Translated material
“Do you still need this war?” Schoolboy Yegor Balazeikin is six years old
17-year-old Yegor Balazeikin was sentenced to six years in a correctional colony in the case of two failed arson attacks on two military registration and enlistment offices in the Leningrad region and St. Petersburg, such a term was requested by the prosecutor. The situation was not saved by either the confession, the absence of victims in the case, or the teenager’s progressive illness. A Sever.Realii correspondent followed this process in court.
Yegor was detained at the end of February in Kirovsk (Leningrad Region) during one of two failed attempts to set fire to the building of the local military registration and enlistment office. Investigators said that the student could have killed the officer on duty, who was at the military registration and enlistment office at the time. As a result, the article against Balazeikin was reclassified as an attempted terrorist act, and a little later a second article was added to it - an attempt to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office building.
Subscribe to Instagram , telegram and YouTube Sever.Realii. There we publish content that is not on the site!At the very first interrogation, Balazeikin admitted his guilt - he threw bottles at buildings, but did not want to kill anyone. During the court hearings, it turned out that the student did not cause any damage: neither material nor physical.
Why did Balazeikin take bottles of gasoline and go throw them at the military registration and enlistment office? As Yegor himself said, from the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he supported the decisions of the Russian authorities. But soon his position began to change.
“At the time the SVO began, I had a positive attitude towards it. I began to look for information on the Internet, subscribed to Meduza. After that, my attitude began to change. I came to the conclusion that I could not agree with the Russian Armed Forces on the territory of Ukraine, so I began to talk with people around me in order to cover information about the SVO (as the Russian authorities and media call the war in Ukraine. - SR) . I realized that talking was useless, and decided that something needed to be done to change the situation,” said Yegor during the preliminary investigation.
In the summer of 2022, Yegor’s uncle Dmitry died in the war in Ukraine, which affected the whole family.
“My uncle volunteered and died in the war in June. This event had a great influence on me. I wanted people to pay attention to the existing problem. I wanted to destabilize the activities of the military registration and enlistment office. I was resolving my internal conflict: either you live with the fact that you don’t like the war, or you act,” Balazeikin said during the first interrogations. In court, he refused to say why he decided to do this.
The lawyers demanded that Yegor be acquitted, insisting that his actions showed no signs of a terrorist act, no signs of intimidation of the population, and that he immediately confessed to what he had done.
The prosecutor in the case said the defendant should have realized that the building could have been destroyed and the on-duty officer inside could have died.
The prosecutor stated in the debate that Balazeikin cannot “hide behind the death of his uncle.”
– His (Uncle Yegor’s) decision was to take part in the war against the state, which declared Nazism as its ideology (Russian authorities claim that the reason for the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine was Nazism in a neighboring country. - SR) . It is incorrect to cover up actions with the death of your uncle. By these actions he betrayed his uncle,” the prosecutor said.
Yegor Balazeikin has autoimmune hepatitis. His condition has worsened in the pre-trial detention center; they cannot provide him with full and qualified medical care there. Yegor’s mother Tatyana Balazeikina insisted that the court acquit her son.
– When you hear “terrorist attack,” Beslan, “Nord-Ost,” and a terrorist attack on the metro in St. Petersburg come to mind. What do we have in an alleged terrorist act? There were no actions to intimidate the population. We asked people in Kirovsk about this, no one there knows about what happened. As for the danger to life. The military registration and enlistment office has three exits from the building; the fire never occurred. There are no fire-fighting equipment in military registration and enlistment offices. Who is endangering people then? There was no damage to the building,” Tatyana Balazeikina said at the trial. – The goal is to destabilize authorities. During the interrogation, he did not mention these goals in a word; he spoke about internal experiences,” said Tatyana Balazeikina. – According to judicial practice, the same actions in other cases would be qualified as an administrative violation. The prognosis for autoimmune hepatitis is unfavorable: mortality within 10 years is 90 percent. Further imprisonment is tantamount to a death sentence. What did my son do? Threw the bottle at the iron door. But what brought him to this?
“During interrogation, the state prosecutor asked my husband about Yegor’s reaction to the death of his uncle. The husband replied that it was a tragedy for the whole family, continues Tatyana Balazeikina. – The state prosecutor agreed: “Yes, it’s a tragedy.” I really want to ask the state prosecutor: “Who did he bury as a result of hostilities? How does he know what a tragedy it is?” When you suddenly realize that the person with whom you recently discussed Pikul’s books is no longer there. When you read a death certificate that states the causes of death. When you clearly imagine a person who was alive just yesterday dead with his arm torn off and his chest pierced. When the body of a loved one is taken away at a military airfield, you realize with horror that the An-74 plane is filled with coffins. When in a cemetery you see rows of holes for 2x2 meter wooden boxes, you understand perfectly well what they are there for. Graves. For people who are still alive.
And when, within several months after Dima’s death, his colleagues call. And they tell, they tell, they tell. When a woman whose husband died there cannot find his body, and the soldiers say that he was burned alive. When your father - a grown man - cries, locked in his room. You observe all this, absorb it and understand that in many families there is such a tragedy. Did the state prosecutor talk about this tragedy? How can you feel all that pain without experiencing it yourself?
My mother-in-law knows what a tragedy is when, instead of her eldest son, she has a grave in the cemetery. My husband knows what tragedy is, wearing his dead brother's clothes every day. We know what tragedy is. I'm sure the state prosecutor doesn't know. Dima was not betrayed by Yegor, Dima was betrayed by completely different people. Why did my son throw the bottle? What was he up against? Against the loss of life. What was he for? For life. After all, there is nothing more expensive and valuable than life. I categorically disagree with the qualifications of what my son did. This is not a terrorist act,” Balazeikina said.
Yegor Balazeikin in his last word stated that he was not asking for justification, but that his conscience was judging him for his actions.
“My loved one, my mother, asked for an excuse.” But I don't ask for an excuse. I am justified by my soul, but my conscience judges me. We will settle accounts in the next world. 6 years, 8 – it doesn’t matter, that time doesn’t exist there. I would like to start with Nietzsche, one of the fundamental ideologists of fascism, the philosopher who first spoke of the superman. He believed that war was a great thing. Yes, Nietzsche loved war. He empathized with her; the goodness of war sanctifies any goal, he wrote. In Russia in 2023, the formulation seems to be more suitable: “A good goal sanctifies even war.”
I have been thinking about my last, not the last, but the last word for a long time, and yesterday night, a few minutes before the anthem, I dreamed of the answer. The state prosecutor touched upon the topic of Nazism and nationalism in Ukraine. I was in jail yesterday with Slava. Slava is a worthy and strong person. His entire shoulder is covered with swastikas. And you can’t imagine how many of them there are in pre-trial detention center No. 5 of St. Petersburg.
In Russia, Nazis are in prison for beating and robbing people. They are imprisoned not for swastikas, but for robberies and murders. Whatever “glass” I go into, there will be a swastika there. This is about Nazism. I communicate with people. They can’t really speak Russian, but they know what “black sun”, “kolovrat” is, and what a running swastika is. This is about Nazism.
We have such a situation, they explain to me that we have a good goal - the fight against neo-Nazism. I cannot understand how a state has such problems when almost every second person is associated with this (neo-Nazism). As a country with such problems, with such people, a good goal that even justifies war. As a country with such problems, with such people who remain and for whom the only way out is to lead some kind of crusade in another country, no less, against the Nazis.
All the time, all kinds of people, while I was still at home, in the so-called freedom, told me that I had to be patient a little and everything would be fine. And everything will be fine for all of us Russians. But the first question is: will it happen? Almost two years have passed. I kept trying to understand what the connection was between bombed Mariupol and my old house. They explained to me that a little more time will pass and everything will be fine with you. The fact is that almost two years have passed, and in pre-trial detention center No. 5 the rear door of the paddy wagon opens while driving. And we won’t have a new house.
February 24 (we are talking about February 24, 2022, when Russian troops invaded the territory of Ukraine. - CP) is now more important to me than my birthday. Now, not then. I will have a deadline. Let's say the same six years. And now I understand why I will be in prison. I'm really guilty of something. I am to blame for my indifference. At the beginning (of the war) I did not support it. When you don't care, you're already supportive. In fact, I didn’t care then. I didn't care then. They react to me differently in the same pre-trial detention center: good or bad, many negatively, but negatively - it’s closer than nothing, than indifference.
Two years later, if I knew what would happen - and we’re not talking about burned cities and columns - I want to talk about my family. If then, on February 24, I knew what would happen to the people who are closest to me, then it seemed absolutely natural and simple that I began to do something. I couldn’t stay away then. I would go up to my parents and say: we are all together now, our whole family, no one can separate us. And in six months we will go to bury Uncle Dmitry.
I won't talk much about my uncle. This is a real officer, he didn’t have so many stars, they weren’t big either. With those people who are around me now, who are big stars, let Dmitry be a real officer for me, and these people will be just stars, as we call them in the pre-trial detention center, no more. My uncle is a man who was on business trips and became a guard major. Wasn’t there a more worthy place for him in Russia? Couldn't he work and be useful? In modern Russia there was no such place for him. There was a place for such a person in the assault squad, among the cannon fodder, I can’t say otherwise.
( Addressing parents ) It may seem that you are somehow forcing me to take some position. But those who know me know how I fought with you. I tried to prove to you that you don’t need to be cannibals. I want to say that I'm proud of you. I have no one stronger than you. I started with a quote from Nietzsche, I want to end with Leo Tolstoy, who for some reason was forgotten in my country. They didn’t even forget, but we simply don’t need him now, because he is a pacifist, a man who went through two wars, the defense of Sevastopol, the Caucasian War. This man turned out to be unnecessary for modern Russia. I’ll read one quote from him: “The only argument in favor of continuing the war is that the war has started.” Leo Tolstoy tells us that now we have nothing. We simply have that the case has begun.
I tell those people who knew me before: if you love and respect me even a little, I will ask you to do just one thing. When you are left alone, talking to your heart, ask yourself just one question: “Do you still need this war?” – Yegor Balazeikin said in his last word.