16-year-old Vladimir Alalykin, the adopted son of Natalia Filonova, an anti-war activist from Buryatia, is being held as a “hostage” in an orphanage without communication in order to put pressure on his mother, and is not returned to his relatives. Nadezhda Nizovkina, a lawyer and human rights activist, told the Kholod magazine about this.
According to Nizovkina, when Filonova was placed under arrest in the fall of 2022, her adopted son Vladimir Alalykin was taken in by the activist’s own children. The human rights activist describes Filonova's children as family and prosperous people who have the necessary qualities to be temporary guardians. They did not hide and were ready, on demand, to show the guardianship authorities the conditions in which Alalykin lives. However, Filonova's son was still taken to the orphanage, although there were no reasons for this.
“We regard this as simply taking him hostage in order to put pressure on the accused herself,” Nizovkina said.
In the orphanage, 16-year-old Vladimir is subjected to ideological and political pressure, the human rights activist believes. Evidence of this was the conversation that she published earlier. On the recording, a man says: “She thought she had a disabled child, and they wouldn’t put her in prison, but wouldn’t they put her in jail?” Filonova's son says that he wants to see his mother and understand what term she faces. However, they answer him that she understands "in what state we live." According to Nizovkina, Oleg Tsyrempilov, director of the Zvezdny Center, spoke to the teenager. He told the "People of Baikal" that there was no such conversation, and some time after he was shown the recording of the conversation, he stopped answering calls.
After the publication of the audio recording, Tsyrempilov took away the phone from Filonova's son, then Nizovkina threatened to write a statement about the missing person. Tsyrempilov returned the device, but soon it was broken by one of the pupils of the orphanage. Nizovkina suggests that this could have happened at the director's request. The activist's son was sent a new phone, but it was never handed over to him. In addition, Vladimir does not attend school in the orphanage. He is a disabled child and attended a correctional school, before the arrest, Filonova accompanied him to classes in the morning and met him after the end of the lessons.
Natalya Filonova was detained in the fall of 2022 for protests against mobilization in Russia. The security forces claim that after the arrest, she hit one police officer with her hand in court, and poked another security officer in the face with a pen. Later in the case, evidence appeared that one policeman had a broken finger. Filonova could face up to 10 years in prison. Preliminary hearings in the case of Natalia Filonova will be held on May 2.