Igor Shustov with his mother Natalia Kim. Photo from the personal archive
A teenager from Kansk, Nikita Uvarov, was sent to prison for 5 years, and a schoolboy from Saratov, Igor Shustov, is just waiting for a court verdict. After Nikita’s sentence about his Natalya Kim, mother of Igor Shustov, wrote to her mother Anna on Facebook: “Anna is holding on, I’m proud of her! Thanks to everyone who supports Anya! I sobbed for 2 days … Such hopelessness inside, pain, longing, despair, protest, fear …
In the meantime, on February 14, Yaroslav Inozemtsev's trials begin, and we will continue (Yaroslav is a schoolboy from Volgograd, accused of preparing an attack on a school. — G. M.) … So, once upon a time we were completely strangers, then we watched on the news how our children were grabbed one by one, now we are all friends, share sorrows, news, support each other and take turns seeing off our children.
Natalya is sure that after Nikita’s verdict, her son’s case will now fly in the same direction very quickly — it seems to her that the Saratov court was just waiting for the verdict in the Kansk case.
Lawyer Alexander Fedulov, although he does not agree with this conclusion, but also believes that they will not delay the decision on Igor's case any longer — everything will most likely be completed this month.
“I think that in Saratov they were not waiting for the decision of Kansk,” he says, “although, probably, they were looking back. There are still different qualifications. Nikita has article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities, Igor has article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, he is accused of preparing an armed attack on school students. I suppose if there is a command to imprison the children — and one of his classmates is on the case with Igor — it will be carried out regardless of Kansk.
The lawyer joined this case already at the trial stage, but managed to get to know Igor and get to know him enough to confidently say:
— He is an ordinary guy, developed for his age, pleasant, polite, well-mannered. If we compare him with Nikita from Kansk, whom I don’t personally know, but of course I know the essence of his business — I read a lot, firstly, and secondly, my friend defended him, Shustov, unlike him, is a quiet guy. To whom no ideas of anarchism are at all close, he is far from all this, he basically did not climb anywhere.
— Why are they clinging to such different children and judging them as real criminals?
— We very often hear, when the president of the country speaks to the FSB officers, about how many spies were caught, however, for some reason, the topic is never seriously covered. And how many terrorist attacks have been prevented… For this, the entire state allocates colossal money to the security forces. And in order to somehow justify your expenses, the easiest way is to fight with children, — Alexander Fedulov answers the question. And he adds:
— I have already spoken in speeches on the Network case (the organization has been recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation. — G.M.), that the court has become a mouthpiece through which the state conveys the idea that everyone needs to shut their mouths. Including young people, who differ from even my generation — and this is 30-odd — in that they are much less afraid. Because you play computer games, I can come for you, and you will leave for 5 years, like Nikita, or for 9 years, like Kuksov, my client in the Network case.
Of course, Igor Shustov also played computer games, but his problems with the law began to be even more absurd. In the eighth grade (it was the fall of 2019), students at the school were asked to prepare a project on any topic that interests them. Igor chose the topic of schoolshooting (an armed attack by a student or an outsider on schoolchildren inside an educational institution. — G.M.). I searched for materials with my mother, watched a film about Columbine (recognized as a terrorist and banned in Russia. — G.M.). He received an excellent mark for this work. The materials of the criminal case contain a fragment of the interrogation of the teacher Valeria Privalova, where she says that at first she was surprised by the choice of topic, but after listening to the student’s presentation, she realized that “it’s okay … since his work concerned the history of the phenomenon and ways to protect children from it.”
But from the moment Igor began to search for material for a school report on the Internet and social networks, a certain Liza began to ask him to be friends, on the page of which the age was indicated — 17 years old. As it turned out later, she was full 19. And Igor was only 14. They began to meet, and the more the girl talked about her passion for military subjects, the more the boy admired her. If he had any critical thinking, now he was eclipsed by love. And the girl did not invite him somewhere to an exhibition or to a park — she invited him to an abandoned bomb shelter. Of course, he “flew”, and, of course, there was “quite by accident” a box with a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun. He examined it, was glad, but put it in its place, and the second time they took his friend Zhenya with them here. Here, on the spot, the boys were arrested. They played a little, and as soon as they decided to put the sawn-off shotgun in place, a crowd of adult men burst in, threw the children face down on the ground and began to beat.
It happened on February 24, 2020, at that time Igor was only 15 years old, now he is 17.
Alexander Fedulov. Photo from personal archive
— This moment is one of the most important, — Igor's lawyer Alexander Fedulov continues to comment on the situation.
— Approximately two months passed between the two trips to the bomb shelter. The FSB officers were well aware of the presence of weapons in an abandoned bomb shelter, they had all of Igor's data,
his friend and, of course, the obvious provocateur Lisa. And at the same time, they did not take the measures that should have been taken in accordance with the law on operational-search activity. It is very important. If you really think that teenagers are preparing a mass execution, you need to immediately stop this in the bud! This is the only goal of your service, it is not in cutting down «sticks», not in obtaining extraordinary titles, but in the suppression and prevention of crime.
This was not done, and it was not done for only one reason: because they knew perfectly well that nothing was being prepared. How else to explain the two-month inactivity? Yes, no way, because they knew that there was no corpus delicti in the actions of the boys, but there was pure provocation of the FSB officers. In fact, the entire criminal case is based on an analysis of the correspondence between Lisa and Igor. But the task of the court is simply to assess, from the point of view of common sense, the actions that he did, and the reality of what he told her about. For example, about some people from Germany who have to bring weapons by plane somehow …
Well, yes, to ask yourself: is this something that can be real, or is it just a drawing of a boy in front of a girl who , firstly, older, and secondly, do you like it a lot, and really want to seem cool and omnipotent to her? And thirdly, he clearly wanted to please — it was the topic of weapons that was interesting to her, he could not help but feel it, she simply brought him constantly to talk about it. This has been clearly proven by the employees of the Volga Regional Center for Forensic Expertise of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. (Details are in the publication “FSB. Hunt for children. How a school report and falling in love with a provocateur made an eighth grader accused of preparing a mass murder” in No. 42 of April 19, 2021 — G. M.)