A Russian man has been detained for making anti-war statements and his 12-year-old daughter temporarily taken into state care after the family faced pressure from authorities for drawings the girl made at school depicting Russia bombing a family in Ukraine.
Alexei Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, has been arrested for making anti-war statements on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social network.
He was detained on Wednesday, his house searched and his daughter put in a state-run shelter until her father is released or another guardian is found, a lawyer for Moskalyov said.
“She’ll be under state care until her father’s fate is decided,” said Vladimir Bilienko, a lawyer for Moskalyov. Asked what could happen if he was convicted, he said that if no close relative could be found, then a “single option would remain: an orphanage”.
“That would be a blow to a girl who has lived with her father her whole life,” he said by telephone. “So tomorrow we’re going to do everything possible to ensure that her father remains free. And so that she can live at home with him.”
The family said they had faced pressure from police since last April when Maria, a sixth-grader, refused to participate in a patriotic class at her school and made several drawings showing rockets being fired at a family standing under a Ukrainian flag and another that said “Glory to Ukraine!”.
School officials summoned the police, who questioned the girl and threatened her father. Moskalyov was subsequently fined about £350 for a post online in which he characterised the Russian army as “rapists”. The remarks came in the wake of revelations of alleged war crimes committed against civilians at Bucha in Ukraine.
Later that month, Moskalyov was told that agents from Russia’s FSB security service had come to the school and were questioning his daughter. When he arrived, he told OVD-Info, he was threatened, saying she would be taken away from him.
“For three and a half hours they told me that I was raising a child incorrectly: they said they would take her away from me, and they would put me in jail,” Moskalyov said in the interview with OVD-Info.
“We do think that the drawing was the main trigger that drew police attention to the father and because of that they looked at his social media,” Maria Kuznetsova, a spokesperson for OVD-Info, told the Guardian.
“It’s important to understand that the Moskalyov case is a part of a larger horrifying trend – as a part of a wider wartime crackdown the regime is routinely persecuting anti-war minors and their families, while squeezing the Russian youth into a heavily militarised culture,” Kuznetsova said.
“According to our data, at least 544 minors were detained in anti-war protests in the past year, and seven minors are currently criminally prosecuted for their anti-war positions. At least 19 anti-war teachers were fired … In particular, minors are targeted for sharing posts or comments about anti-war rallies, leaflets against mobilisation, holding solo demonstrations, expressing anti-war views during school events, demonstrating anti-war clothing, making anti-war inscriptions.”
In the Moskalyovs’ case, FSB agents suggested his daughter “lead some youth team in support of the Russian troops, but I gently refused – she has a lot of classes and clubs, there is no time left,” the father said. Since last year, Russia has ordered an overhaul of patriotic education, including the introduction of “conversations about important topics” at school that are seen as vehicles to indoctrinate students.
The school in Yefremov, a small city, had hosted other events in support of the Russian army, including a “festive event in support of a special military operation” called “For peace, for Russia, for the president”. The school repeatedly used the Latin letter “Z”, a symbol of the war.
Moskalyov faces three years in prison. He is being held at the city’s Investigative Committee offices and on Thursday will be sent to a temporary detention facility while awaiting arraignment.
His daughter was unlikely to be transferred to her mother’s care, said Bilienko. Nearly 10 other people in the community had also offered to take the girl into their care, he said, and that could be an alternative to an orphanage if approved by a court. “Thank God there are people like that,” said the lawyer.
