Imprisoned Russian artist: My country is thirsty for blood

“I have no hope. The Investigative Committee and its head, Aleksandr Bastrykin, have personally chosen me to suffer the harshest possible punishment,” she told REL’s Northern Realities.

The 32-year-old artist, who often goes by the name Sasha, was arrested in April after she altered five price tags in a shop with messages against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. She has been charged with spreading “false” information about the armed forces and could face up to ten years in prison.

“My country is thirsty for blood,” she said. “Including mine”.

Despite her fragile state of health and the non-violent nature of the accusation against her, Skochilenko admits to altering the price tags, but denies saying anything false or defamatory. She has been in a detention center for more than three months. The measure of detention has been extended until August 1 and the stay in detention may be extended even more.

Radio Free Europe was able to send written questions to Skolchilenko for this interview, and she returned written answers through her lawyer.

Including Skochilenko, at least 73 people in Russia have been charged under a tough law passed days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. Most of the defendants are politicians, journalists, priests, activists and even police officers. On July 8, Moscow municipal lawmaker Aleksei Gorinov was sentenced to seven years in prison under this law.

Skochilenko said prison officials have been reluctant to accommodate her dietary restrictions because she has a gluten intolerance, despite pressure from civil society activists and her lawyers for the prison to provide her with a diet suitable for her. .

“I constantly have stomach aches and sometimes vomit when I’m eating,” he said. “Imagine living every day with the symptoms of food poisoning. This is my life now.”

She is also starting to have heart problems, which she managed to keep under control since she was a teenager.

“In the last two months, I have heartache”, she told REL. “From time to time, my vision gets dark, I have breathing problems, chest tightness, dizziness and pain in my left arm.”

She added that she worries her cellmate won’t be able to call for help if she passes out during the night or that an ambulance won’t arrive in time to help her.

Weird rules

Initially, Skochilenko was placed in a standard cell with six inmates, and one of the inmates was a “confidante” named Yelena. Officially, Yelena was responsible for making sure the cell was kept clean, but in reality, Skochilenko said, her job was to make life miserable for the artist.

“In front of everyone, she told me that I ‘object’ and forced me to wash all the clothes by hand,” Skochilenko said. “She stared at me the whole time and made me clean the toilet with a sponge instead of a brush.”

“There are other weird rules she made up, like you can only hold the broom in a certain way,” Skochilenko added. “We had to completely clean the cell three times a day. There was a special cloth for cleaning each surface, and all cloths had to be washed by hand after cleaning the cell…. [Yelena] she didn’t allow anyone to open the fridge and only allowed us to eat at certain times… All day long she would leave the TV on and watch war movies or watch news about ‘special military operation’”.

Yelena, according to Skochilenko, later had her sentence commuted and was sent to house arrest.

Officials also appear intent on proving that Skochilenko is mentally incompetent. A prison psychiatrist who examined her at the detention center concluded that Skochilenko was competent.

Despite this, investigators insisted that she be sent to a psychiatric hospital for a two-week evaluation. A committee “of five doctors and a consultant” also concluded that Skochilenko is fit and does not need psychotropic medication.

“Maybe they acted like this as an additional form of putting pressure on me or maybe they just want to embarrass me as much as they can,” Skochilenko said. After she returned from the hospital to the jail, investigators requested that she undergo another psychiatric evaluation at the jail.

According to Skochilenko, a finding of mental incapacity can be used to justify forced drug treatment. She said that one of the psychiatrists who examined her “kept insisting that I go to church.”

Skochilenko has long suffered – but has been receiving treatment – for bipolar disorder, which includes periods of “paralyzing depression”. However, she said that her condition was not a particular problem for her since she was arrested.

“The years I’ve spent working on my mental health and education, including consulting with doctors, medication, years of psychological therapy and attending seminars, have proven to be effective,” Skochilenko told REL. “And I’ve received a lot of support, which has helped me cope” with the arrest.

Authorities are “horribly scared”

She said she does not regret putting information about Russia’s war in Ukraine on the price tags, even though “those five tags decided my fate.”

“A whole group of police was created to find me and after ten days they caught me,” she said. “Of course, I never hid.”

She believes that Bastrykin and the other investigators intend to punish her as much as they can because they “are terribly afraid.”

“When a person is terribly afraid, they tend to see big threats somewhere where there isn’t any,” she said. “I weigh 47 kilograms, I don’t know how to shoot a gun. I can’t fight. Sometimes I suffer from paralyzing depression. My health is poor. Even under a little stress, I immediately have symptoms. I love people, children and animals. I am a bad candidate for organizing an armed rebellion. But fear is an unreasonable thing.”

“Like everyone who is unfairly persecuted in Russia, I sometimes get scared,” she said. “I am here and I will probably die in prison for freedom of expression and pacifism.”

“But my faith in freedom of expression and humanity is stronger than my fear”, she concluded./Radio Free Europe

top channel