The case of the New Greatness: For what and how 18-year-old Anna Pavlikova is being tried
Dmitry Kurkin
Eighteen Anna Pavlikovaaccused of organizing the extremist community "New Greatness", will remain under arrest until at least August 13. The Moscow City Court made such a decision last week, despite appeals from the Ombudsman Tatiana Moskalkova to change the preventive measure for house arrest, bails of human rights activists and the fact that after the arrest of Pavlikova serious health problems began (since mid-March 2018 years, hospitalized due to heart problems). Earlier, Anna Karlova’s lawyer, Anna Karlova, said that her client tried to complain about the conditions of detention in the SIZO, but under pressure from the prison staff she was forced to give up the claims.
The case of the “New Greatness”, about which no one and nothing knew about the arrest of ten of its participants in Russia, became one of the most resonant political events of recent years not only because of the conditions of detention of its defendants. The parents of two women involved in the case believe that the creation of the movement itself, whose purpose, according to the investigation, was to overthrow the constitutional system of the Russian Federation is nothing more than a police provocation.
Homemade extremism
It follows from the case file that one of the initiators of the movement’s creation was a certain Ruslan D. (this is not a real name, in publications in the media he is also referred to as Alexander Konstantinov). It was he who, at the end of 2017, invited the participants in the telegram chat who occasionally held meetings at McDonalds to create a new organization. He also found a room for the movement, provided him with a printer for printing leaflets and volunteered to write a charter in which the examination later revealed "signs of propaganda of an ideology of violence." Who exactly was Ruslan D., who is a witness in the case, is still unknown: some consider him an employee of the "E" center, others - an informant.
For three months, from the moment of their creation to their arrest, the activists of the “New Greatness” didn’t have time to do too much: they created a group on the VKontakte network and distributed leaflets about Putin’s regime. According to the testimony of Ruslan D., several participants in the movement traveled to the Moscow region to practice shooting from the Saiga carbine (it is claimed that the weapon belonged to Rustam Rustamov, a friend of the alleged leader of the New Greatness Ruslan Kostylenkov; Rustamov himself did not participate in the organization, but , nevertheless, is held by the accused in the case). In March, eight men and two women (a nineteen-year-old student, Maria Dubovik, and a seventeen-year-old Pavlikova, who worked at a veterinary clinic) who were in the New Greatness, were detained and accused of extremism.
"Your honor, I will not run away"
Why the investigation was especially hard on Pavlikov, it was not completely clear: Anna was not the most active participant in the movement and, according to her mother, Yulia Pavlikova, was going to leave him - Ruslan D., who was talking to her daughter, corresponded in a telegram Chat, Julia Pavlikova claims that she did not keep any printed materials related to the “New Greatness” at home (“She had only Navalny’s icons from the“ political ”house). This did not prevent the operatives who conducted the search in the Pavlikovs' apartment to find copies of the organization’s charter.
In a letter sent to the Public Observation Commission, Anna says that during the search and detention, the operative threatened to hit her. After being detained, she was taken for three hours in a paddy wagon, where, despite the cold weather, the heating did not work. It is believed that this trip undermined Pavlikova’s already poor health, which, according to her mother, was examined every year by a cardiologist and a neurologist. However, at the May 11 meeting, the Dorogomilovsky District Court did not take into account the extracts from medical institutions and left Pavlikov in the SIZO until September (the public prosecutor explained the extension of the arrest by “a large volume of investigative and operational investigative activities”). Anna herself was not present at the meeting - as she herself said, on that day the police officers drove her around Moscow for hours.
Last week, the case of Pavlikova reached the Moscow City Court, which left the decision to arrest in force, although it reduced the tenure of the accused by a month. “Your honor, I will not run away. And I don’t want to and I can not intimidate anyone. I won’t,” Anna said at a video conference call from the SIZO. “I have a headache at night, I’m not sleeping. I want to solve the hormone problem, here it is impossible, unfortunately. And I would like, well, while the investigation is underway, I would like before the trial to be returned to my family. I really need to see my parents. I cannot. I want to hug my mother. Sorry. I ask the court change the measure of restraint to any. Only so as not to be in prison. Everything. "
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