Andrej Karelin

"I was hiding in conspiracy apartments for a while and then I got the news that there was a monitoring team outside from Center E around my house, waiting for me to show up so they could detain me. It was clear that they knew about the actions I had taken earlier. Hiding would have been pointless as the statute of limitations on these matters is one year. It would mean hiding for a year or being detained and being released that much faster. I pulled up to the house, I was on my bike, and when I stopped, two plainclothes officers and about three uniformed officers ran out of the car. They twisted my arms, told me I was under arrest. The plainclothes ones were aggressive, one of them, who was bearded and looked like an Armenian, started threatening me. I asked him for his police ID to prove that he was really a police officer; the uniformed officers did nothing, they did not react in any way. After some time a van arrived, they confiscated my things and we went to the police station. There the bearded policeman started threatening me again in various ways, saying we would meet again. He then let the police officers at the station deal with my matter. The clause I had breached stipulates ten days in jail, so they kept me in the cell until the time of the trial. A court date was set, but my lawyer wanted to see the documents, so - to my surprise - they let me go. Then, on 23 February 2022, there was a demonstration by truck drivers against the Covid-related restrictions. I was there as a journalist, but I was detained along with other participants. I was taken to the police department, where two members of the E Center came specifically for me. One of them, the bearded one, I knew from before, the other I had never seen before. They took me and dragged me to the first floor office, where the bearded one hit me several times. He started to threaten me with trouble, saying that if I didn't stop my [activist] activities, it would end badly for me, he said he knew very well how. I have several options, he said. The first one is that I stop doing anything and they leave me alone. The second is that I don't stop doing it and I will have serious problems. And the third is that I can go on and cooperate with them. That means informing them of events that are going to take place; about the participants, time and place, giving them all the information about other activities and movements with which they interact, and getting paid for it. Specifically offering money and help with education, work and solving other problems."

"Until the beginning of the war, when we were children, we were told in patriotic classes how strong our army was, perhaps even stronger than the USA. They showed us pictures and videos of exercises, and I thought we had one of the strongest armies in the world. And that's what I thought at the time that I got into activism. But after a year of service with a real-world battalion, I realized that the situation was different from reality. Irresponsibility, laziness, careless attitude to duty, corruption, theft, all sorts of schemes to make money or take property out of the barracks. For example, our unit commander used to take away huge quantities of iron and sell it as scrap to enrich himself personally. Another example was the car fleet with a large amount of automotive equipment only being in a working order on paper, but in reality it could not even be started. The equipment that was operational was practically always in need of repair. It was said that our equipment was either shooting or driving, but never both."