Who is Ruslan Zinin and why he shot at the military commissar of the city of Ust-Ilimsk

The "people of Baikal" visited the relatives of Ruslan Zinin, who shot at the military commissar and tell who he was and why did it

On September 26, 2022, 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin shot at the military commissar of the city of Ust-Ilymsk Alexander Eliseev. In serious condition, the military commissar was taken to the hospital, he survived. Zinin was arrested, taken to the pre -trial detention center of Irkutsk, and now they are accused of terrorism. In June, he is transferred to Yekaterinburg or Khabarovsk and will be judged by a military court.

Five days after the start of the “partial mobilization” in the assembly hall of the military enlistment office of the 80 thousandth city of Ust-Ilimsk, twenty people gathered in the Irkutsk region. They appeared there on the summons. The military commissar Eliseev made a speech before them, answered questions. Suddenly, a blue -eyed fair -haired guy in camouflage clothes with a gun in his hands ran out onto the stage. He shot at the military commissar and shouted: “Look! All over! " People stumbling, ran from the hall, the woman screamed loudly. Someone shot what was happening on the phone, but the camera in his hands shook so that it was difficult to understand what was happening on the video. A little later, a fair -haired young man appears in the frame, who is firmly holding the hands of the security forces on both sides. Picking heavily, he calls the name, surname, year of birth and address.

"Who needs it - to climb into a meat grinder?"

In the last two months, 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin did not go well in life. He broke up with a girl. He quit from a new job, where they promised good conditions, but the oral contract was violated. He moved off the rented apartment, which he could not pay. He quarreled with his mother in whom he lived.

By September 26, he had moved to his grandmother for three weeks, slamming the door and not telling his mother where he moves. Grandmother for her father-69-year-old Nina Lebedeva-lived alone in a two-room apartment, worked as a watchman at school. Ruslan was not close to her and generally began to “go”, only becoming an adult. Nina Grigoryevna says that he loved to eat salty cucumbers from her, asked to fry potatoes, called the "granny". This time he complained about his mother, his grandmother allowed to stay and "bed in the hall on the sofa."

In the mornings, he left, came late in the evening, was lying at midnight with a phone in headphones or sitting behind a laptop. Lebedeva says that Ruslan was always “quiet and secretive”, he said little, but he worked well - for example, he helped her a lot in the country. Another quality - “clean to disgust”, recalls Lebedev. Recently, he did not even eat at her house, because there were ants in the kitchen.

The night before what happened, in the evening of September 25, Lebedeva was already lying in the bed. Ruslan was not. She did not have time to fall asleep: she heard the grandson opened the door, enters and swear loudly on the phone. According to the conversation, she realized that he had a quarrel with his father, her son Alexander, who lives in Moscow. She went to her grandson in the hall, asked what happened. Ruslan began to shout that "everything around is bad." Lebedeva advised to pay attention to herself.

On this day, the younger grandson of Lebedeva, 22-year-old cousin Ruslan, a summons came. He recently returned from military service. “Vasya is taken to Ukraine,” Lebedeva said with tears.

Zinin shouted: “Yes, morons! Who needs it - to climb into a meat grinder? It’s better for him to break his legs, at least it will be alive! ” Then he shouted: "Close the door!" And he loudly slapped her door with glass sash behind her. He had never allowed himself this before, says Lebedeva.

“I was scared. She looked at him, and he was completely inadequate. I don’t understand whether it is a drug or what. It didn’t smell of anything. I took a coat, put on my boots and right in the nightie went to spend the night to my friend, ”says Lebedeva.

Nina Grigoryevna returned from a friend at about half -time in the morning. Ruslan was not. His things were lying in the room on the floor, the closet was open. She went. And three hours later her youngest daughter came, 40-year-old Svetlana Zobnina, Vasya’s mother, and said that Ruslan shot at the military commissar.

"If this time they are not taken away, they will take it to the next!"

In the evening of the 25th, Vasily, the cousin of Ruslan Zinin, arranged wires with friends, drank. Vasya woke up for dinner with a bruise under his eye and a strong hangover. I could not get up, I called my mother. By 15.00 he had to appear at the military registration and enlistment office on the agenda.

Svetlana arrived in his rented apartment driving, “loaded” her son into the car and brought it to the military enlistment office. Vasily went to the table to march, and then he was twisted by his hands behind his back and took him to interrogation. So Svetlana found out what happened. Vasily kept several hours, checked whether he had to do with shooting, then released home. They said that the right amount of mobilized has already been recruited.

In his testimony , which was published by Mediazona, Ruslan Zinin said that the night from September 25 to September 26 spent in his Toyota Raum car. After the grandmother left the apartment, he went to the garage on foot, where he hid the gun of the gun. After the words of his grandmother that his brother received the agenda, he had a plan to shoot into the air at the military enlistment office. He said: he thought, while they would deal with him, confusion will arise and mobilization will be put down.

With a cut in a backpack, he went to his car parked at the Ust-Terem store on Enthusiasts Street. That evening, Zinin drank vodka with his school friend Leonid Kudrov. In the car, Ruslan went to bed. In the morning he called his aunt Svetlana, persuaded not to let his son go to war. She replied that for evasion of service you can go to jail. Ruslan did not get through to Vasily. Around 12.00 with a backpack Zinin went to the military registration and enlistment office.

“I think this is stupidity,” says his grandmother. - Drive your life. And for what? Well, for a day he would have pushed back the call. All the same, people were taken! And Vasya, if this time was not taken away, then the next one, then, will be taken away. ”

When asked how she relates to what is happening in Ukraine, Lebedeva replies: “How everyone else! If ours are there ... eight years, it turns out, yes, they mocked? These are ours, Russians. How should we? Protect them, of course! "

"Didn't deliver trouble"

Mobilized from Ust-Ilimsk was sent on September 29. The main square of the city near the Druzhba recreation center was filled with people. They kept the flags of Russia, on the main city street of the world blocked the movement. The acting military commissar Dmitry Ovchinnikov made a speech to the mobilized. Not a word was said about the incident about the military enlistment office three days ago. How many people went to fight, did not report.

If you walk along Mira Street a little further from the Druzhba recreation center, you can see the pink building of school No. 13. Over its entrance in color letters it is written: “The School of the World of Worlds”. On the school site, they explain the name: "Teachers, students and parents all together learn to build the world of equally." At the house next to the school, a black inscription with a spray can: "No war!" Ruslan Zinin studied at this school.

His last name is still on the site in the lists of winners of olympiads in mathematics in the school and city stages for 2011-2012. He lived in the same microdistrict, next to the school, on the sixth floor of a multi -entry nine -story building. His mother Marina still lives here.

The 53-year-old Marina hair is collected in a high tail, a narrow skirt emphasizes the waist. She works as an accountant. In a three -room apartment, new furniture, light wallpaper and many pots with flowers. Her eldest son Igor went to live and work in Tomsk. The youngest Ruslan lived in a rented apartment until he lost his job. Of his things, only a guitar remained in his mother’s house. The former room of Ruslan became Marina's office. Here she made handmade chocolate. Since Ruslan is in custody, she does not make chocolate - he says: "I can’t." But he takes care of flowers and seedlings - "calms down."

From early childhood, Ruslan was often sick. He lay several times a year in hospitals either with his mother, then with his father. At eight years, he was diagnosed with asthma. Then he “outgrown” the severe course of the disease and did the majority without an inhaler. Marina says that her son “did not cause trouble”, shows a folder with school characteristics, where the only claim to Ruslan is late.

Ruslan studied well, but changed his school several times: Marina says, classmates “tired” him. But there were friends and victories in the Olympiads. Marina wanted her son to receive a higher education, but he did not imagine himself in the office and took the documents from school in the tenth grade. Since childhood, he remembered how his father, who then worked in Ust-Ilymsk, took him into flights by a driver of a timber truck. Ruslan also chose this profession. Ruslan did not take Ruslan in a company occupied by most forestry in his city: he did not have a military ticket needed for work.

Boiling point

Ruslan could receive a higher education, says his school friend Aram Nurbekyan, who graduated from the Economic Department of the Moscow University. According to him, Zinin studied better than him, he knew English well. Aram is the only Zinin's friends who agreed to talk about him. After the start of the war, Nurbekyan left Russia.

They studied along with the seventh to the ninth grade in the "School of the World of Worlds." After graduation, Aram entered Moscow, but several times a year came to his parents in Ust-Ilimsk. They met with Ruslan, regularly called up. He considers Zinin a close friend.

Nurbekyan talks about him as a complex person who always had his own opinion on everything, but at the same time calm: Zinin never started conflicts first. Ruslan spoke well, reasoned interestingly, so his friends convinced his blog on the Internet. After listening to them, he created two Telegram channel. In one, “ Fairy Taiga ”, he exhibited photographs of nature when he went on flights. The second channel was dedicated to retro cars.

The interests of two friends did not coincide either in music or in hobbies, but when the war began, Aram and Ruslan experienced the same horror. Aram says that they called up and discussed this: Ruslan also seriously thought about leaving Russia.

On September 25, Aram had a birthday. Ruslan called him, congratulated him. The comrade did not notice anything special in him. Nurbekyan says that Zinin had no problems with alcohol and drugs. He rarely drank in companies, but in general he constantly drank tea and loved him very much.

In the morning of the 26th, Aram took the phone and saw that several people at once sent him a video of shooting at the military registration and enlistment office. “It seems to me that Ruslan reached a boiling point,” says a friend. “He absorbed all this news about the dead inhabitants of our city, this resulted in such an impulsive act.”

Nurbekyan is against war and mobilization, but Ruslan does not consider the hero. According to Aram, whatever the highest goal, you cannot kill people: “I think that Ruslan already understood this. I already want it to end as soon as possible. And I want to see Ruslan at large. ”

"He tried to stop his brother's mobilization"

Marina shows the Volga GAZ-24, which her father bought in Kyiv more than forty years ago. Under the hood sparkling new insides. They are a bag with small details that Ruslan left during his last work: he constantly “sorted it through”, looked after the family relic. After him, no one has opened the hood yet. Ruslan led his hobby and led the Telegram channel " Gorky Ust-Ilimsk ." There, lovers of retro car bought parts from each other, discussed their work, shared photos.

Here, in the garage, there is its motorcycle. In his school company, everyone dreamed about motorcycles - but only Ruslan bought it. Marina says she always tried to support her sons and their hobbies.

“The driver of the timber truck is a very hard work. I only drove in a timber truck, ”recalls Marina. - The ex -husband once rolled me. It shakes there so that then it was bad for me for a long time. The machine can break 40 degrees of frost in the middle of the taiga. This is very dangerous. There are many cases when drivers died. ”

In November 2021, Ruslan labeline lay on his side. Ruslan himself was not injured, but the car was damaged. It turned out that the private company did not insure forestry, and forced Ruslan to compensate for losses. He himself repaired the timber industry - and then quit. Since then, Marina recalls, Ruslan’s condition was depressed. He worked for several months in different places, worried that he could no longer find normal work in Ust-Ilimsk.

It was then, Marina thinks, in the life of Ruslan a black strip began. As soon as he quit, the war began. What Ruslan felt and thought about it then, Marina does not know, they did not discuss it. She says that in February 2022 "herself did not understand what happened." I did not look for information and “did not delve”, but worried about relatives living in Kyiv. Marina wrote to his classmates a cousin, he did not answer. She has no other methods of communication with them.

Only after what Ruslan did, Marina began to read the news and find out about the war more and more: I wanted to understand why my son did this. “He tried to stop his brother’s mobilization. I believe that we must have a lot of courage to try to save a person, ”she says.

"I am in shackles, because my article is heavy"

On September 26, Marina called from an unfamiliar number. It was the younger sister of her ex -husband Svetlana Zobnina. They did not communicate for more than 20 years, and Marina did not have a zobnina number. Svetlana said that Ruslan called her, nervous and asked for Vasily's phone.

Zobnina thought that Ruslan wanted to be volunteered to the front and called Marina to dissuade him. Marina did not believe - she said that Ruslan Astma was not taken with such a diagnosis of war.

A few hours later, Svetlana sent Marina a video with shooting and asked in the message: "Is this Ruslan?" Marina reviewed the video several times and confidently replied: “No! This simply cannot be! "

A few hours later she was called from the Investigative Committee. They didn’t report anything, they immediately asked the son to bring things, because everything that was on him would be transferred for examination. In the evening, she went to the Investigative Committee, gave things to the duty officer. She was not allowed to her son.

When she returned home, strangers were waiting for her at the entrance: a man and two women. They heard the address in a video that was already distributed on the Internet. They began to hug her, said that they had come to her specially from the neighboring village of Zheleznodorozhny to say that her son is a hero.

On the same day, several neighbors left the house in WhatsApp, where Marina was an administrator. Two cousins ​​called, asked how this could happen. It was their last conversation. The words of the support of Marina were written by the middle sister of the ex -husband Larisa Zinin, with whom they did not speak from the very divorce. At the work of Marina, this topic was not raised.

By mail, Marina received two letters from strangers. A woman named Maya from Kemerovo wrote that Marina should be proud of her son and be sure to look for good lawyers - and that her own son was born the same day with Ruslan. Marina calls Maya a close girlfriend: she writes letters to Ruslan, collects his parcels. In the summer, he and Marina plan to meet personally. Another man sent Marina the text of prayer for his son. She now reads this prayer every day before bedtime.

On September 28, Marina was called for interrogation, asked to characterize her son from childhood. She talked about him for a long time and in detail, hoped that this would help him. The lawyer said that in fact she harmed Ruslan, saying that Ruslan was in stress for a long time. Marina did not know about the 51th article of the Constitution and the right to not testify against a close relative.

A search was held in Marina's apartment. Employees spoke politely, searched carefully. Marina, whose pressure rose, called an ambulance. They seized the processor from the computer, all the wheels and flash drives, old mobile phones. From the apartment, grandmother took a laptop, behind which Ruslan was sitting in the evenings.

The first meeting with his son took place three days after his arrest, in the garage. Zinina called from the investigation, they asked to come and open the garage, where Ruslan hid a sawn -off shotgun. She arrived early, opened the door and waited. Avtozak drove up to the garage, and women, shepherds, shepherds and Ruslan came out. He had shackles on his feet and in his arms. He saw his mother and shouted to her with a vigorous voice: “Mom, don’t worry, I'm in shackles, because my article is difficult!” Marina cried, Ruslan too. He was brought into the garage, Marina was not allowed.

Marina did not know that her son had a gun. In the testimony, Ruslan said that he found him when he repaired the porch in the country of his grandmother. Nina Grigoryevna says that only Ruslan helped her with perestroika. Under the porch, one could go to full growth. Lebedeva cleaned there, carried out a lot of rubbish. She did not see guns.

The old gun with the stigma of the year of manufacture “1929” and five rounds lay in a felt rag in a grandmother's garage for a long time. Then they decided to sell the garage, and the gun had to be hidden. It was bulky, so Zinin shortened his trunk by 20 centimeters and drank the butt with a hacksaw.

"I went there for him and for himself"

Marina was able to talk with Ruslan five days after shooting. Then he was still kept in the investigative insulator of Ust-Ilimsk. Ruslan was waiting for her in a plastic cab. Between him and his mother sat an overseer and stood glass. Marina recalls: "You can say, but you can’t touch."

Ruslan tried to cheer up his mother, said that everything was fine with him. Marina asked: "You did it because of me?" I thought that everything happened because of their quarrel. He said: "No." The conversation at the overseer turned out to be empty, they spoke on household topics. 10 days after the arrest of Ruslan, they transported to Irkutsk, in pre -trial detention center No. 1 on Barricad Street. The case was taken by the Investigative Committee on Particularly important matters.

From the pre -trial detention center, Ruslan wrote the first letter. He addressed it to everyone he will reach. I was glad that he survived the military commissar. He called this a real miracle. I asked everyone for forgiveness for the chores delivered. He explained his motive as follows: “I will say right away - I did not expect and do not expect any gratitude or approval from anyone. I went there for him. And for yourself. All. One request - save your brother, you will not forgive yourself, God forbid. And he will be ruined there. I gave everything for him. So let it be not in vain. ”

Now Marina every month goes on dates with her son in Irkutsk. Takes a trip for several days. A pre -trial detention center must come to the building in a day, in the evening. Here, relatives themselves start a sheet of visits and sign up for the necessary numbers. The next day, by eight in the morning, you need to come and check if the list is on the spot. Once Marina did not get on a date because the list disappeared.

The last meeting of Marina and Ruslan was March 23. They will not see any more before the trial. The case was referred to the prosecutor's office. Presumably at the end of June, Ruslan is transferred to Yekaterinburg or Khabarovsk, a military court will judge him. On March 7, 2023, he was charged with terrorism under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, part 2, paragraph “B”. The punishment under this article is from 12 to 20 years. According to the aggregate of articles, including the manufacture and storage of weapons, Ruslan can face 25 years in prison.

At first, Zinin was accused of an encroachment on the life of a law enforcement officer (Article 317 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and illegal storage of weapons (Article 222, part 1). After changing the article, Marina found a lawyer from Moscow for Ruslan. His services cost a million rubles. Where to get the money, Marina does not yet know.

Prisoners accused of terrorism are supposed to be kept in single chambers. In the Irkutsk pre -trial detention center there are no such people, the employee explained to Marina, so Ruslan, after changing the article from the camera, was transferred to the punishment cell, which is in the basement. The difference from the punished is one thing - the folding bed was not lifted for a day. He spent a week in Kartsere, then he was returned to the cell for eight people.

“He is not a terrorist,” says Marina. - He did not present any requirements. It is not connected with any organization. He just went to somehow stop the mobilization of Vasya. ” She cries. He says that with his diagnosis to live so many years in prison is simply unrealistic. He also blames himself for saying excess at the first interrogation.

"From hopelessness they do what they want"

The former husband, 50-year-old Alexander Zinin, accuses her of darling with talkativeness. After a divorce from Marina, he left for Moscow. He works as a trucker, lives with his first love. Ruslan is his only son.

"The people of Baikal" talked with him on the phone. Alexander answers sharply and shortly. Some questions are simply silent. He believes that the more to talk about the crime, the more they “swell” this case. “Now everyone wants good shoulder straps, they will do a political business. They would be silent, and one could consider this hooliganism, ”he says.

The father speaks of Ruslan as a worker’s boy, proudly emphasizing that Ruslan began to work on a timber truck at the age of 20. Alexander thinks that Ruslan picked up a weapon under the influence of some substances:

“Now no one needs youth. Ruslan's brother came from the army - no one needs him. I don’t know how to start life. And all Siberia is now filled with these salts (drugs - LB) . From hopelessness they do what they want. I would not survive now. "

Ruslan Zinin, according to his father, “fought against the walls” of the Ust-Ilim military enlistment office for seven years, because he could not get a military ticket. Alexander, when he came to Ust-Ilimsk, went to the military registration and enlistment office with his son. According to him, they were constantly sent to Irkutsk for examinations. Ruslan went there several times, but returned with nothing. It was necessary to wait, then pay. The road to Irkutsk is the night on the bus or a day on the train. Every year, a medical examination was postponed for various reasons. And the war, mobilization and agenda became, according to the father, the last straw.

He and Ruslan spoke about the war several times, but did not coincide in opinion. Zinin Sr. with regret says that in Ruslan they did not raise devotion to the motherland. And he immediately justifies him: “Because the Motherland did not give him anything!”

“He and his brother only began to get better. And all this collapses. He already collapsed there. Everything just fell into a heap. And I lost the only beloved son, ”Zinin Sr. said. To the objection that Ruslan is alive, the father says: "Is this life!" What he was talking about with his son on the eve of what happened, Alexander refused to talk. He is going to travel to the court hearing.

"No worse than in the cabin of a timber truck"

Alexander is the eldest son of three children Nina Lebedeva. He has two sisters - Larisa and Svetlana. He has one father with Larisa. Svetlana is different. The age difference is five years old. Neither Larisa nor Svetlana talked with Marina after her divorce from their brother. When shooting at the military registration and enlistment office happened, Marina called with the words of Laris's support. They began to communicate, write letters together to Ruslan, collect parcels for him.

46-year-old Larisa accepts us in his apartment. She is an employee of the Ministry of Emergencies, asks not to name her surname for her husband and not shoot. As a child, Larisa saw her nephew, Ruslan, only when he came to his grandmother in the country. “An ordinary child, calm, was constantly sick,” says him.

In early August 2022, Larisa became very ill, she found a hernia on her spine. I had to go to Irkutsk for treatment. Ruslan called her, asked how she feels. Then he began to come to visit her. They drank tea, talked. They talked a lot about the father. Ruslan seriously thought to leave for him and start working with him.

Larisa learned about what happened on September 26. The sister threw her a video and wrote: "This is Ruslan." Larisa did not understand anything and called the former daughter -in -law. “Because she was left with grief alone. No support. I realized that everything would turn away from her, ”explains Larisa. - My attitude towards Marina has changed. She is a wonderful mother. Whatever happens, she will not abandon her son, will not turn away, wait and help, no matter how much he was given. ”

Larisa replies about his attitude to what is happening in Ukraine: “How I think everyone. It seems to me that if not for us, then we. But I believe that only professional military should be engaged in this matter. I am negative about mobilization. ”

Larisa corresponds to Ruslan every week. She had 15 letters from him. He writes about his new life: "It lives here no worse than in the cabin of a timber truck." In one of the letters, he reassures loved ones: "The real trouble has retreated - I know that for sure."

"He would not even regret his hand"

Before the incident, Ruslan Zinin had already encountered the military commissar. Ruslan had to appear at the military registration and enlistment office for registering a military ticket, and at that time he was lying in a hospital with a broken hand. The military man started an administrative case at him. Ruslan was then perplexed at the mother why people in positions are soulless.

After September 26, Marina first saw a photograph of the military commissar on the Internet for the first time. After he was discharged from the hospital in November, she tried to contact him through a lawyer to apologize. The wife of the military commissar consulted with her husband and answered Zinin’s lawyer: “We are not ready to communicate, maybe then. We just came to our senses. ” The custom -made letter for Eliseeva was also written by Marina Maya's friend, asked him to forgive Ruslan. The letter was never received.

Now Alexander Eliseev is undergoing rehabilitation. He did not go to work.

In early November, the open letter of Ruslan Zinin appeared in the media, in which he himself explained why he shot at the military registration and enlistment office. In addition to saving his brother, he spoke about the death of a school friend:

“To this day, I am tormented by nightmares after the posthumous photograph of my school friend, an 18-year-old guy, a military service soldier, called up in November 2021 and died in March 2022, in the early days of his. Having presented for a moment that I ever, God forbid, will have to see such a person like that, I realized that I could not live on, knowing that I did nothing. ”

From the pre -trial detention center, Ruslan devoted a poem to this guy Danil, sent him to his mother. It is called Danila. It begins with the lines: "I'm sorry we did not help, I'm sorry that we did not save, I'm sorry that in an instant of your last we were not with you."

18-year-old Daniil Trofimov died on March 9. There is a video of how the Ukrainian military breaks Chevron from the body of the deceased soldier, reads "Trofimov D.I." And he adds: "Mom, come, take him."

Mother was able to pick up Danil only in the summer. His funeral took place on June 15, 2022, three months after death.

Ruslan’s mother did not know Danil, never heard of her from her son. The same was said to LB and mother Danil Olga Posnitskaya. When Olga read in the media that Zinin, who shot at the military enlistment office of their city, was impressed by the death of her son, she herself, without calling, went to the Investigative Committee and testified that her son Zinin did not know. “Danil didn’t welcome such things. And even he would not have shook his hand, he would be alive, ”says Posonnitskaya about what Zinin did. “Because Danil has a completely different upbringing.”

Olga confirmed the “people of Lake Baikal” that her son was a military service soldier. In November 2021, she carried him into the army. On February 15, 2022, the last time I talked with him on the phone. He said that they were taken to exercises to Klintsy (a city in the Bryansk region of Russia - LB) . 10 марта 2022 года она проснулась и поняла, что его уже нет. Говорит, что сын ей приснился и сказал об этом во сне. Она сама начала искать его, направлял её тоже сын во снах.

Сейчас Ольга в память о сыне организует в Усть-Илимске фотопроект «Тихий фронт». Бесплатно приглашает жён, вдов и матерей участников войны на фотосессии в военной форме. Она также участвует в патриотических вечерах и поддерживает российских военных.

«Я не понимаю, почему вся эта история выливается на моего сына»

Портрет внука Васи в военной форме стоит на самом видном месте в квартире его бабушки Нины Лебедевой, над телевизором. Вася недавно вернулся со срочной службы. Его в семье любили больше всех. Потому что самый маленький. Потому что он единственный родной внук второго мужа Лебедевой, с которым она прожила 30 лет. Потому что родился кило семьсот, недоношенным, семимесячным, лежал почти два месяца в реанимации.

Нина Григорьевна с гордостью показывает его портрет. Но называет Васю «оболтусом». Рассказывает, что учиться он не хотел. Учился он в школе, где она работает, и ей всегда было за него стыдно. В девятом классе он оставался на второй год. После армии работал то в магазине, то в шиномонтажке. Сейчас Василий с другом арендовали автосервис. Аренду оплачивает бабушка.

«Люди Байкала» позвонили Василию, чтобы назначить встречу. После слов: «Я корреспондент», — связь оборвалась. На второй звонок Василий посоветовал «отдыхать» и положил трубку.

«Что вы хотите от Василия?» — спросила по телефону в первые секунды разговора его мать Светлана Зобнина, тётя Руслана. От встречи с корреспондентом она отказалась. «Какие могут быть интервью? Мы под подпиской!»

О Руслане Светлана сказала, что они не общались: «Руслан с Василием даже не встречались, толком вообще нигде не пересекались. Я не понимаю, почему вся вот эта история выливается на моего сына». Она не считает, что Руслан спас Василия.

«Василий не попал на спецоперацию не потому, что Руслан что-то там совершил, — говорит она. — Его арестовали, моего ребёнка. Он 12 часов просидел в Следственном комитете. И когда на следующий день он пришёл в военкомат, ему сказали, что мобилизованных уже набрали. Не сегодня-завтра мобилизация опять придёт. Вы прекрасно знаете, что СВО ещё не закончилась. Сегодня-завтра его заберут».

Зобнина говорит, что отпустит сына на войну, прятать не будет, потому что он гражданин Российской Федерации.

До конца июня через систему «ФСИН письмо» Руслану Зинину можно писать электронные письма на адрес: СИЗО № 1, город Иркутск, Зинину Руслану Александровичу 1997 года рождения.