“Putin is war and poverty”. Teenager detained in Kazan over graffiti criticizing Putin may face extremism charges

The day after the graffiti photos were published, on October 22, operatives from Center “E”, a police unit tasked with combating “extremism,” visited the home of Airat Gumerbaev, a member of the “Civil Initiative” party and a former candidate for the Tatarstan legislature. They showed Gumerbaev the photographs of the graffiti and asked if he was the author. Gumerbaev stated that he was seeing the photos for the first time and agreed to take a polygraph test offered by one of the police officers, which required him to go to the Kazan police department.

On the polygraph test form, it was necessary to indicate the article of the Criminal Code under which the test was being conducted. At this point, the woman administering the polygraph test hesitated and called an operative. After consulting a document on his phone, the operative determined that the test was not being conducted as part of a criminal or administrative case, but rather in response to a received report.

Initially, Gumerbaev was asked test questions about his name and then about unrelated topics such as his life, work, and participation in opposition activities.

“Then there were substantive questions: had I committed any crimes [in general]? Had I put inscriptions on the wall in red paint? Do I know the person who put these inscriptions? Am I in collusion with the person who put them? Each question was repeated about five times. Then they started asking questions, repeating them about 20 times—first names, then last names, all starting with the letter S. Did Serafim make these inscriptions? Did Spartak make these inscriptions? Did Sevastyan make these inscriptions? Did Sultan make these inscriptions? Did Suleiman make these inscriptions?” Gumerbaev recounted.

Based on the police questions, Gumerbaev understood that the graffiti had appeared on October 14. He was released from the police department without any formal charges, only with a warning about the inadmissibility of participating in unauthorized rallies.

The first to report Gumerbaev’s detention was his “Civil Initiative” associate, Dmitry Rumyantsev, the chairman of the party’s regional branch. On October 24, Rumyantsev clarified that on the same day, another person was detained: a 15-year-old boy with one of the rare names that Gumerbaev had been asked about at the police station. The young man’s VK page showed that he had last logged in on the morning of October 21.

The teenager’s grandmother said that she was unaware of his detention and then stopped answering the phone. His sister suggested clarifying the issue of his detention with the teenager himself, but the phone numbers found in data leaks were unavailable.

Mediazona was unable to contact the young man’s mother. Rumyantsev claims that she deliberately distances herself from the opposition and the media. “She perceives everything related to the opposition with hostility, because she believes that her child suffered because of the actions of Navalny’s headquarters,” the politician claimed. According to Rumyantsev, on October 24, he found a lawyer who was willing to work pro bono for the teenager, but the mother refused the help, entrusting her son’s defense to a court-appointed lawyer. However, Rumyantsev claims that the teenager himself periodically contacts him and shares details about the case.

According to Rumyantsev, the teenager was detained on the morning of October 22 when he left his house. He was taken to the police department, where he remained until 7 p.m., waiting for his mother to arrive, as the interrogation could not take place without her presence. During the interrogation, the teenager admitted to drawing the graffiti. “They questioned him, scared his mother by saying she would be fired from work, and so on. They recorded all of this. He confessed,” Rumyantsev claimed.

The following day, a search was conducted at the teenager’s home, during which “physical evidence related to the case” was found, and two phones were seized. The young man agreed to unlock the phones, according to the chairman of “Civil Initiative”. After the search, the investigator conducted an on-site verification of testimony, photographing the young man next to the buildings near the underground passage on Voznesensky trakt.

On the evening of October 25, Rumyantsev reported that after the interrogation with his mother, the young man was charged under Part 2 of Article 214 of the Criminal Code, which pertains to vandalism motivated by hatred. Rumyantsev did not see any official documents, but in a conversation with him, the teenager listed the articles that the police discussed in his presence, including articles on participation in an extremist community (Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code) and the dissemination of false information about the army (Article 207.3). However, due to his age, the teenager can only be charged under the article on vandalism, for which criminal responsibility begins at the age of 14. For the other articles mentioned, the age threshold is 16.

“He doesn’t understand at all what is happening. He thought that he was facing administrative charges until I told him that they wouldn’t appoint a state lawyer for an administrative case. He doesn’t know what charges he is facing,” Rumyantsev explained.

The pre-trial restrictions also remain unclear. He has been attending investigative proceedings freely, accompanied by his mother. “So far, nothing is clear, but they are definitely investigating him. Maybe they will only charge him with vandalism, or maybe they will find something else on his phone—we don’t know what he had there,” Rumyantsev said. He fears that based on the information obtained from the phone, the teenager may face more serious charges, such as those related to terrorism.

Editor: Dmitry Treschanin