“There’s no sense in playing roulette with the court.” Interview with Konstantin Kotov who escaped house arrest after being accused of donating $30 to Navalny’s ACF

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Everything started quite unexpectedly for me, with a search on August 21. An interrogation followed, and then all the usual stuff. I was lucky compared to my previous criminal case, because house arrest is easier than a detention centre. That is, you’re still isolated, it’s still forbidden to see other people, to use the Internet, to go for walks… I had all these restrictions. But the investigator was adequate and, for example, gave me permission to go see a doctor. So I managed to take a little walk. Just like on the way to and from court, of course. In any case, for six months I was sitting in my apartment, but together with Anya and not in Matrosskaya Tishina.

For the last several years, I’d been working in different human rights organisations, and each of them had security protocols: my colleagues and I were monitoring political repression, and I have some experience myself, so I was prepared for a potential criminal case.

I knew that I shouldn’t keep valuable things in my apartment, and ideally I shouldn’t have my appliances and passport with me in case of a search. So when my doorbell rang in the morning, I managed to make sure that all sorts of important things could not be found. I succeeded for the most part, though I did lose my front door.

I’d say the search itself was fairly mild. At first, yes, they sawed the door and broke the camera that I have hanging at the entrance to my apartment, but then they calmed down, we even managed to find a connection of sorts. Yes, they turned things around, threw everything off the shelves, but it was quickly cleaned up. I was even able to reinstall the camera afterwards, so it wasn’t such a big loss.

A life at risk of a criminal case

Of course, my wife and I discussed the prospects of another criminal case a lot, both because of my human rights work and my record. After my release from the penal colony in December 2020, I’d been detained on administrative charges several times.

After the war started, although I wrote about it and published anti-war petitions, I tried to do it carefully. But then, we don’t know what “carefully” means nowadays: you can use the word “war” in some absolutely insignificant text, and they will open a criminal case for that alone. If they want to, they’ll find a reason.

In a way, this second criminal case was harder, because both my wife Anya and I have traumatic imprisonment experiences. We were well aware of what could happen. I had been there, and I absolutely did not want to go back, especially after the “wonderful”, exemplary penal colony in the city of Pokrov in the Vladimir region.

On the other hand, I personally perceived the fact that I was under house arrest as luck, almost good fortune. I knew that things could have been much worse: if I’d ended up in a pre-trial detention center, I probably wouldn’t have had any chances.

Interrogation and guilty plea

When they took me to the Investigative Committee after the search, the investigator said that “if everything goes well, there might be house arrest.” And I realised that I had to grab this opportunity and leave when I had the chance. You should defend your freedom and take control of it as much as possible.

He started off by saying that I was accused of transferring money to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and the sum wasn’t that large: three thousand rubles. I looked at the case file: there was a bank account statement, where you can see it all at once. I did transfer money [to ACF] from August 2021 to January 2022, and then I canceled the payments myself. So there was no point in denying it: the card was mine, the transfers were made.

And I thought that a confession wouldn’t make any difference here: they wanted me to admit that I was me and that I used my card myself, and not some random guy who transferred money to the ACF for me. Well, yes, that’s what happened, I don’t think anything is wrong with that.

There is, of course, a difference between this and my first criminal case, when it was a matter of principle. I could not admit guilt then, because it was about my constitutional right to go out on the streets of Moscow or any other city. Back then, even formally I did not violate any law. Here I was at least really transferring money to an organisation recognized as extremist. I don’t agree with that decision at all, but my agreement or disagreement was naturally of no interest to anyone. Thank God, I was not asked to testify against anyone. My testimony concerns only me, I was not supposed to incriminate anyone, so I accepted it with a light heart.

Donations and claims against ACF

Almost immediately after my detention, other stories about donations began to appear, very similar, with approximately the same amounts: 3,500 roubles. I have a different amount: 3,000. Because, like everyone else, I signed up for donations in August [2021], but didn’t transfer anything in February [2022]. And then everyone’s payments were canceled because their cards were blocked.

After the launch of the [donation] service, ACF itself admitted that there had been a mistake, that the description of the payments, which included the abbreviation “ACF”, had actually been leaked. I thought about it for a while, but I couldn’t make up my mind and unsubscribe right away. We discussed it with my wife and decided not to risk it, so I canceled the payment—not immediately, but even before Visa and Mastercard blocked our international transfers. In the end, that didn’t help.

I signed up for donations when ACF had been recognised as an “extremist organization.” I went to the courts when this decision was made: first to the Moscow City Court, then for the appeal. This news was a blow to me: I went to the rallies organised by Alexei’s ACF, I met—well, tried to meet—Alexei in Vnukovo, I closely followed his fate: first another criminal case, then his difficult life in the Pokrov colony.

So this gesture—subscribing to donations—was my attempt to express something like: “You have banned the ACF, but we still continue to support them.” I subscribed when they released their video “We Continue” and said that despite the ban they had built a safe system.

Of course, on the one hand, you could say that I trusted the ACF because I thought their systems were mostly safe, but it turned out that there was some kind of vulnerability on their part. But it wasn’t the ACF that put me under house arrest, it was the Russian state.

You can make claims against the ACF that they didn’t think enough about security, but I certainly don’t want to be part of a campaign in which they are painted as bad actors who wanted to deliberately frame Russians. I understand their situation, I really do: they needed money, they had to leave Russia, Alexei Navalny was in prison—they had to continue to support him and work somehow, pursue the line he chose when he was still free. We don’t need to fight each other, we need to fight the authoritarian government in Russia.

Associates and the decision to emigrate

When I was placed under house arrest, I began to study information about similar criminal cases. Memorial probably has the most detailed statistics here. There is a list of cases that had already been initiated at that point, mostly in the Russian regions. As for Moscow… I think only Andrei Zayakin was in Moscow at that time, but he left while still under investigation, so there is no verdict.

So when I studied these cases, I realised that the sentences were quite lenient, mostly fines. Big fines in most cases, but still. Only one defendant was sentenced to actual prison time, but he had a combination of charges. And after looking at this, I wondered whether we should wait for the verdict and for the fine. The risks of leaving under house arrest, when you have a bracelet on your leg, when you are controlled by the inspection, are quite high.

But then I realised that waiting wasn’t worth it: right after the sentence of Ivan Tishchenko, who was given prison time for the same crime as me. There was absolutely no sense in playing roulette with the court, with the investigation. It was better to take fate into my own hands and get my own freedom.

I don’t know why Tishchenko was handed such a harsh sentence. Maybe because the case was in Moscow, and the prosecution decided that it should somehow be an example to all. Maybe this is a change throughout Russia. I would hate to see this trend, if that’s the case, lead to imprisonment of another defendant from Moscow, Viktor Levakov, whose trial is still underway. We are very worried about him now. He is a very interesting and good person, although I didn’t know him before we met in the Investigative Committee. He was a volunteer for Nemtsov Bridge, and he transferred a lot of money to charity.

I have to say that the FSB definitely started working my case in 2023, when they looked at all the financial statements. That is, they’ve known for a long time that thousands of people transferred money [to ACF]. The question is who they choose to prosecute. I think when the selection is made, they look at a person’s background or something like that. I’ve already had a criminal case, Levakov is a volunteer on Nemtsov Bridge, Tishchenko as a doctor may have signed some letter in support of Alexei Navalny... That is, ordinary people are not included in this FSB sample of selection: and from the inquiries in the case, it’s clear they are the initiators.

Leaving, staying, and plans for the future

I’m in Vilnius, Lithuania, now. In Russia, I tried to be more careful. That is, I went to trials of political prisoners, I tried to write on Facebook, but in general I reduced media activity and tried to be cautious about what I was saying. Now I can finally turn off my internal censor and speak openly about the war and repression. In Russia, it’s hard to even call the war a war. Everyone around me constantly uses the stupid abbreviation SMO. Of course, it was killing me, it was a really heavy burden.

Now, it’s important for me to continue working, to help the people who have stayed in Russia, to protect them from the Russian state, and to contribute as much as possible to change in the country. A huge number of Russians aren’t happy right now. Someone goes out on the street with a poster “No to war, Putin to the Hague”, but goes to jail. Someone finds other ways to do good. It may not be as visible now, but it’s important nonetheless. And many people in Russia are doing something.

Lawyers continue to defend people, journalists—like the wonderful Mediazona—cover these trials. These are also huge risks, but people continue to do it. And many stay not because they support the war, but because they have families, children, elderly parents. Someone simply believes that it is necessary to continue doing something inside Russia.

In fact, no one in Russia now lives as if nothing is happening. There is an understanding that war can reach you anywhere: Ukrainian drones have flown into Moscow and beyond, almost as far as the Urals. That’s why I believe that you can’t criticise people who are now in Russia continuing to do their peaceful work. Neither for the fact that they have not left, nor for the fact that they pay taxes, for example. Europeans buy Russian gas, so what?

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev