By Yury Krylov , Contributing Author, FRF

The criminal case against Lakeyev was filed for “abuse of a car” belonging to the FSB, a secret service, the successor of the KGB, whose officers literally formed a caste of untouchables in modern Russia.

Who is Konstantin Lakeyev and Why is His Case Important

On January 28, 2022, the Memorial Human Rights Center issued a press release, adding Konstantin Lakeyev, convicted of kicking a car owned by an FSB officer, to the list of Russian political prisoners. The 20-year-old man received two years and eight months in prison for kicking a car three times at a rally in support of the politician Alexey Navalny in Moscow. Even with all the absurdity and phantasmagoric nature of the political trials of Alexei Navalny’s sympathizers in Russia, this sentence is utterly disproportionate to his actions and violates judicial practice.

Konstantin Lakeyev was born on February 1, 2002. He is a resident of Moscow, a TikTok blogger known under the nickname “Kostya Kievsky”, he had over 800,000 subscribers in the social network. At the time of his arrest, he was barely 18 years old and a second-year college student.

Case Background

On January 23, 2021, Konstantin Lakeyev attended a demonstration in Moscow as part of the international action “Freedom to Navalny!” About two thousand people were detained during its crackdown that day in the capital of Russia, according to the Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman. The defense notes that Konstantin Lakeyev arrived at the protest to shoot video content for his popular blog on TikTok.

“The protesters blocked a car moving along the Tsvetnoy Boulevard and, committing acts of hooliganism, damaged it and sprayed tear gas in the driver’s face,” the Russian Investigative Committee (ICR) said in a statement released on the day of the action. “The passenger vehicle with special license plate number belongs to the FSB Headquarters.” On the same day, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case.

Sources of the state news agency RIA Novosti assured at the time that the driver’s eye was “knocked out.” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, repeated the same version. “Many people felt their [protesters’] direct impact, physical impact. Many of the law enforcement officers, felt it firsthand,” he said. “We all remember the driver who lost his eye thanks to these ‘peaceful’ protesters,” Putin’s representative said. However, the information about the driver’s eye was never confirmed.

On January 26, 2021, Konstantin Lakeyev was detained by riot police along with eleven other fellow bloggers in the territory of their rented house — a “TikTok House” in New Moscow district.

“You could have come and detained them quietly … God, they are children! I don’t think any of them would have resisted. But, apparently, this is the policy – be sure to drop in, drop them on the floor”, — says OVD-Info lawyer Tatiana Okushko, who represented the interests of Lakeyev. She was outraged by the ostentatious harshness of the detention.

The next day, January 27, the Investigative Committee published a video on YouTube with an apology from Tiktoker for the incident with the car. “I started throwing snow on it and kicked it several times, which I am very regretful and remorseful about. I apologize to everyone connected with it— to civil servants, to policemen —to everyone who is connected and not connected with it. And one hundred percent it won’t happen again,” said influencer in detention.

On January 28, the Presnensky District Court sentenced him to two months in jail. Konstantin Lakeyev was charged under the articles on hooliganism (Article 213 of the Criminal Code) and property damage (Article 167 of the Criminal Code); in a conversation with Mediazona outlet the lawyer noted then that her client hoped for a milder preventive measure and partially confessed.

On January 28, member of the Moscow PMC Marina Litvinovich, who visited him in the temporary detention facility on Petrovka Street, said that for two days after his arrest, Konstantin Lakeyev “slept on a chair” in the Investigative Committee, where he was questioned continuously. The human rights activist asserted: “They did not feed him for almost two days.  He was beaten when detained, but there is no trace of the beating left.  He was kept in a cell with a man who had previously served a prison sentence and is now charged with a serious crime under Article 161 of the Criminal Code. This violates Article 33 of the law ‘On detention’, and we demanded that they be seated and given slippers and a toothbrush.

The Sentence

On December 8, 2021 the Tverskoi Court in Moscow sentenced Konstantin to 2 years and 8 months in prison under part 2 of article 167 of the Criminal Code (“Intentional damage to property”). Also, the court issued a fine in the amount of 337, 000 rubles (about $4,000) for material damage to the FSB. The claim was filed by the military unit 44710 of the FSB, to which the damaged car was assigned. The court dismissed the case under the article on hooliganism.

“Although the court could have given a suspended sentence or confined the sentence to a fine for “defacement of property,” which in fact did not happen,” says Ivan Astashin, human rights activist of the Committee for Civil Rights. “The sentence has not yet come into effect, and Konstantin Lakyeyev was sent to Krasnoyarsk SIZO-1, notorious for regularly torturing prisoners. I am sure that this is revenge for the assault on the FSB property. And an attempt to intimidate other socially active people. I hope that the publicity and public support will prevent the cops from torturing Lakeyev, but I don’t exclude that right now he is being subjected to very hard conditions.”

According to Astashin, on December 16, 2021 Lakeyev’s defense filed an appeal against the sentence, but so far there has been no response.

Why does the Memorial Center recognize Konstantin Lakeyev as a political prisoner?

“Memorial”, an international historical and civil rights society, does not believe Lakeyev’s actions constitute a crime.

1. The incident occurred during the unlawful dispersal of a protest rally. The authorities grossly violated the right of citizens to peaceful assembly, and each of the demonstrators risked being illegally detained and beaten. The leading Russian organization for monitoring freedom of assembly — OVD-info — stated at the time that it “considers the actions of the authorities in connection with the January 23 rallies to be the most massive and brutal violation of the right to freedom of assembly in the entire modern history of Russia.” Obviously, by hitting the FSB vehicle (accompanied by the crowd’s chanting of “Shame, shame”) with snowballs and feet, people expressed their indignation at the law enforcement officers’ illegal violence and the repressive policies of the authorities, which, from the human rights activists’ point of view, is a mitigating factor in their actions in the current situation.
2. There is an obvious asymmetrical assessment by law enforcement agencies of the actions of demonstrators and law enforcement officers. OVD-info documented numerous incidents of violence by law enforcement agencies, and at least 64 demonstrators in Russian cities were injured that day. Detainees reported bruises, broken fingers, dislocations, and smashed heads and noses. People were beaten on the head with truncheons and tasers, thrown onto the floor of the police vans, and beaten with their feet. However, there are no known criminal cases of violence by law enforcement officers, including the widely publicized case of Margarita Yudina from St. Petersburg, who was put in intensive care unit after being hit by a member of the Rosgvardiya. All criminal cases, and as a rule on dubious grounds, are conducted exclusively against demonstrators.
3. The video, studied by Memorial, shows that Lakeyev struck the headlight of the car three times, but it did not break and continued to run. The convict himself wrote in a post-conviction letter: “Everything I said on camera, they made me say… The car was going from north to south, and we were walking towards it along the boulevard (park) and then started going across the crosswalk. Accordingly other people were throwing snow on it… I hit 3 times (no more no less) the headlight of the car only because of my stupidity, because of which I was influenced by the crowd… Three years in prison for three strikes not against a person, but against a car…”.
4. Differences in the enforcement of articles of the Criminal Code in “political” and other cases have been repeatedly noted. In “non-political” cases, courts usually impose considerably milder sentences, limiting them to fines or suspended sentences. The verdict against Konstantin Lakeyev belongs to the same category – usually under Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code courts hand down suspended sentences.

While not at all justifying the defacement of law enforcement property, human rights activists from Memorial consider the punishment imposed on Konstantin Lakeyev extremely disproportionate to the public danger of his actions, seeing in it a political motive to suppress freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as well as to preserve the powers of authority by their subjects. “We are convinced that the young man’s cruel sentence is aimed at intimidating potential critics of the Russian authorities, primarily in the youth community,” reads a statement on Memorial’s website.

“Memorial”, in accordance with the International Guidelines on the Definition of a Political Prisoner, considers Konstantin Lakeyev to be a political prisoner and calls for his release and a review of his sentence with respect for the right to a fair trial.