“I didn’t take the pills to be saved”

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21-year-old Anastasia Myachina (surname changed at the request of the heroine) , who studied with Rostislav Karelin in her first year, returned from school at about four in the afternoon on October 6. At this time, he sent her a message: “Tell me, please, have you had situations when your loved ones wanted to commit suicide with pills?”. Myachina was a close friend of Karelin and the question seemed strange to her. But Karelin wrote that he needed this information to write a scientific article. What kind of article this was, Karelin did not explain and only asked her to answer his question.

“[I wanted to go to him, but] Rostislav moved, and I didn’t know his new address, so I asked him to tell me where he lives. He replied that he would not tell me anything. Then I hung up and wrote about a strange question to his girlfriend, with whom he lives, ”says Myachina. She did not know Karelin's girlfriend Alexandra Gorelova (the surname was changed at the request of the heroine) , and she did not read her message.

Myachina immediately called Karelin back - he confessed to her that he had a stomachache and that he had drunk 60 tablets of one drug available without a prescription ( the editors know its name ). Myachina offered to call an ambulance to a friend, again asked him to give his new address, but Karelin said that he “drank the pills not to be saved,” and stopped answering calls.

Then Myachina got through to the girl Karelin through their mutual friend. “It scared me, I took time off from work and ran home,” recalls Gorelova. - It was dark in our apartment, but when I opened the door, the light from the entrance fell so that at first I saw only Rostik's legs. He lay on the floor in our room. I called an ambulance because I couldn't believe he was gone. Thought he could be helped. I touched him once while calling an ambulance to take a pulse. When the doctors arrived, they said that there was nothing to help him.”

Karelin left a suicide note addressed to Gorelova: he urged his girlfriend not to be upset and asked him to give his things to an orphanage.

He said that he "will definitely finish his studies"

Karelin was born in Kyiv. According to Myachina and Gorelova, when he was just over 10 years old, he and his mother moved to Russia, while his father continued to live in Ukraine. Gorelova says that Karelin warmly recalled his childhood spent in Ukraine, but “did not say anything specific” about his attitude to the war. Myachin and Gorelova also knew little about his father: he only said that he could not leave Ukraine.

Myachina last saw Karelin in May. Then she got the impression that he spoke very carefully about the war. “You see, at the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, it’s not that they are forbidden to talk [about the war], but if someone speaks out, it’s only in support,” she says. Myachina, unlike Karelin, left the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in her first year - "because of the unwillingness to study there." She suggested that Karelin do the same, but he said that he would "definitely complete his studies."

Gorelova recalls that Karelin entered the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations because he did not have enough USE scores to go to another university on a budget, and “by that time he had not managed to save up money for the first semester.”

Tired of everything

Rostislav Karelin was expelled from the Academy on September 26 due to "violation of local acts" - as it is written in an extract from the order (the document is at the disposal of the editors) . According to Gorelova, after that Karelin was depressed. “But Rostik found himself a new hobby: programming, driving, trying to deal with expulsion and find ways to recover at the Academy. I didn’t observe suicidal tendencies for him, because he was always strong, we made plans for life, ”she says.

Myachina also recalls that Karelin wanted to recover at the university, continue his studies, and even asked if he could transfer to her university. She helped a friend find a lawyer and challenge the decision to expel him: then Karelin asked her to do it herself. “I'm tired of everything, I feel bad. My hands drop,” he wrote. Myachina agreed to take on the challenge of the university's decision and did not attach any importance to Karelin's words: she thought that he was really just tired. Even before that, they often helped each other out: before being expelled, Karelin jokingly said that he would take Myachina as his secretary when he opened a private legal practice after studying.

" *It's easier to breathe in the Academy *"

Shortly before the expulsion, an anti-war post appeared on Karelin's Instagram page. His relatives do not see any other reasons for the sudden expulsion of Karelin: Karelin had absences at school, but the dean's office usually did not worry about this, says Gorelova. “In addition, in accordance with the local act of the university, an explanatory note should have been requested before expulsion, and they did this after Rostislav signed that he was familiar with the expulsion order,” she adds.

Before his death, Karelin told Myachina several times that he didn’t post the post, and showed a screenshot of an Instagram notification that his account had been hacked. Gorelova says that no one had direct evidence that Karelin himself was the author of the post. According to her, he showed screenshots to the dean's office that his account was hacked on the day the anti-war post appeared there. Myachina admits that she would like to believe the friend's words about the break-in, but thinks that he did not tell her the truth on the phone and by correspondence for security reasons.

At parting with Karelin on October 10, his classmates told Myachina that in the classroom, students from another group discussed his post: Karelin was criticized, and the teacher, in their words, called him a “Nazi”. Myachina was also told that the girl who showed Karelin's anti-war post to the leadership commented on the news of Karelin's death with the phrase: "Well, okay, but it became easier to breathe at the Academy!" At the same time, three teachers from the Department of Legal Disciplines noted in the classroom that Karelin was very capable, and one teacher admitted that she felt guilty that she had not followed him.

Kholod sent requests to both the Academy and the Ministry of Emergency Situations with a request to comment on what happened. At the time of publication of this text, the Academy did not respond to the editors, and the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations refused to answer, citing the lack of registration as a media outlet in Russia.

The original of the very post "Cold" could not be seen. According to Myachina, it read: “I am ashamed that on my behalf, as well as on behalf of other citizens, Putin attacked a free Ukraine. I hope that those who were sent to take over Ukraine will be captured and will be justly judged, according to Ukrainian laws. Is it possible to live in harmony with yourself, passing over in silence such an injustice committed on your behalf? Glory to Ukraine!".