‘Eats Like a Dog’: The wild story of an armless convict who is refused to be released

An armless convict is serving his sentence in the Ivanovo colony (he lost both limbs at the age of 13: football fans pushed him under an electric train in the Moscow region). Every day he is full of humiliation and suffering, because he cannot serve himself. A prison is not a home for the disabled or a sanatorium. There are no nurses or orderlies here, so there is no one to wash, comb and bring a spoon to your mouth.

How does 37-year-old Alexander eat? Like a dog, he laps up food from a state-owned iron bowl. How does he wash? No way. Once every three months (more often it is not supposed to) a wife comes for a date, who washes and heals abscesses and wounds that appear due to the lack of basic care and hygiene.

A normal person is unlikely to be able to calmly look at the forced humiliation of others. But Ivanov’s prison doctors and local judges refuse to release him on formal grounds. In the list of diseases preventing the serving of a sentence (approved by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 54), there is no line “amputated limbs”.

Alexander received a term for drugs. Justice, probably, tried to discourage criminals from using disabled people for their own purposes: we will punish severely one so that it would be disrespectful to others. But it seems that the line between such “science” and torture has been crossed in this story.

Alexander Zanedinov is a resident of Serpukhov near Moscow. Since childhood, he has been professionally involved in football, went to competitions. When he was 13 years old, Alexander and his friends went to the match. On the way back in the train there was a conflict between football fans of different clubs. Let’s go, as they say, wall to wall. During the fight, Alexander was pushed out of the car at full speed.

“He was wound under two electric trains between the Krasny Builder and Pokrovskoye stations,” says common-law wife Christina. “We still don’t travel in this direction as a matter of principle, it evokes such terrible memories. And now it was shredded so that it was scary to look at. Half a head was blown off. Alexander lay in a coma for 12 days. The operation was done by the famous Leonid Roshal. It was experimental, no one gave any predictions. Everything went well in the end, in the sense that Sasha survived. But the internal organs were damaged (one lung was non-working), both arms had to be amputated (one to the shoulder, the second a little lower).

Alexander took a long time to recover. After what happened at the age of 13, he weighed only 10 kg. Chronic diseases appeared, epileptic seizures began to occur. But the teenager courageously fought against all this. Mom was always there and helped. Alexander received a higher education with a degree in psychology in the social sphere. And he was even able to fulfill his childhood dream: at the school where he once studied, he created a football team where children played for free.

Alexander started a family, a daughter was born. But it didn’t work out – the young people broke up. He raised his daughter alone (mother was deprived of parental rights).

“And then we got along with him,” says Christina. – I myself am a psychologist by education and I will tell you: although he is without hands, he is very economic and decent. Others with hands, but, I’m sorry, without brains.

They all lived together – Alexander’s mother, Christina, a teenage daughter. Women helped him with the most necessary – fed and washed. Alexander has two prostheses: one “to fill the sleeve”, the second – for the stump (but it is also non-functional). He failed to get a job without hands. I sat at home, received a disability pension, and raised my daughter. At some point, a company appeared around him: while his mother and wife were at work, friends and comrades came and “smoked”. There is no doubt that they were involved in drugs. But what was the role of Alexander there is a big question.

– How can an armless person make “bookmarks”? asks human rights activist, lawyer Arseniy Levinson. – The investigation attributed him to an organized group, as if he was on the lookout. Members of this group blamed everything on him. Apparently, they reasoned like this: he is armless, he will not be anything anyway. And the court appointed 7 years in prison in a strict regime colony. In general, for a non-violent crime, disabled people of group I are usually not sentenced to such a severe punishment. I think they wanted to make a demonstration process, so that others would be disrespectful. And the judge made it clear that he could still be released from the colony due to illness.

“Arrest in the courtroom,” the judge of the Serpukhov City Court read out. And the guards with handcuffs rushed to Alexander. There was confusion. There is nothing to put on handcuffs.

Ivanovskaya IK No. 5. There is a detachment for the disabled here. But only it is practically no different from all the others (only the inmates do not sleep on the second tiers of beds). People with serious illnesses were placed in the detachment, and, as Alexander himself says, he is the only amputee there.

Colony employees assure that a person who helps him is assigned to him.

“That’s not entirely true,” Christina says. – One convict brought him food in a bucket from the dining room. For this, Alexander pays off with cigarettes. But he does not feed Sasha from a spoon. So during long (three days) dates, I try to fatten him up a little. But in fact, all this time is spent on treating it. The thing is, he can’t wash himself. And in the absence of hygiene, wounds form in a few months. It’s unbearable to watch…

In May last year, the prison medical commission issued a conclusion: Alexander has no diseases that prevent him from serving his sentence. Formally, they are right: there is no such item in the list as the absence of limbs. In general, this list of ailments has changed more than once, but for some reason, amputees have been forgotten. It turned out to be a paradoxical situation: a person with paralysis of the limbs, with diseases of the musculoskeletal system can be released, but if he does not have them at all, no.

Experts believe that there was a way out: in this case, it is necessary to prove the identity of the condition with amputation of both hands to the state with paralysis of both hands. But the prison doctors do not want to do this.

“They rested, saying that a prosthesis was ordered for him, and with it the function of one limb would allegedly be restored,” says Mikhail Denisov, an expert at the Commissioner for Human Rights in the region. – There is still no prosthesis. Yes, even if it appeared, it would not solve the problem in any way. He will not be able to serve himself (after all, he had prostheses at home, this did not help).

The Ivanovsky District Court, where Alexander applied, pointed this out. At the same time, at the request of the lawyer to appoint an examination that would answer the question of whether he can serve himself independently and whether constant outside help is required, the court noted: they say, everything has long been established. I quote the decision: “indicates the inability to self-care, the need for constant care and complete dependence on other persons.” The judge then (in the summer of 2022) ordered him another examination. According to its results, another servant of Themis refused to release on January 25, 2023.

There are about 20,000 disabled people behind bars today. But there are few amputees among them, and only a few without both arms or legs. So Alexander is unique in his own way. At first he was a special patient of Roshal, now he is a special inmate of IK No. 5…

An individual rehabilitation program is developed for each disabled person, and our hero also has it. Only now it is not implemented in any way, which means that the UFSIN violates the law in relation to him.

Disabled inmates and their relatives are often told: “A prison is not a sanatorium and a rehabilitation center.” Yes, but the prison is not a torture chamber. In the case of Alexander, she became just that. And those who calmly look at the torment and humiliation of a disabled person, voluntarily or involuntarily, become dehumanized.