'Ma, what are you crying for?'

The story of Savely Frolov, the first Russian charged with treason for ‘defecting to the enemy’

Original story by Valeria Kirsanova from Paper Kartuli. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

21-year-old Moscow native Savely Frolov started speaking out against Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine right after it was launched, and he continued condemning the war even after it brought him a misdemeanor charge and a 10-day prison sentence. Then, after Putin’s mobilization announcement in September, Frolov, like thousands of other Russians, tried to flee to Georgia through the Verkhny Lars border checkpoint. And that is where he disappeared. One month later, he became the first person in Russia to face conspiracy to commit treason charges for planning to “join the enemy.” Frolov is now facing up to 10 years in prison for his interest in the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit of Russian soldiers fighting for Ukraine. Valeria Kirsanova, the editor-in-chief of the outlet Paper Kartuli, spoke to Frolov’s mother, his lawyer, and his best friend about his story. With permission, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of her article in English.

‘Scrambling to get out of Russia’

A photo on Instagram shows a curly-haired young man in a purple baseball cap and headphones sitting on a concrete barrier, the Caucasus mountains and a long line of traffic in the background. “Scrambling to get out of Russia, 5 km [about three miles] from the border,” read the caption. The picture, posted on September 29, is the most recent image shared on Savely Frolov’s account. It was taken a week after President Putin mobilized hundreds of thousands of people into the military, during Frolov’s first attempt to get out of Russia.

Frolov’s friend Malika Bakhtiarova was waiting for him in Tbilisi, and the two were in near-constant contact that day. “The Georgian border officers were filtering the crowd somewhat randomly,” she said. “[Savely] told them, honestly, that he had 20,000 rubles [about $290] with him, and they refused him. They said it wasn’t enough money,” said Bakhtiarova.

A month later, Frolov decided to try again: on October 30, he boarded a bus from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi. At about 11:00 a.m., however, he wrote to Bakhtiarova that he was going to be searched by federal agents. Then he disappeared.

At 5:00 p.m., Bakhtiarova received a text from Frolov’s phone. The message said to send her location, supposedly so that Frolov could order a taxi to reach her. According to Bakhtiarova, however, the two had agreed in advance that she would meet him in her car, so the request didn’t make sense. She tried to call him, but he didn’t answer and stopped responding to messages.

The next day, Frolov called his parents to tell them he had been arrested for 15 days for disorderly conduct. He said he was alone in a Vladikavkaz prison cell, and that he wouldn’t be given his phone again until he was released.

Soon after, six Federal Security Service officers from North Ossetia showed up at Frolov’s registered place of residence in the Moscow region.

“Only our 14-year-old daughter was home,” Saveley Frolov’s mother, Ekaterina Frolova, told Paper Kartuli. “She called me, sobbing, ‘I’m scared!’ They wouldn’t even let her close the apartment. They just said, ‘Call your parents.’ Our neighbor is an 85-year-old man whom we take care of, and he came to the door and refused to let them in.”

According to Ekaterina, the officers were especially interested in her son’s outdoor gear, such as his snowboarding boots, his tent, and his sleeping bag.

‘There could be dozens of stories like this’

On November 14, when Savely Frolov was scheduled to be released, Ekaterina boarded a one-way flight to Vladikavkaz; she planned to buy two tickets back home after reuniting with her son. But minutes after Frolov left the prison, before he’d even seen his mother, he was arrested once again — this time for allegedly disobeying border agents. He was sentenced to another 15 days in prison. That sentence was followed by a third, this one for more “disorderly conduct.”

On December 2, state investigators opened a felony case against Frolov on treason charges. Prosecutors say he was “preparing to defect to the enemy.” It’s the first known case of its kind in Russia.

Vladimir Putin officially made “defecting to the enemy” tantamount to treason in July. The crime is punishable by anywhere from 12 to 20 years in prison. Investigators claim Savley Frolov planned to travel through Georgia to Turkey, then to Poland, and finally to Ukraine, where they say he intended to join the Freedom of Russia Legion. According to his lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, however, Frolov had neither a ticket to Istanbul nor a Shengen visa, which he would have needed to go through Poland.

“This is an emerging trend,” said Yevgeny Smirnov. “The FSB’s border service ‘uncovered’ this crime by reading [Frolov’s] messages. And judging by how many phones they’ve looked through, especially during the first wave of mobilization, and how little it takes to open a criminal case, I think the number of stories like this could reach into the dozens. We don’t currently know the total number because many treason cases are not made public.”

‘A principled bonehead'

Savely Frolov, a longtime critic of the Putin regime, graduated from high school in Naro-Fominsk, a suburb of Moscow. After studying physical education in college, he started working as an escape-room actor and as a children’s fencing instructor. In the summer, he would travel to the Altai region to work as a yacht and kayak instructor at a charity camp for children with cerebral palsy.

“He’s the kind of older brother who won’t wipe your snot but who will teach you to make a fire and catch a fish,” said Bakhtiarova, who met him at the Altai camp. “The children just loved him. He knows how to support them without making them feel pitied.”

In Moscow, Bakhtiarova worked as a mural painter, and Frolov began helping her. On February 24, they started standing at a metro stop and distributing flyers urging people to write to their State Duma deputies and attend anti-war protests. Soon, they were both fined and given misdemeanor charges; later, Frolov was arrested for 10 days.

As fall drew near, the two friends concluded that their efforts were futile, Bakhtiarova said. She moved to Georgia, while Frolov stayed in Moscow to earn some more money.

In Tbilisi, Bakhtiarova organized a small fencing club for children; she and Frolov planned to turn it into a business in the future. For that reason, when he set out for Georgia himself, Frolov brought a fencing sword, a projector, a wooden shield, camouflage pants, and tactical boots in the trunk of his car. Investigators later cited the gear as evidence that he was planning to take up arms against Russian troops in Ukraine.

Bakhtiarova assumed Frolov would erase the words “Slava Ukraini” from his backpack before trying to cross the border. But when she learned that he hadn’t, she wasn’t surprised: “[He’s a] principled bonehead," she said.

‘They said he’d applied to join the legion’

In Vladikavkaz, Ekaterina Frolova has been granted two visits with her son. Savely told her that the officers “beat him, promised to rape him with a broom, and threatened his family” after he was arrested at the border, and that that’s why he agreed to give them access to his phone.

With no power and nobody to talk to in his cell, Savely told his mom, he’d lost count of the days and had even started burning his arms with cigarettes “just to feel something.” After talking to Ekaterina, though, Savely’s spirits rose again: “It was confirmation that he hadn’t been abandoned.”

From the time Savely was a baby, Ekaterina says, she taught him to fight for his beliefs, though she “didn’t think his beliefs would be so political.” At home, the two of them would frequently get into intense arguments over their conflicting views; Savely would tell his parents they were “old already and don’t understand anything, whereas he, his sister, and his brother would have to live in this Russia [for a long time].” Eventually, the family banned the topic of conversation altogether.

Savely usually visited his parents several times a month.

“When he spoke, he did so openly; he never hid anything. Sometime around the start of fall, he came over and casually mentioned that in June, he’d applied to join the legion. There’s some legion where they fight against the Russian authorities, but from the Ukrainian side,” said Ekaterina. “But nobody would take him. He wrote to them, ‘Two months have passed. Why haven’t I gotten an answer?’ They said, ‘Oh, we’ve had some technical issues.’ And that was the end of the correspondence.”

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Ekaterina never saw the messages herself, but she doesn’t think Savely deleted them. Malika Bakhtiarova, meanwhile, says that she and Frolov only spoke offhandedly about whether or not the legion exists, and that he never mentioned wanting to join it.

Another friend of Frolov’s told the independent outlet The Insider that in late November, FSB officers came to his workplace and forced him to confess to “training activists” to go to Ukraine and fight with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and that they read his messages with Frolov aloud.

“There were messages where we discussed the special military operation, and what [the officers] mostly latched onto was a half-joking message about planning to [join the war], to which I responded approvingly, going along with the joke,” said the friend. He said he’s confident that Savely Frolov was never really planning to join the Freedom of Russia Legion.

‘It’s just a circus’

Frolov is currently set to remain in remand prison in Vladikavkaz until February 11, 2023. He’s not allowed to communicate with his relatives. His lawyer, Yevgeny Smirnov, said that this is an illegal but common practice aimed at completely suppressing the will of a suspect. He also said that FSB officers have interrogated him repeatedly without a lawyer present.

According to Smirnov, the amount of time between a person’s arrest and their sentencing is usually about two years, so he’s advised Frolov’s family to “prepare themselves.”

Frolov himself asked his lawyer to tell Malika Bakhtiarova that he’s learned to stand on his hands, that he read The Witcher, and that the books by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman she sent him are “too complicated.”

“One time, he had run out of paper, so he wrote me a note on toilet paper that said, ‘Take this sheet, use it to wipe yourself, and remember me.’ The lawyer sent me a picture of it. Savely loves jokes like that,” said Bakhtiarova.

Ekaterina Frolova doesn’t understand why her son is being charged with treason if he willingly gave up his phone and didn’t try to hide anything. “The evidence of treason just isn’t there. Maybe he just wanted to check the [Freedom of Russia Legion] site,” she said.

Smirnov noted that Savely is being charged not with treason but with conspiracy to commit treason, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The lawyer noted that his defendant discussed the “legion” with his friend before the State Duma changed the law to equate “defecting to the enemy” with treason.

“Like a prayer, he constantly repeats, ‘Everything’s fine with me, don’t worry. Mom, why are you crying? This is just a big circus. Look, I’m laughing at it,’” said Ekaterina Frolova. “But me, I’m not laughing,” she adds. “I tell him, ‘Even if this is a circus, who does that make you? A spectator, a clown, the ringmaster, an acrobat, or an animal in a cage? And he has no answer, of course.”

Original story by Valeria Kirsanova from Paper Kartuli

Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale