For the "man in black"

Previously, Sidorkina described in the blog of the publication “Grani. Ru”, how for two days she could not find her client and learned that he was in the temporary detention center of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate only after the intervention of the Public Monitoring Commission.

On December 7, Sidorkina managed to get into the temporary detention center with Buchenkov. She asked if they beat him after the arrest - he replied that they didn’t beat him, but they put psychological pressure on him. “On December 4, when a preventive measure in the form of detention had already been chosen, operational officers from the Center for Combating Extremism came to see him and strongly recommended that he cooperate with the investigation, otherwise very tough measures would be applied to him, and which ones specifically - about this they didn’t say,” Sidorkina said. The operatives promised to come again.

The investigation showed Buchenkov a video from Bolotnaya Square, where a man in black was kicking police officers and trying to overturn dry toilets. According to investigators, Buchenkov is this person. “He is extremely indignant,” says Sidorkina, “because he was not at the scene at all. He was visiting his relatives in Nizhny Novgorod, and at the moment when the events took place on Bolotnaya Square, he was traveling from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow; he arrived in Moscow late in the evening on May 6.”

The Basmanny court arrested Buchenkov for two months. As a rule, after the court has chosen a preventive measure, the person must be sent to a pre-trial detention center. But Buchenkov continues to be kept in a temporary detention facility. Sidorkina’s reasons for this are not clear: “In a temporary detention center, of course, it is much more convenient to carry out any investigative actions than in a pre-trial detention center - in a pre-trial detention center you have to stand in line and look for some offices. Maybe they left him so that the “eschniks” could calmly come and apply pressure?”

Apparently, Buchenkov was mentioned during the trial of four accused for the events on Bolotnaya, among whom was anti-fascist Alexey Gaskarov. The testimony of a secret minor witness named Sergei Gerasimov states that he (“Gerasimov”) was in a column organized by the anarchist movement “Autonomous Action.” According to “Gerasimov,” they were first approached by Gaskarov, who told them that their goal was “to come and not leave,” that is, not to leave Bolotnaya after the rally ended, and then, when it became known about the sit-in near police cordon, one of the coordinators of “Autonomous Action”, nicknamed Sim, led the column to the cordon. The investigation painted a picture according to which Gaskarov was something of a coordinator of the anarchists and anti-fascists who participated in breaking the cordon.

Buchenkov is known among anarchists under the name Sim and was indeed a prominent participant in “Autonomous Action.” He then left along with a group of activists, which is now called People's Self-Defense. At the same time, even if we do not take into account Buchenkov’s words about an alibi (which is confirmed by his relatives) and assume that the “man in black” (as Sidorkina says, “very active”) is very similar to him, it is unclear why the investigation became interested in Buchenkov right now, three and a half years after the events at Bolotnaya. All this time, Buchenkov was not hiding, he lived in Moscow, worked, was an applicant at public events, and was even detained by employees of the Center for External Action.