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Photo: Freedom for Mark Kislitsyn! \/ Telegram. Collage: Mediazona<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark Kislitsyn, a 27-year-old trans man and volunteer at Centre T,<\/em> a Russian initiative, has been actively assisting people in crisis in recent years. In the summer of 2023, he was detained by security forces on a Moscow street. Six months later, the Moscow City Court sentenced him to 12 years in a general regime penal colony on charges of treason. The case began with a donation of 865 roubles, or less than $10, to a Ukrainian bank account, which was provided by an old acquaintance. Kislitsyn has been in a Siberian women\u2019s prison for nearly five months. During this time, guards have denied him his hormone replacement medication, threatened him, and frequently confined him in solitary. Here\u2019s his story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u0427\u0438\u0442\u0430\u0442\u044c \u043d\u0430 \u0440\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u043e\u043c<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHelp!\u201d is all the short passer-by with shoulder-length hair manages to shout as two masked men jump out of a hastily parked minibus, pin him against a wall and handcuff him. One of them holds him by the back of the neck and forces him, bent double, into the vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day, state media would report<\/a> that a \u201ctransgender and LGBT activist\u201d had been detained in Moscow for \u201cfinancial assistance\u201d to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is Mark Kislitsyn, 27, a volunteer at the Centre T<\/em><\/a>, a Russian initiative that helps transgender and non-binary people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark was detained on the morning of July 12, 2023, in Moscow. He was charged with high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) for transferring 865 roubles to an account at the National Bank of Ukraine. He was then taken to a pre-trial detention centre in the city of Orel, where he spent the first three months after his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 23, 2023, the Moscow City Court sentenced Mark to 12 years in a general regime penal colony and a fine of 200,000 roubles (about $2,000), sending him to serve his sentence in women\u2019s penal colony IK-9 in Novosibirsk, some 1,750 miles east of Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kislitsyn was born in the Krasnodar krai in southern Russia, lived in Orel, and then moved to Moscow. Mark became a volunteer several years ago, Freila Sirin Rigiri, head of the Centre T\u2019s<\/em> mutual aid service, tells Mediazona.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cResponsive, straightforward, warm-hearted,\u201d Freila recalls. \u201cAt the same time, he was always optimistic\u2026 I was scared and pained to watch the video of his arrest: Mark is a very gentle person, and here he is being grabbed by these brutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yan Dvorkin, the head of the Centre T,<\/em> testified as a defence witness and gave a character reference for Mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMark took in people who were left on the street and needed help, sleeping on the floor himself and living like that for weeks until people found work. Or he would travel across Moscow to bring food or clean the flat of someone who was severely depressed. He got involved in fundraising for people who needed help, always tried to support others,\u201d Dvorkin recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kislitsyn sent the money to the Ukrainian bank account out of humanitarian considerations, the head of the Centre T<\/em> believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was the same desire to support people,\u201d Dvorkin says. \u201cAgainst the backdrop of everything that is happening, my speech in court was so naive\u2026 On the other hand, it was the only truth I could tell about Mark\u2014he is a person who has repeatedly helped and supported others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The court verdict states that on the night of February 24\u201325, 2022, Kislitsyn transferred $10\u2014865 roubles at the then exchange rate\u2014to a National Bank of Ukraine account \u201copen for fundraising for the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces\u201d, the details of which were sent to him by an acquaintance, a \u201cresident of Kyiv\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grishin, an officer of the FSB Directorate for the Orel Region\u2014who later appeared in court as one of the prosecution witnesses\u2014testified that in correspondence with the \u201cresident of Kyiv\u201d, Kislitsyn had previously \u201crepeatedly expressed negative views\u201d about the Russian army and politics, and \u201calso received instructions\u201d from the Ukrainian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What exactly these instructions consisted of, the prosecution never specified in court, lawyer Anna Kinchevskaya tells Mediazona.<\/em> The FSB tried to portray Kislitsyn\u2019s acquaintance as \u201cposing a threat and more dangerous than he actually was\u201d, she believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMark was chatting\u2014I think like many people in Russia\u2014with people from Ukraine,\u201d the lawyer says. \u201cHe had a comrade in the trans community. They had not met in person, they corresponded remotely. He sent him an account, and Mark decided to help. And the indictment used wording that the acquaintance from Ukraine \u2018instructed\u2019 Mark or they \u2018discussed how to obstruct mobilisation in Russia\u2019\u2014all of this is absolutely untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On February 28, 2022, Kislitsyn held an anti-war picket, after which the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow fined him 10,000 roubles, or about $100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to Kislitsyn\u2019s laptop and phone, seized during the search in the criminal case, the indictment and verdict describe in detail other items found in his flat: a piece of paper with the words \u201cNo to war\u201d in red, two Ukrainian hryvnias (approximately 5 U.S. cents as of today rate), a white fabric ribbon with the words \u201cPeace to the world\u201d, postcards reading \u201cLight is stronger than darkness\u201d and \u201cRussia\u2019s horoscope for today\u201d, a book titled \u201cMHG: On the History of the Moscow Helsinki Group,\u201d and an issue of the Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta<\/em> magazine for February 2023, \u201ccontaining criticism of the decision to start the \u2018special military operation\u2019.\u201d The prosecution presented all of the above in court as evidence of Kislitsyn\u2019s guilt, lawyer Kinchevskaya says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the absence of any real evidence, they found a diary on his computer in which Mark left his reflections: on how he was worried about the war, how he wanted it to end\u2014and this diary was also cited as evidence,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Insisting on Kislitsyn\u2019s \u201canti-government stance\u201d, the prosecution presented in court an expert analysis of memes he had saved. One of them is a photo collage of a meeting between Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in February 2022. In the photos, the officials are sitting at a long table several metres apart. \u201cVladimir Vladimirovich, we\u2019re getting absolutely slaughtered out there,\u201d Shoigu \u201csays\u201d. Putin, seemingly mishearing, asks, \u201cAre they saying \u2018ceasefire\u2019?\u201d \u201cNo, I said we\u2019re slaughtered,\u201d Shoigu \u201ccontinues\u201d. \u201cWhat? Are they asking for peace?\u201d Putin can\u2019t hear. \u201cThis bloody table\u2014he can\u2019t hear a thing,\u201d the next frame shows Lavrov. \u201cFuture centuries? I\u2019m a king?\u201d Putin asks again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the start of the war, the Prosecutor General\u2019s Office threatened<\/a> Russians with treason cases for donations to the Ukrainian military, and as early as May 2022, Sberbank<\/em> reported the \u201crapid identification of fundraisers for the Ukrainian Armed Forces\u201d. There were several subsequent tightenings<\/a> of the law\u2014up to and including life imprisonment, which Vladimir Putin introduced<\/a> in April 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The verdict states that Kislitsyn, who never pleaded guilty, told the court that, \u201cworried about the start of the \u2018special military operation\u2019 and protesting against it\u201d, he did indeed transfer money on the first day of the war \u201cout of humanitarian considerations\u201d to an account whose details were provided by his acquaintance from Ukraine. But Kislitsyn did not know that the bank account might have been \u201ccreated to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces\u201d, as the prosecution claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMark didn\u2019t understand that this was a criminally prohibited act: although the article [on high treason] in that wording was introduced in 2012, it hadn\u2019t been applied to anyone since then; it only began to be applied with the start of the special military operation,\u201d lawyer Kinchevskaya says. \u201cIn Mark\u2019s case, the prosecution did not prove in any way where the money went, what it was spent on. What specific \u2018harm to security\u2019 was caused by Mark\u2014all of this was not discussed [in court] and not proven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The presiding judge of the Moscow City Court in Kislitsyn\u2019s case was Andrei Suvorov, who in August 2023 sentenced Alexei Navalny to 19 years in prison in the extremism case. Suvorov considered Kislitsyn\u2019s testimony \u201cclearly contrived and untrue\u201d, and the defence\u2019s evidence insufficiently convincing. The verdict ends with a mention that Kislitsyn has \u201cfemale genetic sex\u201d, therefore he must serve his sentence in a general regime penal colony\u2014women do not get sent to the strict regime prisons in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Kislitsyn, \u201crespect for his transgender status is fundamentally important,\u201d says Kinchevskaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen speaking in court, he emphasised that he wasn\u2019t asking for any special treatment,\u201d she explains. \u201cHe was prepared for the consequences\u2014whether being held in a men\u2019s colony, solitary confinement, or other outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Kinchevskaya, transferring Mark to a women\u2019s penal colony mitigates certain risks, \u201csuch as violations of the inmate\u2019s sexual integrity and, overall, threats to his safety.\u201d However, since his arrival at IK-9 in Novosibirsk in early August 2023, the colony\u2019s administration has refused to provide him with hormone replacement therapy medication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey force him to wear skirts, dresses, low-cut blouses, and headscarves. They make him shave and use his deadname,\u201d she says. \u201cWe hope to secure access to HRT through the medical unit since he had been receiving it throughout his time in the detention centre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nA piece of paper with the words \u201cNo to war\u201d and memes. How the prosecution proved the trans activist\u2019s guilt<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirst you\u2019re a liberal, then a faggot, then you\u2019ll sell your motherland\u201d. A trans man in a women\u2019s prison<\/h2>\n\n\n\n