Children are taken to pre-trial detention centers

Propagandist Andrei Medvedev released a film about young “terrorists”. Ksenia Luchenko explains why the viewer sympathizes with them

One of the main propagandists of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Andrei Medvedev made the film “Betrayal” about young people sitting in pre-trial detention centers and colonies on terrorist charges. All the characters in this film, except for Denis Popovich and Nikita Ivankovich, who are accused of attempted murder of Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) and who do not admit their guilt, actually committed certain acts that can formally be qualified as terrorist attacks or preparation for them. Especially if you try very hard to prove guilt. These heroes are very different - from different cities, social classes, different ages, they have different motivations, they evaluate their actions differently. Guys who set fire to relay cabinets and helicopters for money, Daria Trepova, who handed over a bust with explosives to Vladlen Tatarsky, girls who contacted the Russian Freedom Legion to try to stop the war, etc. They have one thing in common: they have already been given or are threatening to be given huge prison sentences - from 12 years to life. The youngest is 14 years old.

Probably, as conceived by the authors and customers, it was supposed to be a frightening film with a pedagogical, didactic effect, so that, having seen the fate of the heroes, young people would be horrified and vigilant, not succumbing to the provocations of NATO countries and their recruiters. This effect probably even worked. But a much stronger effect was clearly not planned. The Rossiya-1 channel showed a movie about suffering, with the heroes of which it is much more natural for viewers to identify than with their executioners.

People break into ordinary apartments and tell ordinary people that they have come for their children. Pack your things, mom, he won’t be back soon, this is terrorism. The 14-year-old relay cabinet arsonist is completely petrified, his father yells at him, “Are you a moron? You didn’t have enough money?”, the mother laments, “You know that SVO, why did you go there?” And both to him: “Moron, moron, moron.” Because it’s scary, because they show the police that they all understand that they are not like that, that this is all by chance... As if something depends on these police officers.

And the boy in shorts, with his sharp knees sticking out, doesn’t know what is more terrified - that his parents are screaming, or that they have come for him. Who is scarier - mom and dad or special forces?

Another mother is sobbing on her knees, clutching her boy, who allegedly set the locomotive on fire. And everyone is filming it.

A girl from “Freedom of Russia” in a hoodie with a plush hood cries into the camera: “Stop it, can it stop?” — but they keep showing her in close-up.

Daria Trepova, wrapped in a scarf, barely whispers, but stands her ground - she repents of the murder, allowed herself to be used, but refuses to say anything that would indicate her ideological degeneration, support for the war or anything else that was clearly demanded of her. At least, her husband told journalists that Medvedev visited Daria in the colony several times in the summer, and after his visits she ended up in a punishment cell for obstinacy, for not giving a picture of how a Russian prison makes patriots out of criminals. But Daria's answers are left in the film. Medvedev asks her why she wanted to go as a volunteer to Ukraine, why not volunteer to help her country, to which Daria replies: “I was taught that you need to take the side of the weak.” And this is broadcast on the federal television channel.

Denis Popovich calmly and confidently says that he treats Metropolitan Tikhon as a father and could never commit parricide - and this is also aired.

With all this on direct cuts, commentators from the security forces. Well dressed, with Hollywood smiles. They are intimidating. They explain that yes, these defendants and convicts did not understand what they were doing, they were recruited, NATO is at the door (and in the UK, do you know how many people have been arrested for comments on social networks? Thousands!), but now they will have to answer to the fullest extent. It’s as if these articles and deadlines are something beyond man’s control, an indispensable divine punishment, like a volcanic eruption. It is not even questioned that maybe we should go some other way, not to prison? Maybe there is no need to ruin the life of one particular boy, who clearly did not know what he was doing, in order to frighten thousands of other boys? Not to mention psychologists, rehabilitation, social workers - but this is all from peacetime. And the film directly shows that there is a war going on and that it is already in Russia and potentially affects everyone. The tentacles of this war are everywhere - and this effect, it seems, was also not intended by the authors.

“I don’t want to apply these measures. But those who use them do not protect a specific box, door, or some kind of automation, they protect the Russian Federation and our Russian people,” says retired FSB Major General Alexander Perelygin. And retired Colonel Andrei Bezrukov from intelligence is demanding the death penalty so that everyone can see it.

It seems that they would not mind adopting the experience of their Iranian colleagues and hanging these girls with red hair from taps in public.

Young people, including literally children, are taken forcibly, in colonies and in pre-trial detention centers, in the end they are all forced to say how many years they have left to serve and how old they will be when they get out, and their well-groomed uncles and aunts who took their lives comment on them. This is such a manifesto of violence and such a sadistic intoxication with power that it looks like human sacrifices to the state.

At the same time, it is so clear who is actually alive, even if they really tried to do something socially dangerous, and who is dead, that it seems that the stones will sympathize.