“Implicit justification for terrorism”: beating in Kaluga for commenting on VKontakte

I got a job as an administrator in a store in Kaluga. This was supposed to be my first day at work. [October 15, 2019] I left the house around seven in the morning. The FSB officers were waiting for me near the neighboring house. A guy came up to me and asked for my phone number: like, I really urgently need to call a taxi. I gave the phone number. At this time, two or three masked people ran out of a dark blue minibus parked nearby.

They twisted my hands, laid me on the asphalt, and then dragged me into a minibus. They put me face down on the floor of the minibus, searched me, and handcuffed me. They pressed me a little. One of them took off his mask and shouted: “Do you recognize me”?

I found out: this is an employee of the Kaluga FSB, he introduced himself as Dmitry Sergeevich Volkov. Although I have never seen his ID. When I came to him at the FSB and asked to call Dmitry Sergeevich Volkov, this particular person came up. Dmitry Sergeevich Volkov appears in the documents in my [first] case. (In 2017, Lyubshin was convicted under articles on extremism (Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code) and rehabilitation of Nazism (Part 2 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) due to posts on VKontakte - OVD-Info ).

My father found Dmitry Volkov from Kaluga on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, printed out photographs of him and his friends and showed them to me. Volkov himself is not the FSB officer [who deals with me], but he was among the friends [of Kaluga Dmitry Volkov from social networks]. On social networks, this FSB operative is not Volkov, but Evgeny Shkuratov. His father, Oleg Shkuratov, was found through social networks. Oleg Shkuratov, originally from Donetsk, a Russian military man, was one of the leaders of the Kaluga pre-trial detention center.

When they dragged me into the minibus, I thought, this is not my story at all - maybe they’re taking the guy who asked me for my phone number? Then I thought: maybe these are the Prigozhinites ? There were cases when they beat people and set cars on fire. But then I saw Volkov-Shkuratov .

He asked: “Can you guess where we are from?” I answered yes. He threatened that he would take me to Donbass, and there they kill people like me. He started beating me and using a stun gun. The minibus drove off. I don’t know where, I was lying face down on the floor. But obviously not to Donbass, we drove for about 40 minutes. Probably, so that all this would not happen in public, not in my yard.

Volkov-Shkuratov asked what the password was on my phone. I said 2004, this is the year my eldest son was born. He decided that 2004 was April 20, Hitler's birthday. He started beating me for this too. I was convicted under the article about the justification of Nazism - I did not justify it, but the examination decided so.

Accompanying all this with beating:

- You're a Nazi!

- I'm not a Nazi.

-What is your article?

— 354.1.

— What is the name of the article?

— Justification of Nazism.

- So you are a Nazi!

He threatened to kill me and bury me in the forest. I had nowhere to run: I was handcuffed, in a minibus in an unknown place. He asked why I had the Polish journalist Tomasz Maciejczuk as my friends. How I met him, under what circumstances I met him. I say: I don’t know him, he’s one of my friends on VKontakte. He also beat me for reposting texts about Alexander Litvinenko .

Volkov-Shkuratov said that I was detained for justifying terrorism, explained on what occasion, and demanded that I admit that I justified terrorism. I reposted a news publication about the case of Mikhail Zhlobitsky at the Arkhangelsk FSB Directorate.

He also asked me why I support Ukraine and Lithuania. I replied that I was simply studying the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, because I have relatives in Belarus. Maybe it didn’t fit in his head: [current] Belarus was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

He asked why I went to Belarus. Firstly , I have relatives there. He made me list my relatives, who worked where. He says: you also just went there, took pictures of something , met someone . I say: I had a debt in 2016, even before the criminal case I was not allowed to travel abroad. Everyone vacations in Turkey or Egypt, but I went on an excursion to Belarus. I took pictures with two people: one was a friend on Facebook, the other was on VKontakte. They both live in the Belarusian city of Lida, I met them.

Volkov-Shkuratov said that I was not patriotic - apparently, he beat patriotism into me with his fists, feet and a stun gun. He asked if my grandfather fought. I said no, he was 13 years old [when World War II started]. He asked if I served in the army.

Even during the torture, he asked me about the CPI. The True Orthodox Church is a Christian denomination that does not belong to the Moscow Patriarchate. I have friends in one of these churches, the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. I asked if their activities were paid for from abroad - I knew nothing about this. He beat me because I and these friends of mine criticized the Russian Orthodox Church.

He asked why I went to the pagans. Well, they are interesting people, I went to their party. He asked why I got divorced. People get divorced, I got divorced successfully. He asked me not to tell anyone [about the beating in the minibus]. Otherwise there will be trouble, I will be punished in prison.

Four hours later I was brought to an investigator at the Kaluga Investigative Committee. From him I learned that the case was opened on October 14 [2019]. During interrogation, I did not admit guilt, I said that I had never and do not justify terrorism, I took advantage of Article 51 of the Constitution (gives the right not to testify against oneself - OVD-Info ).

A case was opened for reposting a comment from a year ago. Although I myself deleted this post a long time ago: they stored this data for a year, and it doesn’t matter that the post was deleted, it was public. They investigated the post on March 27th. In conclusion, they wrote that the post contained an implicit justification for terrorism. Implicit - as if hidden, unclear. I called Zhlobitsky “the hero of the week at least,” I meant that he became the hero of the news. This was brought up as if he was “generally a hero.”

I was sent to a temporary detention center (temporary detention center - OVD-Info ), at the trial the investigator asked not for a pre-trial detention center, but for house arrest. On December 25, I was released on my own recognizance. The investigation has already been completed.