222 Part 3 ("Illegal turnover of weapons").
Chirniy, before the arrest, was fond of the reconstruction of medieval armor, considered himself a pagan and Pubnoval in social networks Nazi propaganda posters. Today, his interests are represented by the defender appointed by the investigation, and the case will be held in a special order in the Military District Court of Rostov-on-Don.
In addition to damage to the two offices, the Sentsov Group is accused of preparing the explosion on May 9, 2014 of the Eternal Flame and the monument to Lenin. According to the special services, the defendants also planned “the destruction of a number of life objects, railway bridges, power lines”.
In the same case, the employee of the prosecutor's office of the Zheleznodorozhny district of Simferopol, Gennady Afanasyev, detained on May 8, 2014, went on a deal with the investigation. The process over Afanasyev went in a special order, that is, without a trial - in this case, the defendant has the right to mitigate the punishment. On December 25, Afanasyev was sentenced to seven years in prison in a maximum security colony.
Sentsov refuses the charge brought to him. Kolchenko admitted that he was next to the office, but did not take part in the attack. He refused to testify against the rest. If their fault is proved, both can be released in twenty years. Afanasyev and Chirny will become the main witnesses of the accusations on the process.
The accusation claims that Kolchenko met with Sentsov at “mass events of supporters of the location of Crimea in Ukraine”, where the director allegedly proposed to create a group “for the implementation of the“ Right Sector ”in accordance with the ideology of the“ Right Sector ”. According to the FSB, this group was to destabilize the activities of the newly created authorities "in order to influence their decision on the withdrawal of the Republic of Crimea from the Russian Federation."
Despite the severity of the prosecution, almost every letter from Kolchenko begins with the words-"I still have everything is fine." He calls arson a symbolic gesture of protest, and not an attempt to “frighten the population of the Crimea,” and emphasizes that there was nobody at midnight in the building. “I was against the war, against violence. My actions are directed against the United Russia party, which voted for the entry of troops. "
In the correspondence he says that he followed the “swamp business”: “Nevertheless, somehow it’s not very much sitting for this, through the prism of this it is scary to imagine how long it awaits me-the prospects, the campaign, not very much.” Larisa Kolchenko is worried that they do not give dates: “They motivate this - since he refuses cooperation, then there is nothing to communicate. Dates are allowed only to those who cooperate. ”
The action in support of Alexander Kolchenko in Kiev “will not understand in Simferopol” “The son from the school was a truth -seeker,” says Larisa. “He had a soul for the whole Crimea, participated literally in everything.” In the left -wing party, Kolchenko was thanks to hard feeding, which he became interested in at school. I went to archaeological excavations, went to the demonstrations under the black and red banners of the anarchists. He organized a protest against the construction of a transport terminal on the Black Sea, was among the initiators of the student action trade union, which struck against monetarization of education - the All -Ukrainian rallies began with Simferopol, then consulted the already striking employees of Crimatetroll.
“We supported him in everything,” says his mother. “But when he gathered for Euromaidan, he literally stood in the doorway, and behind his backpack, I rushed to dissuade: they kill people and people in Simferopol.” As an activist Kolchenko, according to lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina, has long been under development. “He was never afraid to express his dissatisfaction, always openly advertised his position - so openly that he interested the organs,” says Larisa Kolchenko. When the Russian Spring started, Kolchenko opposed the accession, his mother was in solidarity - she refused to go to the referendum. Not all of Larisa’s relatives agreed with this position. Some relatives ceased to communicate with the Kolchenko family.
“Russia comes, we will act tougher” “Sasha is an ideological anti -fascist, every year he organized a picket in memory of the murdered lawyer Markelov and journalist Baburova, she was local from Sevastopol,” says Larisa Kolchenko. “But now the son is accused of the fact that he is a member of the Right Sector.” After the arrests, the FSB press service reported on the capture of the sabotage and terrorist group of the Right Sector prohibited in Russia. “Activists did not belong and do not belong to the Political Party of the Right Sector,” the press service of the organization prohibited in Russia said in response. “However, we demand immediate liberation and termination of political terror in the occupied territory.”
Later, the defense of the activist directly made an official request - a similar answer. “But it is doubtful that this is enough for the Russian court,” says Larisa. -Thank God, such an absurd accusation did not play a role for people in Crimea: when they collected characteristics for the court, then the attitude towards him at the university is still good. In the printing house where he worked as a loader, until the company after the referendum moved to the mainland, and colleagues at all called the accusation undeserved. ” It is difficult to suspect Kolchenko in sympathy for nationalists - in 2012, 30 right -wing radicals attacked the tundra and his three comrades after the film about Baburova.
Since the arrest with Kolchenko, none of the official representatives of the Ukrainian side has tried to contact. This mother worries this: "As if they forgot about the detainees." The Ukrainian consul in Moscow does not attend the investigation and the Ukrainian consul - Russia recognized them as its subjects, but on February 4, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation unexpectedly determined the presence of double citizenship among Sentsov. However, the judge refused to satisfy Kolchenko against the right to preserve Ukrainian citizenship, the judge refused, an employee of the migration service presented the court for a passport with Kolchenko’s data, allegedly for his signature, now the protection plans a handwriting examination. “He was forcibly recognized as a citizen of another country,” says his mother. “He did not write any statements.” In turn, the State Migration Service of Ukraine confirmed in February the Ukrainian citizenship of Kolchenko, and on March 27, 2015, the Kiev prosecutor's office finally opened a case on the abduction of Ukrainian citizen Kolchenko. A similar case has already been instituted on Sentsov. Lawyer Kolchenko Svetlana Sidorkina said that her client sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights to the forced assignment of Russian citizenship.
Since the beginning of the new academic year, many universities of Crimea have not read students who went to work out to Ukraine. “Some of the people with whom I was friendly in civil activity dumped,” says Anton Trofimov, a philosophy teacher at the College of Taurus University. - I was still surprised: are all the problems ended? Is the ecology no longer bothering? " Trofimov - the organizer of the carnival processions "Monstand", together with Kolchenko created a student trade union. “As a result, many friends left - and not in vain,” says Anton. “And the FSB came to me-former SBU employees-warned: Russia comes, we will act differently, we will act tougher-according to Russian laws.”
“Sasha also wanted to go,” says her mother. - We discouraged him, did not want to let him go far, everyone was afraid - but not that! " The student of the Faculty of Geography Kolchenko chose between the universities of Uzhgorod or Lviv, but on May 23 he was transferred to the Moscow Lefortovo isolator. A friend of Kolchenko, who introduced himself as a novel, explains the reason for the repression: “The people were scared by the militants from the Maidan all spring, no one showed themselves, and it was necessary to show that the threat is still real.” “After the detention of the first four of the guys from the pro -Ukrainian movement of the FSB, it began to conduct preventive conversations with the rest,” says Maxim Osadchuk, a teacher of history, a friend of Kolchenko on the left movement. -Almost all of my friends, who have at least some kind of attitude to public life, left. The question became the edge: either emigration, or the transition to the underground, taking into account the high risk of arrest. " Osadchuk himself left Crimea a few days before the referendum, now he is fighting as part of the Aidar battalion.
Osadchuk considers the arrest of the four to be a warning that remained on the peninsula activists to moderate the ardor: “Threats, exhortations we were persistently recommended either to leave, or to stop any childhood.”
“From luxury - broth cubes and ketchup” Kolchenko does not complain and extremely laconic - in a letter from a pre -trial detention center reports: “We have so much goodies that have enough for a month, but the goodies are not so tasty as they might seem in the wild.” In the other, he writes that “my appetite has fallen here, I have enough official food”, but she dreams of getting popular and popular magazines, “and from luxury-broth cubes and ketchup”.
Kolchenko is studying Lenin, Marx, Fromm and Ivan Franco - he read the last in Ukrainian. It regrets that he began his acquaintance with Russia with a pre -trial detention center and in one of the letters shares his impressions of the journalism of Leo Tolstoy: “A typical extremist. Today it could probably be closed on the 280th
* * Article 280.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Public calls for the implementation of actions aimed at violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation”. : “What will happen to Russia? Russia? What is Russia? Where is it the beginning, where is the end? Caucasus with all its peoples? Kazan Tatars? Ferghana region? Amur? The fact that these peoples are considered part of Russia is a random, temporary phenomenon. This connection is kept only by the power that extends to these peoples. ”
Drawing by Stas Tanichev from the courtroom, Moscow, April 9, 2015. Photo: nihilist.li, fsb.ru.