Anna Pavlikova

A native of Moscow, born in 2000. She has a secondary education and worked as a veterinary assistant. A defendant in the 'New Greatness' case.

She was detained in the spring of 2018 while still a minor. After five months in a pre-trial detention centre, she was transferred to house arrest. In the summer of 2020, she was sentenced to four years’ probation on charges of creating and participating in an extremist community. The European Court of Human Rights awarded Anna €2,600 in compensation in connection with the unjustifiably lengthy pre-trial measure imposed on her.

2020s

Reading time: 10 minutes

The Final Statement

‘Back then, two years ago, I was a minor, and during this time I was forced to grow up as a result of this life experience. Now I can clearly see that we were simply used.’

More than two years have passed since the day when, early in the morning, strangers knocked on my door and entered my home. From the moment they broke in, our suffering began–for my entire family, for all the defendants in the case, for all their families.

I was no less fortunate than the others–I spent only five months in the pre-trial detention centre. I will not talk about my health–the court has all the relevant documents–but I wanted to talk about what pertains to the case. Immediately after I was transferred to the pre-trial detention centre, investigators were constantly coming around, asking questions and trying to get close to the ‘senior’ inmate in the cell. There was a good woman there, and she told me: ‘Don’t talk to anyone, don’t say anything even accidentally, because they are very interested in you.‘ It became almost absurd–they put a ‘snitch’ in my cell; I think you know what that is. She was about my age–a year or two older, I think–and, as far as I remember, she was in for drugs. She would constantly sit with me and try to start a conversation. We began talking, and I heard from her exactly what the investigator had been trying to get me to say–the things he had told me during our meetings. She said to me: ‘Listen, I’m really right-wing. I remember the days when we used to go to the Russian March, give Nazi salutes, and they would arrest us all.‘ She told me stories like that and asked: ‘You probably were too?‘ She tried to get me talking, and I said: ‘No. I’m neither right-wing nor left-wing, actually.‘

When I was already in the hospital, there were two of us in the cell. First they would summon me, then my cellmate. They kept pestering her. At one point she came up to me and said: ‘Can you tell them who Ruslan is and what he did?‘ We even had arguments because they were harassing her–ask this, ask that.

All this time [of the trial], there has been no opportunity to work, no opportunity to study. Even though I read some biology books when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I have continued pursuing that dream ever since–I want to become a good specialist. I studied, I worked. I believe I am doing something useful for society. I want to continue helping society, to work for the benefit of society. That is why I did not understand why I was immediately sent to a pre-trial detention centre instead of being released under a written undertaking not to leave the country.

Back then, two years ago, I was a minor, and during this time I was forced to grow up as a result of this life experience. Now I can clearly see that we were simply used. The people who deliberately fabricated this criminal case manipulated us very skilfully. And because of their cruelty, all of us have been enduring this suffering for such a long time. We keep hearing all of this over and over again.

In the case, the [provocateur], as we can now see, was looking for a different approach to each of us. He was simply playing us while at the same time creating the [case]. Actually creating it, rather than collecting some information, so-called evidence. It became almost absurd: I was used to believing that people always want to do something good for others, and if they are not very decent people–if they get into fights at school, for example–you can immediately tell what kind of person they are. They do not pretend to be your friend or put on a show for others; you can usually tell from the conversation right away. I talked to this person–well, yes, he said some things, but I believe that some things are better joked about than cried over. Many people can make jokes about dark subjects; you would never take them seriously–it’s just a joke, and that’s that. He simply controlled our every move–sometimes he pressured us, sometimes, on the contrary, he reassured us; he made promises and threats.

Near the very end, there were moments when, completely seriously, while we were sitting in a café, he said: ‘Rebrovsky really irritates me, he drives me crazy.‘ He talked about how much he disliked him. And he said: ‘I have a guy. Let me hire him, he’ll find out where he lives and scare him a little.‘ And at that moment, as was his habit, he did not laugh–it was clear that he was being completely serious. We were eating in the café at the time, we just swallowed what we were eating, and I said: ‘Why? We can just talk calmly.‘ And he said: ‘All right, I made the suggestion. I’ll think about it.‘

Basically, he never said anything particularly strange, but he was always laughing. Yes, we could laugh too. In the case, for example, as I later found out, there was Kashapov–I don’t remember his first name. At the time I was talking to him, I did not know who he was at all. It just happened that he wrote to me saying that some acquaintances of mine had asked him to pass something on to someone and asking whether he could meet me. I said–I couldn’t, I was working, but if he wanted, he could come to me for two minutes. I finished work, bought groceries at the market as usual, and we met. He turned out to be a young, well-mannered man. I even learned his name–I think he introduced himself as Ruslan. He saw that I had huge bags and said: ‘Oh, how are you going to manage with all those? Let’s go to the shopping centre.‘ So it turned out that he persuaded me, took my bags, led me to the shopping centre, bought me coffee, and we sat down to talk. I was in a hurry, but I had half an hour. We started talking, and he found out who my mother was and what illness she had, because someone he knew had the same illness, so we talked about that. I found out that he had a daughter. Then, when I asked him where he lived, he said–in a military settlement. And then he said: ‘I actually work for the National Guard.‘ He complained a lot that his superiors were terrible, that they made him do stupid things, that they themselves knew nothing about computers, while he sat there typing things he shouldn’t be typing–something like that. At the same time, he worked at a computer, so there was no way I could have said to him–buy us something or steal something from the military. That simply could not have happened. He worked at a computer, sitting in an office. That’s how he described it to me; I don’t know exactly. And since he said he had a daughter, and I had a lot of groceries–I was always buying things at the market and carrying bags home–I said to him: take some persimmons and cottage cheese for your daughter. And somehow we developed a friendly relationship. We exchanged messages, and he would ask how my mother was doing.

Then one day he wrote to me–it turned out that he knew Ruslan Kostylenkov indirectly through someone, which I only found out later. He said: ‘I have a present for Ruslan Kostylenkov. Where are you now?‘ At that moment I was at Bratislavskaya. He said: ‘I’ll get a taxi now, a car.‘ He came, simply handed me a package and said: ‘Give it to Ruslan, he’ll understand.‘ He asked again how my mother was doing. We never saw each other again. Then I read that I had supposedly asked him for things that we had never even discussed. I believe that law enforcement agencies should prevent offences, not create them. So even if he was working there, as he wrote, and was a patriot–he could have simply approached me and said, ‘Listen, Ruslan is writing this kind of thing.’ But nothing like that happened. No one approached us, we never discussed any of it; we were simply talking as friends. I suppose you shouldn’t trust people who immediately try to establish contact with you. I don’t know.

As for the entire case, including the torture: when I was being interrogated, they brought Kostylenkov past us–my father and me–and shoved him into the adjacent room where investigator Malyugin was. Apparently they beat him, because we could hear the sounds. Afterwards we continued to see that he could barely walk; he was limping, and it was obvious that his kidneys had been injured. I had seen it in films–when your kidneys have been beaten, you cannot walk straight. He was completely hunched over; it was obvious. We were frightened–or rather, we were not even frightened, we simply did not understand what was happening. And they told us, ‘So, you’re next to go into that room.’ We were interrogated by SOBR officers wearing masks. And right in front of us they were actually bragging–’There, we went to see him, wished him a happy birthday‘–it was Ruslan Kostylenkov’s birthday–and they said it was from Masha [Dubovik]. They showed a video–you have probably seen it online–of Ruslan Kostylenkov, on whom there was barely a part of his body left untouched, confessing to all the alleged offences in this case. They showed me the video and said: ‘Look, I filmed it. I’m going to post it on Telegram now.‘ They were openly boasting about how brutally they had taken everyone down.

I believe that the sentences the prosecution has requested for the boys in pre-trial detention are extremely cruel and unjust. I believe that no one committed what they are trying to accuse us of. I ask the court to be rational. To rationally consider all the evidence from both sides and make the right decision. Thank you.

24 July 2020.
Lyublinsky District Court, Moscow, Russia.
Source: ‘Meduza‘.
For more information: ‘Memorial‘.
Photo: Maxim Shipenkov / EPA / Scanpix / LETA.