December 27, 2015
"Vlad Kolesnikov. Last seen Dec 25 at
13.36."
My Telegram account is silent. Eerily,
excruciatingly silent.
Vlad's last message came on December 25,
right after Christmas lunch as my children were noisily running out of the door
for an afternoon walk.
"If I don't get in touch in the next
2-6 days, you can write [about me]. It means I'm dead," it said. "I
took a lethal dose."
"Sorry," he added, thoughtful
right until the end.
He didn't answer my calls. My panicked
messages never reached him, either. They are still marked as unread. I
contacted someone in Russia, who I thought could help.
A few hours later, police confirmed my
worst fears: Vlad had passed away, killed by an overdose of prescription drugs.
The teen who had been my daily online companion for weeks was now lying dead on
the cold slab of some distant Russian morgue.
His name was Vladislav Pavlovich Kolesnikov.
He was 18.
As a journalist, I had written about Vlad's
troubles before. But when I contacted him again on December 2 to follow up, his
answer looked like a cry for help. He seemed desperate and wanted to talk to me
about his life. We chatted on Telegram, often several times a day. Most of the
time, I just listened.
Vlad asked me to tell his story if anything
happened to him. He wanted the world to know about the persecution, the
violence, and the crushing isolation that can befall anyone in Russia deemed to
be different.
This was his dying wish.
Act Of Bravery
What can prompt a smart, educated, healthy
boy of 18 to take his own life?
Unfortunately, in today's Russia, it
doesn't take much.
The incident that sent Vlad's life tumbling
down like a house of cards is absurdly, almost indecently trivial. But amid the
hateful war-mongering now spilling from Russian television screens, even a
kid's prank, it turns out, can be deadly.
On June 3, Vlad showed up at his school in the
Moscow suburb of Podolsk with a T-shirt featuring a Ukrainian flag and the
words: "Return Crimea." In Russia's current political context, this
can safely be called an act of bravery.
Vlad was not Ukrainian. He was not a human
rights defender or a political activist, either.
He was simply a young Russian who firmly
disapproved of his country's actions in Ukraine. And unlike many others, he was
not afraid of saying it out loud. A few weeks earlier, he had played the
Ukrainian national anthem on his mobile phone during a compulsory visit to the
military conscription office.
Several days after the T-shirt incident, he
was assaulted by classmates.
"Just a split lip, a few bruises, some
bumps on the head, and three drops of blood," he wrote on Facebook, trying
to put on a brave face.
But those around him had no intention of
letting it go.
Police officers came to question him. At
the conscription office, military officials slapped him with a diagnosis:
"personality disorder."
He was excluded from school. "At his
own request," he was informed.
Worse still, his own grandfather, in whose
apartment Vlad was living in Podolsk, drove him out of the house.
He packed him off on the train to his
father in the small town of Zhigulyovsk, in the Samara region, threatening to
wring his neck if he ever returned.
That was still not enough.
Shamed
He proceeded to shame his grandson in a scathing interview to the
Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, calling him fat, accusing him of courting the West's
favor, and citing passages from his diary.
Komsomolskaya Pravda was only too happy to
oblige.
Vlad was still 17 at the time, a minor,
almost a child.
"Even in my worst nightmare I could
not have imagined that such a machine would be set in motion because of a piece
of cloth and a small flag," he later wrote to me.
Life in Zhigulyovsk brought him little
solace.
Rumors of his budding homosexuality did not
help. He said his schoolmates routinely beat him up, pushed him around, spat at
him, and flung mud and snow in his face.
They called him "khokhol" and
"pidoras," crude insults denigrating Ukrainians and homosexuals.
"I can't even remember how many times
I've been beaten up," he wrote to me. "Or I'm just walking down the
corridor and someone calls me 'bitch' and hits me in the ear."
He told me that a local vigilante had
pledged to ensure he would "never finish school."
His father, he said, was unsupportive and
had warned him against causing any trouble in Zhigulyovsk.
The police had apparently threatened him,
too.
"For a whole hour, they humiliated me
and told me how dangerous it was here," he wrote. "They made me
understand that they wouldn't lift a finger if anything happened to me. That
they would punch me in the face themselves if they could."
Vlad was scared. Very scared. And he was
completely alone.
Many knew about his plight. Vlad had more
than 2,000 followers on Facebook. But for some reason, no compassionate teacher
flew to his rescue, no classmate's concerned parent, no human rights
campaigner.
With the exception of his friend, a
schoolmate from Podolsk whom he said he was in love with, he was alone.
Understand me right, I'm no Russia-basher.
I spent many happy years in Russia and there's a lot to love about this
country.
But I can't help wondering what kind of
society drives children against each other, where families turn their backs on
their own kids.
Now, investigators are trying to paint
Vlad's suicide as an accidental
"poisoning" from booze and drugs.
They won't even let him die with
dignity.
But I knew about the meds.
I knew that he and his friend -- who was
interned in a psychiatric ward for more than a month after taking part in
Vlad's pro-Ukraine stunt -- had been considering suicide.
"I will say this to you only and to no
one else," he wrote to me on December 14. "We both have a lethal dose
of drugs. I will tell you honestly, I would already have taken them were it not
for you. You give me some hope. A sliver, but still."
"There's nothing here for us anymore
-- I won't be able to finish my studies, or work," he continued.
"Do NOT take anything!!!" I wrote
back.
I had put Vlad in touch with a trusted friend
of mine, a civil society advocate. She had alerted lawyers and foreign NGOs
that ran evacuation programs. There were forms to fill in. References to
provide. E-mails to send.
Vlad slowly let this sliver of hope slip
away. He grew tired. He felt like his world had caved in and there was no way
out.
"I believe you and I trust you,"
he wrote to me several days before he died. "But I don't believe in
miracles."
I did everything I could to save Vlad, but
I failed. We all failed him.
Vlad was an endearing boy. He was smart,
and brave, and curious. And despite his harrowing ordeal, he was also caring.
On the eve of his death, he wished my
family a wonderful Christmas.
"Good luck with the presents, I hope
everything goes perfectly!" he wrote. He even added a smiley.
Claire Bigg
