Solidarity Zone
Igor Paskar has been sentenced to eight-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for two anti-war actions.
In June 2022, in the centre of Krasnodar, Igor set fire to a “Z” banner [a symbol of support for the Russian military].
Two days later, he protested at the local office of the Federal Security Service (FSB), by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the stone porch of the building, while his face was painted with the colours of the Ukrainian flag. The FSB and the courts defined this as “vandalism” and an “act of terrorism”.
Igor Paskar in court, June 2023. Photo from Solidarity Zone
Igor Paskar was born in Nikolaevsky village, a working-class community in the northern part of Volgograd region. He went to school there. After doing national service on building sites in Samara, he worked as a courier, and for haulage and construction companies.
Igor Paskar had three previous convictions. The first time he went to court, at the age of 22, was for possession of a few grams of cannabis: he was given a five-year suspended sentence.
“In the milieu in which I grew up, half of the people I knew – if not more than half – smoked cannabis. It was not considered to be asocial or objectionable. But the motherland has decided that, in contrast to drinking alcohol, that’s serious criminal behaviour”, Igor said.
Three years later, Paskar was in court again, and this time was sentenced to two years in prison for the theft of, and possession of, drugs. He points out that, from the moment of his first time in court, the police searched him regularly, and said quite openly that they were looking for weed.
Igor’s third time in court was in 2006, when he received a one-and-a-half year suspended sentence for possession of narcotics. “That’s how I came to the attention of our law enforcement agencies. And from then on, I didn’t have a life”, he recalled. Given these circumstances, in 2013 Igor moved to Moscow.
In the capital Igor continued working in various jobs, and helping his mother, until she died in 2017. This was around the time his social conscience took shape.
“As far back as I remember, even when I was very young, I was always concerned about what was happening in our country. Our motherland, in the guise of the Russian state, always seemed like a step-mother to me, not a real mother. I was never indifferent to the pressure that the state brought to bear on those who dissented or disagreed”, Igor said in court.
In 2020 Igor went to the Belarusian embassy, to express solidarity with those who protested after the blatant falsification of the results of the presidential election, in which [Belarusian president Alyaksandr] Lukashenko gave himself 93% of the votes. “That summer and autumn, in 2020, when Belarus’s tinpot dictator was pushing his people around, I was still hoping that here in Russia we would avoid that kind of thing”, Igor says.
In 2021 Igor participated in a big protest staged after the arrest of Alexei Navalny. He was detained, brought to court and fined 10,000 rubles.
The all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 decided things for Igor once and for all. He decided to undertake a symbolic anti-war action, to support people in Ukraine. On 12 June 2022, the Russia Day national holiday, Igor set fire to a pro-war banner displaying the letter “Z” and the [militarist] slogan “We don’t abandon our own”. However, the action did not attract the attention Igor had hoped it would.
He decided on a second protest. On 14 June he threw an improvised Molotov cocktail at the stone porch of the FSB offices in Krasnodar. It set fire only to a plastic mat. As Igor later stated in court, his action was entirely symbolic and carried no threat to anyone’s life. For Paskar, the action was an expression of solidarity with people in Ukraine, and a signal to those in Russia who did not support the war, that they were not alone.
“My action was peaceful, and aimed to show all who opposed this monstrous war, that they were not isolated, and to show our Ukrainian neighbours, that we [in Russia] have not all been turned in to zombies by state propaganda”, he said in court.
Igor was arrested a few minutes after throwing the Molotov cocktail at the FSB building. “I stood outside the building and waited for them. I made no attempt to hide or to evade arrest”, Igor recalled in court. The police arrived, asked if it was him that had started the fire, and, when he confirmed that it was, they put him in handcuffs and took him in to the FSB premises.
“There were people in uniform, perhaps six to eight of them”, Igor said. “They snapped a photo of me on a phone: that picture is in the case file, and it shows that I had no injuries. Then they asked me what I wanted, why I did that. I answered that I wanted to make use of Article 51 of the Constitution, that gives you the right not to incriminate yourself.
“They obviously found that funny, because a split-second later a sack was put over my head. The next few hours were among the very worst of my life.”
Igor’s arms, which were handcuffed behind his back, were pulled sharply upwards, so that “my head went down to waist level”. That was how he was dragged through the FSB’s corridors. “I was taken to some room, thrown on the floor, and then they began to kick me”, he recalls.
“They put into my hands a grenade, or a replica of one, and said they were going to pull out the pin. They put a gun to my head and said they were going to shoot. Then they attached rings to the middle fingers of both hands and started to send electric shocks through them.
“Then some very heavy guy sat on me so that I could not move, and they started to ask me anything and everything. They just wanted to see how much I could stand. I started to scream, although even that wasn’t always possible. They pushed down on me so hard that I could not breathe.”
Paskar says that he twice lost consciousness. “They took my trousers off and tried to force some plastic object – presumably some sort of imitation phallus – into my anus. All this time the sack was over my head. I could hear that they were taking photos of me in this situation. Perhaps they wanted to be able to blackmail me in future.”
People were constantly coming in and out of the room, Igor recalls. “As far as I can understand, the senior officers were not only well aware of these illegal activities, they were encouraging them.”
They asked about “Ukrainian handlers”. “But since I had no Ukrainian handlers, after every negative answer to these questions there came another electric shock”, Igor says.
“The electric rings were moved to my feet and put round my toes. As far as I could understand … When I understood, that they would keep torturing me until I gave them somebody’s name, I invented a person: Aleksandr Vol’f. It was a nickname someone I knew used in a [computer] game. [After I said that,] they picked me up from the floor and even gave me a glass of water.”
With the sack still over his head, Paskar was taken to the investigator of his case, Yuri Zakharchenko. He opened a case against the detainee on the commission of an “act of terrorism” (Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). When, under questioning, Paskar described his action with the “Z” banner, a charge of “vandalism” (Article 214.2) was added.
In court, Paskar did not deny his actions, but he insisted on their symbolic character, underlining that he had no intention of hurting anybody.
In his final statement to the court, Igor Paskar declared:
During the last sitting, your honour, you asked whether I regret my actions. I understood that the extent of my professed regret would influence the severity of the sentence. But if I renounced my beliefs, I would be acting against my conscience.On the contrary, during the time I have been in prison, I have seen first-hand the injustices perpetrated against the people who we call our brothers: both prisoners of war who have served in the Ukrainian armed forces and ordinary Ukrainian citizens.
The war – or whatever term we use to label it – came to their homes, destroying their lives as they knew them. No matter what slogans and geopolitical interests we use to varnish this, in my eyes it can not be justified.
Do I regret what has happened? Yes, perhaps I’d wanted my life to turn out differently – but I acted according to my conscience, and my conscience remains clear.
Rather than reflecting on who is right and who is guilty, I would like to pose this question: what did each of us do to stop this nightmare? What, ten or fifteen years from now, will we tell our children and grandchildren about these troubled times?
On 31 May 2023, the Southern Military District court sentenced Igor Paskar to eight years and six months’ imprisonment. The sentence was passed by three judges: Alexei Abdulmazhitovich Magomadov, Vladimir Evgenievich Tsybul’nik, and the president of the court, Kirill Nikolaevich Krivtsov.
The prosecution case was brought by the Alexei Nikolaevich Khanenya, legal adviser and prosecutor in the Krasnodar region prosecutor’s office, and E.A. Drozdov, senior assistant prosecutor in the Kushchevsky district of Krasnodar.
The judges treated Igor Paskar’s actions as expressions of “political hostility”, based on his opposition to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. The action with the “Z” banner was defined as “vandalism” (Article 214 of the Criminal Code), and the symbolic fire-setting at the FSB building entrance as “an act of terrorism”, despite the lack of any significant damage, or of any threat to anyone’s life.
The court also ruled that the aim of Paskar’s actions had been to bring about a decision by the government to end the military operation [in Ukraine], despite his declaration that he had aimed to draw attention to the war and express support for the Ukrainian people. The court ignored the defence’s arguments, that the prosecution case had ignored the actual consequences of Igor’s actions, and that that was an indication of the politically-motivated nature of the investigation. We consider the sentence to be illegal and unjustified, since Igor’s actions were clearly not terrorist.
The human rights project, “Memorial. Support for Political Prisoners”, continuing the work of the Memorial human rights centre since the state liquidated it, has recognised Igor Paskar as a political prisoner on the basis of international criteria. Memorial considers that Igor Paskar’s actions were incorrectly defined by the court, that the sentence he received was politically motivated and that it did not reflect the lack of social harm caused by his actions.
Memorial states: “The attempt to set fire to the FSB office is considered a terrorist act, because, according to the prosecution, Paskar’s goal was to ‘intimidate the civilian population’. However, he denied any such intent, and the court did not question any witnesses who could have been frightened by Paskar’s actions.
“The burning of the banner with the letter Z, in our view, is not a manifestation of hostility: Paskar later noted that it was merely a peaceful action ‘to show all opponents of this monstrous war that they are not alone’, and to show our Ukrainian neighbours that not everyone here is ‘zombified by the state propaganda’.”
Memorial calls for Igor Paskar to be released from custody, for his conviction to be quashed, for the proceedings under the Article on acts of terrorism to be halted and for his complaints that he was tortured to be investigated.
□ Read Memorial’s legal argument in full here
After sentencing, Igor was taken to Novocherkassk detention centre, where he was placed in a cell with supporters of, and even participants in, the war, who immediately beat him up. After this Paskar was transferred to another, less problematic, cell.
Igor Paskar and his lawyer, Felix Vergetel, lodged an appeal against conviction with the Military Appeal Court. They disputed the definition of Igor’s protest as an “act of terrorism”.
At the court hearing, Igor’s lawyer stated: “Igor Konstantinovich […] spoke repeatedly of his motives. He never hid the fact that his actions were undertaken exclusively as a means of protest. That is, he did what he did not in order to terrorise the population, and not to destabilise the organs of state, but just to draw attention to specific problems.”
However, the burning of a “Z” banner was defined as “vandalism” (Article 214.2 of the Criminal Code) and throwing a bottle containing burning liquid at the stone porch of the FSB office as an “act of terrorism” (Article 205.1).
Paskar’s lawyer also pointed out that not every fire in the doorway of an FSB building is an act of terrorism, even from the courts’ point of view. “Exactly the same thing that Igor Konstantinovich did was done in 2015 at Lubyanka, Moscow. The artist Petr Pavlensky set fire to petrol in the doorway of the FSB building at Lubyanka.
“This action was at first dealt with under Article 214 of the Criminal Code (‘vandalism’), but was then re-defined as an offence under Article 243 (‘destruction of, or damage to, objects of cultural significance’). That is, not an act of terrorism. We would suggest the same in this [Paskar’s] case, too.
“The defendant’s actions were recorded on video. Everything is clearly visible, including the context. People passed by peacefully. FSB employees, who came out of the Directorate office, were also behaving calmly, and did not try to protect civilians from danger. Why? Because there was no danger of any kind.”
Igor Paskar did not himself present oral arguments. But in his final statement to the court, he read a poem by Anastasia Dmytruk, the Ukrainian poet, written in 2014:
We will never ever be brothersnot by motherland, not by mothers.
Your souls aren’t free, they’re crippling –
we won’t even become step-siblings.
Christened “elder,” – we don’t believe you –
we’ll be younger, but not beneath you.
You are many, but faceless of late,
you’re enormous perhaps, we’re – great.
But you smother… orbiting zealously,
you will choke one day on your jealousy.
Freedom’s foreign to you, unattained,
from your childhood, you’ve been chained.
In your home, “silence is golden” prevails,
but we’re raising up Molotov cocktails.
In our hearts, blood is boiling, sizzling,
and you’re kin? – you blind ones, miserly?
There’s no fear in our eyes, it’s effortless,
we are dangerous even weaponless.
We have grown, became brave outright
while the snipers held us in sight.
Executioners forced us to kneel –
we stood up and all was repealed.
Rats are hiding from us, but their lot
is to wash themselves clean in blood.
They are sending new orders, devising,
we are lighting the flames of uprising.
From your Tsar, our Democracy’s severed.
We will never be brothers ever.
On 19 September 2024 Igor Paskar’s conviction was considered by the Supreme Court, to which a cassation appeal was made by Felix Vertegel, Paskar’s lawyer. The judges there ignored the defence arguments, and upheld the conviction as sound in law.
Igor Paskar is now in prison in Yeniseisk in Krasnoyarsk region. This is the northernmost of Russia’s high-security prisons. The prison management is preventing Igor from receiving books and newspapers from outside, which is making still worse the already bad conditions in which he is detained.
Solidarity Zone continues to give all-round support to Igor Paskar.
Solidarity Zone, which supports people arrested in Russia for anti-war actions, tells the story of political prisoner Igor Paskar. Reposted from Solidarity Zone’s web site.
You can support Igor by sending letters, to:
Russia, 663180 Krasnoyarsk, Yeniseisk, ulitsa Dekabristov 11, T-2,
Paskar Igor Konstantinovich (d.o.b. 1976).
You can send letters using PrisonMail.Online.
□ The translation of Anastasia Dmitruk’s poem is by Russian Poetry in Translation
□ Find out how to support Russian anti-war prisoners on the Solidarity Zone site.
□ Read more about Igor Paskar’s case in English here and here. Read Igor Paskar’s statement to the court in full here, and Memorial’s legal argument for his political prisoner status here.