‘They called me a fascist, a traitor, and a disgrace’ Even minors aren’t exempt from the Kremlin’s zero-tolerance policy on anti-war speech

Story from Verstka. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities have prosecuted people for speaking out publicly against the war, attending anti-war protests, and even posting anti-war content on social media. The suspects aren’t limited to adults, either: numerous children and teenagers have faced legal consequences for criticizing the invasion. One of the highest-profile cases is the prosecution of Varya Zholiker, a Moscow fifth grader whom anti-extremism officers interrogated after she skipped one of her school’s state-imposed “patriotism” classes and posted a pro-Ukrainian image as her avatar online. But Varya’s story is far from unique. In a new investigation, journalists from the independent outlet Verstka found that children have faced threats of violence from police, public shaming, and steep fines for denouncing the war. In English, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of their report.

‘I felt like a witch in the Middle Ages’

In May 2022, 17-year-old Zari’s (name changed) school held a ceremony to mark the end of the academic year. Zari was supposed to read a poem at the event.

Before she was up, however, the school’s director took the floor. The woman told the students she had some good news: the Russian army had just captured the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol. Listening to the speech, Zari grew angry.

When it was her turn to read the poem, Zari walked up to the microphone and cried, “No to war! Freedom for Ukraine! Putin is the devil!”

Someone took a video of Zari’s outburst, and on the morning of May 22, the video spread across social media. The reactions were mixed. Many commenters insulted Zari and called her derogatory names, but some praised her bravery.

The response at Zari’s school, however, was far from ambivalent: nobody at all supported her. From the moment she made the statement, she said, “Everyone [at the ceremony] started screaming at me; everybody was really angry. They called me a fascist, a traitor, and a disgrace to my country.”

Before long, police officers showed up, confiscated Zari’s phone, and took her to the police station.

“This was all accompanied by verbal insults,” she said. “I felt like a witch in the Middle Ages, or a serial killer. They kept me at the police station for about five hours or so; it’s hard to remember. They didn’t beat me. They told me that I’m stupid and that I don’t understand anything. And they insulted Ukrainians too.”

Later that day, a video appeared online that showed Zari and her mother apologizing. Standing in front of her school, Zari says that she was “anxious about exams” and regrets her actions, which were just an attempt to “get attention.” Her mother, looking despondent, calls Zari’s actions “emotional and thoughtless” and expresses regret for having failed to raise her properly.

According to Zari, this video was filmed by “people from the [city] administration.” She was given a script and told to read it on camera.

When asked how she feels about her actions at the ceremony, Zari says, “I’m not going to answer that. I’m on the police registry.” The authorities told Zari that if she’s involved in another incident, they’ll open a criminal case and “ruin the lives” of her entire family.

‘You think we won’t beat the shit out of you just because you’re a minor?’

According to the independent media project OVD-Info, at least seven people under 18 were hit with felony charges for making anti-war statements in 2022.

In addition to peaceful protests and statements, some teenagers have engaged in direct action to oppose Russia’s war effort. On January 30, 2023, for example, OVD-Info reported that the Federal Security Service (FSB) had arrested three eighth graders outside Moscow for damaging railroad tracks (according to media reports, they set fire to a signaling control box). The FSB alleged that the students were acting “on instructions from unknown actors from the messenger Telegram,” and it called on Russians to “remain vigilant and not follow the lead of persons being used by Ukrainian intelligence services to commit sabotage attacks on transportation infrastructure targets.”

It’s currently unclear what charges the teenagers will face. The FSB has said that their actions could qualify as either a “terrorist act” or a “diversion,” which are both offenses that could land the young perpetrators in prison.

While criminal charges against minors are relatively rare in Russia, arrests, threats, harassment, and misdemeanor charges are all becoming increasingly common. Judging by media reports and open-source data, minors have been arrested for taking part in rallies in solidarity with Ukraine and have been fined for “crimes” like putting up posters, writing anti-war posts on Telegram, drawing anti-war graffiti, and wearing anti-war patches in at least a dozen Russian cities. In Crimea, a student was reported to the FSB for drawing a Ukrainian flag in her notebook.

Andrey, a 16-year-old from Russia’s Vladimir region, is one of the teenagers who has been charged with a misdemeanor. He told Verstka that he’s long had a reputation for being a “Navalny fanboy,” both among his fellow students and among school staff.

When the full-scale war broke out, Andrey stopped attending protests; he was afraid both of getting arrested and of his parents’ reaction. But when Vladimir Putin announced mobilization in September 2022, he couldn’t resist.

“On September 21, my friend and I were so worked up,” he told Verstka. “We agreed that we had to do something. We got on the bus and went as far as Vladimir, where protests are usually held. We were disappointed to see how few people there were. No crowd at all. But a lot of cops. They were coming up to random people — even to people who were just walking by or standing at the bus stop. I personally didn’t see anybody chanting or holding up any signs. But they were still arresting people.”

Andrey decided to record a video of the scene using his phone. Immediately, officers came up to him and his friend and pulled them by their arms into a police van.

On the way to the precinct, the officers made Andrey and his friend give up their phones, threatening to “nail them for disobeying police” if they didn’t. Then, at the station, they demanded that Andrey unlock his phone, but he refused. One officer, he recalled, told him, “The way you behave will determine the consequences, so unblock it.” When that didn’t work, they started threatening him directly: “You think we won’t beat the shit out of you just because you’re a minor?”

Eventually, Andrey’s parents came to pick him up.

“They don’t super agree with my position. But they didn’t show much emotion; they just looked at me angrily,” he said. “[…] My dad said something like, ‘Great job, what a great gift you’ve given your mother.’ Because her birthday was coming up.”

A few days later, the police stopped Andrey on his way out of his home. “They came up to me and said, ‘Call your parents and then we’re leaving,’” he said.

It turned out that even though Andrey had refused to unlock his phone for the officers, they had seen some messages on his screen, and they’d used the messages to find Andrey’s public Telegram channel. There, he had shared a post about a protest against mobilization that was organized by local activists and the Vesna (or Spring) movement. “And that’s what they used as the basis for the charges against me: Section 2, Article 20 of the Russian Administrative Code, participation in unauthorized protests,” he told Verstka.

Andrey’s case was referred to a Commission for Juvenile Affairs, which decided to fine him 20,000 rubles ($270).

As part of the case proceedings, the commission read Andrey’s school file aloud. The notes in the file said that he was disciplined and studied well, but also that he “takes active civic positions, supports Alexey Navalny, and accuses the authorities of corruption.” One of the commission members was a local administration official whom Andrey had never met before. “He asked whether I considered him corrupt,” Andrey recounted. “And he also talked about Nazism in Ukraine.”

Now, Andrey is required to report to the police station once a week. There, officers remind him that he “shouldn’t go to protests or write any bad posts on social media.”

Andrey decided not to dispute the penalty, fearing it would only make things worse. The blogger YoungMasha and her followers donated money to help him pay the fine.

‘There were Z’s everywhere in our town, and it pissed me off’

Other teenagers targeted by authorities for opposing the war have decided to seek legal support.

Vera (whose name has been changed at her request), a 17-year-old from a small town in the Chelyabinsk region, was stopped by an FSB officer in October when she tried to put up an anti-war poster after school. When the officer learned that she wasn’t yet 18, he ordered her to call her parents.

“I called my mom, but I was so scared that I just gave the phone to him,” she said. “He told my mom that she needed to come here, because they couldn’t do anything to me without my parents.”

It soon became clear from Vera’s conversation with the man that he somehow knew that she had skipped her school’s “patriotism” classes in the past. He told her to stop reading “stupid nonsense” on the Internet and advised her to start following “patriotic” Telegram channels.

When Vera’s mom arrived at the scene, the men took them both to the police station, where they were then held for approximately eight hours. Vera was ultimately charged with “discrediting the Russian army,” and her mother was charged with failing to fulfill her parental duties.

While Vera still didn’t consider herself guilty of a crime, the charges scared her. She told some friends about what had happened, and one of them recommended she contact Andrey Lepyokhin, a lawyer who works with the human rights group Agora.

Lepyokhin agreed to defend Vera, and he attended the first Commission for Juvenile Affairs meeting. But her case hearing that was supposed to follow was postponed — and was subsequently postponed twice more. When it finally occurred, Lepyokhin was unable to attend.

“The hearing took place on December 27, and I went alone,” Vera said. “They just read out the decision, and then the chairman of the commission took out some Nazi posters that he had printed out himself and read them out. He said that calling for peace is a known political strategy.” She was fined 30,000 rubles (about $400).

Lawyer Andrey Lepyokhin told Verstka that he prepared an appeal against the commission’s decision, but that the court refused to accept it, claiming that the decision had already entered into legal force. Now, Lepyokhin plans to appeal the court’s decision to reject his first appeal attempt.

“This girl was prosecuted for expressing her opinion. For writing the word [war]. It’s nonsense in and of itself. How can you prosecute somebody for discrediting [the army] for that word?” he said in a later interview.

According to Lepyokhin, life is difficult for Vera in her hometown: a lot of people have now turned against her, and the local authorities view her decision to hire a lawyer as an act of insolence. Nonetheless, she doesn’t regret her decision.

“Our town is covered in all kinds of Z’s [pro-war symbols], and it pissed me off,” she told Verstka. “I wanted to make an alternative perspective visible, to show that not all Russians support the war.”

Vera’s arrest has been a topic of heated debate on local social media. Some commenters have suggested that Vera might bring a bomb to school, and that she wasn’t acting of her own volition but was paid by some third party. But others have left words of support. One person wrote, “This is a case of the youth being wiser than the old people.”