Patriot from Latvia, because of which Kolokoltsov fired the police, described the flight to Russia

Officials of the Migration Department reacted superficially and formally to the writer’s request for temporary asylum in Russia, according to an official statement from the Ministry of Internal Affairs yesterday. Sergei Vasiliev was denied refugee status. In the letter he was warned that his further stay in Russia would be illegal. He was threatened with immediate deportation to Latvia.

After the intervention of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the refusal to grant the writer temporary asylum was annulled. Together with police colonel Igor Dudnik, the head of the department for refugees, temporary asylum and internally displaced persons, police colonel Tatyana Dmitrieva, was also fired.

After high-profile layoffs, we managed to contact and talk with Sergei Vasiliev.

“I am very glad that they figured it out, I am very glad that they gave me the right to live in Russia,” says the patriotic writer. Because deportation would be a death sentence for me. As for the minister’s decision, I will say this: “I am not very happy that I am the cause of someone’s misfortunes. It doesn’t make me happy at all.” I would not want to have the scandalous fame of a person who caused someone to suffer. This is not why I came to Russia, so that someone would suffer because of me.

Why were you denied temporary asylum?

— The notice stated that my status, my position does not meet the requirements of the refugee law. Nothing else was deciphered.

Maybe I didn’t provide convincing evidence that something threatens me in Latvia. He did not talk about the work being done by anti-fascists in the Baltics. And the work is dynamic.

At first it was a public organization, we wanted to record the demolition of monuments and somehow punish these vandals. When they started doing this work, along with the vandals, they began to identify people in the Baltics who were fighting against Russia.

There are few retirees among them, mostly regular servicemen of the Latvian army. Active Nazi soldiers who went to Ukraine to kill Russians.

Anti-fascists are working on the spot, I am now in Moscow. They give me information, they found one, the second, the third… They found a sniper who killed 20 Russian soldiers. I pass this data on to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. Six such applications have already been submitted.

This infuriated the Latvian authorities so much that they now began to grab people who were just acquaintances with me. For example, last week in Riga, 22-year-old Tanya Andriets was detained and arrested, allegedly because she was the administrator of the Anti-Fascist Baltic telegram channel. And the proof was the photograph in which she stands next to me at the Forum of Compatriots. Tanya faces a real term of up to 5 years in prison. If they grab people who just took pictures with me, then after the deportation, a “carpet path” was prepared for me right in prison.

– How did you end up in Latvia, is this your homeland?

— I was born in Latvia, and my parents were born there. My great-great-grandfather was in the Russo-Japanese War, was awarded the St. George Cross. And at that time, along with this award, they gave either a cash prize or an allotment of land. My great-great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather had already died by that time, they allocated this allotment of land.

Until 1917, it was the Vitebsk province of the Russian Empire. Thus, my ancestors ended up in the territory of present-day Latvia. When they moved, there was no talk of any Latvia yet. I was born and raised in the Latvian SSR. After graduating from school, he entered the electromechanical technical school, served in the army. Later he worked in government communications.

I believe that Latvia is our common homeland. I write in all my books that the Baltics are Russian land, a meter deep soaked in Russian blood and Russian sweat. In Riga there is a six-meter monument to Peter’s grenadiers who fought and died on this land. (Monument to the defenders of the island of Lutsau, which was erected in honor of 400 Russian grenadiers who died heroically in July 1701 in one of the episodes of the Baltic campaign of the Northern War. — Auth.) The whole Baltic region is dotted with Russian cemeteries, starting from the time when no one there knew such words as “Estonia” or “Latvia”.

– In Latvia, you became more and more strangers?

We were those frogs that were simmered. When the Soviet Union had just collapsed, many of my relatives and acquaintances thought that this was temporary, that we would soon be reunited again. And then there was less and less hope.

In Ukraine, everything was clear, here he is, a Nazi – yelling: “Muscovites to the knives.” But in the Baltic States, the Nazis were different. They could come to you, ask about your health, smile, speak to you in their native language, and then turn around and go to vote for the person whose program is your destruction. Such is Nazism with a smile on its face.

The moment of truth came in 2004 when Latvia joined NATO. And at the same time, the first attempts were made to ban Russian schools. Ordinary people told us: “No, no, we are for you, this is all the intrigues of the government.”

And with this “no-no” we survived until 2012, until the second attempt to eliminate education in Russian. We initiated a referendum on the Russian language. And then everything opened up. Latvians all without exception went and voted for the destruction of the Russian language. As they say, civil society has spoken. And everything went downhill… And in 2014, when Crimea became Russian, we were finally divided.

— How did you start helping the people of Donbass…

— In 2014, a lot of people tried to help the population of Donbass in some way. First of all, these were medicines, blankets, clothes. I allocated money to a female volunteer who carried medicines to Donbass in her minibus.

I had my own company in Finland, we were engaged in the supply of agricultural equipment to Russia. Through this company, they began to purchase the necessary equipment in Spain and Germany and deliver it to Donetsk. Directly it did not work, it would be immediately obvious. First they sent him to Rostov-on-Don and Kursk.

Outwardly, these are field camps, but in practice they are field points for 120 people. Two shipping containers could be deployed in one day. Very quickly it was possible to resettle the company in an open field with all conveniences and comfort.

We also sent tents and generators to the Donbass. We never thought that they could be prosecuted and punished for this.

Then, in the east of the Donetsk region, a Boeing 777 was shot down, which was operating flight MH17 on the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur route. I believe that Ukraine did it. And so it began… The authorities in Latvia and Finland began to persecute everyone who had anything to do with the supply of humanitarian aid to the Donbass. Almost all were prosecuted for “financing terrorism”. In their opinion, everyone in Donetsk and Lugansk were terrorists, and we, respectively, were assistants to terrorists. And the flywheel started spinning…

– First you got “under the rink” in Finland?

– In Finland, I was sentenced to three years in prison. But European justice has its own peculiarities. When you hear the verdict in the first instance, you are not immediately imprisoned if you file an appeal. I filed an appeal and did not wait for its result. I attended the hearing remotely.

Finland has a unique justice system. The verdict contained the phrases “by prior agreement by a group of persons”, “on an especially large scale”, and so on – with aggravating consequences.

The trial went on for exactly an hour and a half. I had four refusals in my hands: refusal to familiarize myself with the case materials, refusal to ask questions of the prosecution, refusal to consider the essence of the case on the merits within the framework of the trial, refusal to have the last word. No one showed the case file to the lawyer either. There was a verdict, and it just had to be announced. The Court of Appeal also lasted an hour and a half. And that’s all – a sentence of 3 years, what you wanted – civilization, democracy!

A criminal case was opened against me both in Finland and in Latvia. For them, this is normal, they punished once, they can be punished a second time. Having received a summons to a court session in Riga, I decided that I would hardly leave the courtroom. And he decided to leave for Russia.

— Did you have any associates in Finland who also helped the people of Donbass?

– I had a company registered in Finland, I didn’t really live there. And the population of Donbass, of course, was helped by Finns, Italians, and Germans. Even now, when Tanya Andriets was arrested, we offered to write letters. And our telegram channel began to receive letters in English, in Spanish, in Finnish, in Swedish … There are a huge number of fooled people, but there are also people who understand very well who is who.

– Do you have any problems with housing?

My friends are my salvation. When I left Latvia, I thought that I would stop in Pskov. But my friends-comrades-in-arms told me: “Come to Moscow, you are needed here, we will organize everything.” They gave me an apartment, I only pay for a communal apartment. I bow low that there are such people.

What are you doing now, what are your plans?

– I continue to work together with anti-fascists in the Baltics. Every day we compile a new dossier on criminals. I believe that sooner or later we will punish them. The Nazis themselves never stopped, they must be stopped.

Thank God, I now have an official status. Now I will do what I can as an officer of the Soviet army. I am taking courses now. Tomorrow morning I have tactical medicine classes. Courses will end in the next two weeks. And I’m going to the military. I am a senior lieutenant of the communications troops. I am 59 years old, of course, I need to slightly improve my physical fitness.

I came to my homeland, and my homeland is at war. I understand perfectly well that the fighting in Ukraine is only the beginning. The Ukrainians will run out, the Balts, Poles, Moldovans will be drawn into the crucible of battles …

Are you writing anything now?

— I have finished an autobiographical story about my generation. Now I am working on the book “The Protection of the Trinity”, which describes the siege of the Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra by the Poles and then there is a conversation about Sergius of Radonezh. In this book, I just wanted to tell you that everything repeats itself.

Sergei Vasiliev says that he was contacted by a person with the call sign “Composer”, who found himself in the same situation as himself. On January 26, he received a refusal to grant him temporary asylum in Russia. The notice said: insufficient grounds.

In the near future we will try to contact him to find out the circumstances of the case.