‘Destroying a life’ Arrested on ‘terrorism’ charges for setting off a firecracker, a Russian girl was raped in detention — then locked in a psychiatric hospital
In November 2023, a 14-year-old Russian girl was arrested and charged with terrorism after setting off a firecracker. Lyuba was sent to a juvenile pre-trial detention center, where, cut off from her family, she began to unravel. Then, the abuse started. Her cellmates beat and sexually assaulted her — but despite documented evidence, prison officials refused to transfer her. The trauma left her so severely affected that she was eventually moved to a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with a “mental disorder.” Meanwhile, despite a lack of evidence for the terrorism charges, the investigation into her case drags on. The independent outlet Takie Dela spoke with Lyuba’s mother and looked into the circumstances surrounding her case. Meduza shares a lightly abridged version of the story in English.
“She has dark hair, like mine,” Olga says of her now-15-year-old daughter, Lyuba (names changed). “She dyed three strands white. The investigator kept asking why her hair was so ‘unconventional.’ In prison, they cut them off.”
Lyuba’s former English teacher, Marina Kovalenko, remembers her as reserved. “That’s her defining trait,” she says. “She struck me as sensitive and sweet — always smiling shyly. Not mean at all, very friendly. Just a typical teenager.”
Her parents divorced more than a decade ago. When Lyuba was four, her mother remarried. She has an older sister. According to Olga, Lyuba gets along well with her stepfather, but she hasn’t spoken to her biological father in years — his presence in her life gradually faded until he disappeared entirely.
Academically, Lyuba did fairly well and was active in extracurriculars. She spent six years dancing and competed in various contests — her bedroom wall is lined with 15 awards. She also studied guitar at a music school and later developed an interest in rock music, even trying her hand at translating English lyrics. “She had completely normal teenage interests and behavior,” Kovalenko says.
‘A terrible shock’
On the morning of November 15, 2023, police officers and investigators descended on Lyuba’s school. They questioned her, and an hour later, summoned her mother. Olga was told that her daughter was suspected of “extremism” — she’d allegedly set off a firecracker.
“I thought, my God… What’s this about? What firecracker?” Olga recalls. “My daughter was sobbing, unable to say a word.”
Investigators pulled out a search warrant and headed to their home.
“They kept asking where the firecracker was,” Olga says. “Lyuba had thrown it away, and her older sister had already taken out the trash. They told us to go get it — said they’d find it on surveillance cameras anyway. So her sister went and brought it back. Then they called in a dog handler. The dog didn’t react to the firecracker as if it were an explosive. But the investigator kept interrogating Lyuba. They didn’t finish until seven in the evening. We weren’t even allowed to eat.”
The next morning, Lyuba and her mother were summoned to the police station — supposedly to provide a more detailed statement. They arrived at 11:00 a.m., only to be handed a formal notice: Lyuba was now facing criminal charges and would be placed under arrest.
“They were just waiting for the lawyer,” Olga says. “By 4:00 p.m., they took Lyuba away. It was a terrible shock.” The teenager was taken to Federal Correctional Facility No. 1 in the Moscow region, which houses a pre-trial detention center for minors.
From curiosity to ‘terrorism’
According to Olga, her daughter had come across several videos on TikTok about the 1999 Columbine school shooting in the United States.
“Lyuba wanted to understand why they did it,” Olga says. “She read several articles online about the tragedy but never found an answer. And since she kept searching, more videos and links on the topic started appearing [in her feed].”
One video contained a link to Telegram channels promising “detailed insights” into the lives of the Columbine shooters and their motives. To access a second, private channel, users had to sign a template statement. In exchange, they were promised “secret information.” The statement — Olga struggles to recall her daughter’s exact words — read something like: “I plan to carry out a brutal school shooting in four years. A joint suicide at the end. [I have] a strong desire to kill.” Lyuba signed the form using her Telegram handle. Instead of receiving the promised information, her post was published in the channel.
Olga still isn’t sure whether her daughter’s actions were driven by teenage impulsiveness or a desperate need for attention, but her heart breaks for her. Lyuba bought a firecracker, split it into three pieces, set one off, filmed it, and uploaded the video to the Telegram channel. Two weeks later, the police showed up at her school.
“She made three small firecrackers from one,” Olga explains, her voice trembling. “She set off one, got scared, and threw the rest away.”
The official indictment describes a far more sinister scenario.
It states that Lyuba “joined a Telegram group in an undisclosed location where members [...] promoted deviant behavior, suicide, and mass killings as a way of life and a means of achieving personal goals.” It further claims that by doing so, she became part of the so-called “Columbine movement,” which was classified as a terrorist organization by Russia’s Supreme Court in February 2022.
According to investigators, Lyuba “actively participated in discussions about past mass killings and engaged in the promotion of terrorist activities within the banned organization.” The document also alleges that she “constructed three homemade explosive devices, intending to use them to kill two or more unidentified individuals among her classmates and school staff.”
Under Russian law, “public calls for terrorist activity, public justification of terrorism, or propaganda of terrorism” carry a sentence of up to seven years in prison. “Organizing or participating in a terrorist group” is punishable by life imprisonment. The age of criminal responsibility for these charges starts at 14.
Lyuba’s case was assigned to a senior investigator, Inspector Vozkov. She was arrested on November 16, 2023, yet Vozkov waited three months before ordering a forensic examination of the alleged explosive device.
The report, issued on January 31, 2024, concluded that the firecracker Lyuba had detonated “does not qualify as an explosive device and is unsuitable for producing an explosion due to its high content of non-explosive substances.”
Lyuba’s lawyer repeatedly presented this finding in court. He also got an official letter from Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, confirming that the two Telegram channels Lyuba had joined were not classified as terrorist organizations and that the Investigative Committee had never filed such claims. The channels were only blocked days after her arrest.
Under Article 175 of Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code, if an investigation fails to substantiate a charge, the prosecution must drop that part of the case. Yet the charges against Lyuba remained unchanged.
And so, she remained in pre-trial detention.
‘Mom, I can’t take this anymore’
Desperate to preserve a sense of normalcy for her daughter, Olga tried to arrange remote schooling while Lyuba was in detention. But according to her, prison authorities refused to accept textbooks. She filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office.
Two weeks after Lyuba’s arrest, the head of the juvenile affairs department in her hometown visited her in detention. In a report, she described the girl’s condition:
She struggled to answer questions, clearly suffering from prolonged stress. Her emotional and psychological state was severe — apathetic, withdrawn, hunched over, unable to make eye contact, crying uncontrollably. She has no appetite, cannot sleep, and keeps repeating that she doesn’t understand what happened to her and that she will never return home. […] According to her mother, a psychologist met with her only once. In two weeks, the investigator allowed just one visit from her mother. When the visit ended, the girl crawled under the table and sobbed loudly. Staff from the prison’s social and psychological services say that education is provided only for convicted minors; detainees must study on their own.
Lyuba’s school informed Olga that without continued studies, she wouldn’t receive credit for her eighth-grade coursework.
In February, four months after her arrest, a school psychologist examined Lyuba. Her report noted a “deterioration in the child’s mental and emotional state to a critical level.” “She exhibits obsessive hand movements and tremors typical of neurosis,” the psychologist wrote. “During questioning, she broke down in tears and was unable to respond to the investigator’s questions, forcing the interrogation to be postponed.”
The psychologist also observed that Lyuba had “lost her appetite and struggled with insomnia.” “She has stopped caring for her appearance and refuses to shower. These factors, combined with the psychological trauma of detention and isolation from family, are signs of suicidal behavior in teenagers.”
In March, the court issued a private ruling against Inspector Vozkov, stating that he was violating Article 6.1 of Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code, which requires criminal proceedings to be conducted within a reasonable timeframe. The investigation had dragged on for too long.
On May 14, the city prosecutor’s office once again ordered Inspector Vozkov to ensure the case proceeded within legal time limits. That same day, Olga arrived at yet another hearing on whether to extend Lyuba’s pre-trial detention. By then, her daughter had been in custody for six months. She sat in the courtroom’s glass enclosure, known as the “aquarium.”
“Mom, I can’t take this anymore,” Lyuba said. Then, she lifted her shirt, revealing red marks across her stomach from beatings. She let down her hair — right in the middle of her head was a long bald patch.
Lyuba told her mother that her cellmates had beaten her for three days straight. They had used hair removal cream to burn off part of her hair. They had taken her family photos, torn them up, and thrown them away. When she tried to study in the cell, they ripped up her completed homework.
Olga immediately asked Inspector Vozkov to record a formal statement that her daughter was being abused in detention. According to her, he refused, saying it was a matter for the Federal Penitentiary Service and that she needed to file a complaint there. Yet, under official regulations, he was obligated to report it to his superiors.
The court extended Lyuba’s detention. The next morning, Olga went to the Investigative Committee and formally filed a complaint about the abuse. She has not received a response to this day.
She then filed another complaint — this time with the prosecutor’s office — about the Investigative Committee’s inaction. In response, Vozkov claimed that on May 21, he had forwarded the results of his investigation into the abuse allegations to the local Interior Ministry office.
But a December 2024 investigation by the prosecutor’s office found no record of Vozkov ever sending such a document. The Interior Ministry had received nothing — not on May 21 or any other date. In fact, Olga’s original complaint had never even been registered with the Investigative Committee.
The investigation report concluded that “the case has been subject to delays, and no comprehensive efforts have been made to establish the full set of facts, resulting in violations of reasonable time limits for criminal proceedings.”
‘I have every reason to fear for her life’
After Lyuba’s pre-trial detention was extended, Olga requested a visit with her daughter. Inspector Vozkov refused without explanation. On May 16, Lyuba’s lawyer visited the detention facility and learned that officials were aware of a “violation of prison regulations” caught on surveillance cameras.
The acting warden, Alexey Ushakov, responded to the lawyer’s inquiry about the beatings by stating that the prison administration was aware of the situation. The prison had footage from May 10 showing Lyuba, naked, standing on a table in her cell with a degrading sign around her neck, sobbing.
“Three girls — her cellmates — made the sign, forced her to undress, and made her stand in front of the camera,” Olga explains.
She pleaded with the warden to transfer Lyuba to a different cell. He refused. According to Olga, he told her that her daughter needed to “get used to her cellmates and accept their rules.”
Days later, the administration produced a written statement from Lyuba, claiming she had climbed onto the table naked “of her own volition, without physical or psychological coercion, as an act of mischief.” On May 20, the facility issued her a formal reprimand.
Reports from Lyuba’s arts school, where she studied dance for six years, her music school, her regular school, and even the detention center — written two months after her arrest — all describe a quiet, disciplined, and well-mannered student.
“Polite with teachers and staff. […] Calm temperament. Accepts criticism well. Highly capable in her studies. Compliant, disciplined, even-tempered, and kind.”
“Calm, friendly, even-tempered, engaged in her studies, showing strong progress in mastering her instrument. Gets along well with peers.”
“A quiet and composed person. Has a strong memory, stays focused in class, completes homework carefully and consistently. […] Accepts teacher feedback well, cares deeply about her grades.”
“By nature, calm, non-confrontational, sociable, […] shows no criminal inclinations. Has not violated facility rules, has no disciplinary penalties, […] polite and respectful toward staff and fellow detainees, avoids conflicts.”
Yet four months later, in the official reprimand, prison authorities abruptly claimed that Lyuba “lacked moral and behavioral standards.”
On May 23, Lyuba wrote a statement confessing to “disorderly conduct.” But according to her mother, she did so under coercion from a prison employee. “If I had refused to write the explanation as instructed, I would have been placed on a preventive monitoring list, which is impossible to be removed from,” Olga recounts her daughter’s words.
Warden Ushakov documented the results of an internal investigation in a report:
[Lyuba] committed these actions under psychological pressure from her cellmates. This is confirmed by surveillance footage. The investigation into her detention conditions […] found that minors Irina, Yekaterina, and Diana [names changed] exerted psychological and emotional pressure on [Lyuba]. […] The minors were subjected to disciplinary measures. […] No evidence was found to suggest that [Lyuba’s] life or health was at risk, nor that special protective measures were necessary.
But an inspector from the local juvenile affairs department disputed this conclusion in a separate report: “On May 10, 2024, […] the minor Yekaterina beat [Lyuba], causing physical pain.”
In a written statement, Yekaterina admitted that she and her cellmates had “exerted psychological and emotional pressure” on Lyuba and restrained her. Her cellmates wrote similar accounts. Diana acknowledged slapping Lyuba “on the back of the head” multiple times and “intimidating and harassing her.”
The prison’s disciplinary committee wrote that, according to surveillance footage, the abuse continued on May 11 — one of the girls “slapped her.”
Terrified for her daughter, Olga sent letters to Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia's Federal Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office. In August, prosecutors conducted an inspection of the detention center. But when they requested the surveillance footage from May, prison officials claimed the recordings were no longer available, citing “expired storage limits on video recordings.”
Following the inspection, Maxim Nikitin, head of the Moscow Region Prosecutor’s Office department overseeing compliance with federal security and counterterrorism laws, acknowledged to Olga that prison officials had “effectively abandoned their duties in preventing violations among detainees.” He stated that a formal notice had been sent to the regional penitentiary system’s management, though it had yet to be reviewed. He added that no further action was necessary.
Lyuba’s lawyer petitioned for a medical examination, but Inspector Vozkov denied the request on June 6 — without explanation. The required medical evaluation wasn’t conducted until September 6, four months after the alleged abuse. The official report concluded: “No bodily injuries detected.”
Despite sending repeated requests to see her daughter, Olga was only allowed a visit two months after learning of the beatings.
“To understand how I can help her, I need to see her,” Olga pleaded in a letter to Inspector Vozkov. “You have witnessed how her mental state has deteriorated. […] She personally reported the abuse to you on May 14, 2024. […] I have every reason to fear for her life and health.”
Vozkov never responded.
In July 2024, Olga was finally granted a visit. “She was shaking. She’d developed facial tics. Her whole body trembled. She couldn’t bring herself to leave our meeting. And she couldn’t speak,” Olga recalls.
‘Now she’s terrified of people’
From the moment of her arrest, Lyuba shared a cell with Yekaterina, Irina, and Diana. The abuse began on April 20 — Irina’s birthday.
In November, Lyuba detailed everything that had happened to her in a police report:
On April 20, we spent the afternoon preparing for Irina’s birthday. Katya pinched me, and I calmly told her, jokingly, trying not to offend anyone, that I didn’t like it. After that, all three of them demanded that I apologize, saying I had ruined their celebration. By evening, they were furious. They tried to force me to dunk my head in the toilet as punishment for ‘spoiling the party.’ When I refused, they shoved me against the door, twisted my arms behind my back, and forced my head into the toilet. Then Katya suggested they all urinate into my favorite cup and pour it on me. The others agreed — and they did it. When they were done, they spit on me and poured oil over my head. They threatened to do it again if I didn’t apologize. […] I was terrified, so I apologized.
Her statement describes further abuse — how her cellmates threw tomatoes at her, shoved her under a bunk, and slammed her head against the wall. One of the girls taunted her, asking if she found her attractive. “I was so scared that if I said no, they would beat me again, so I pretended to feel the same way, even though I didn’t. Around that time, all three of them started forcing me to expose myself to them.”
Lyuba writes that throughout May, she was subjected to daily sexual violence. They forced her to perform sexual acts, raped her with objects, and threatened to beat her if she resisted.
“I never reported it because of how shameful and disgusting it was — and still is — to me. I was too ashamed and too afraid. […] I knew I couldn’t fight them. They were stronger, and there was no point in resisting. If I told the staff, they would have killed me in the cell — because when it became known that they had been beating me, I wasn’t transferred.”
In her long, desperate statement, Lyuba writes that after her pre-trial detention was extended on May 16, her cellmates began pressuring her to kill herself. They even told her exactly how she should do it. When she refused, they threatened to do it themselves. Eventually, Lyuba attempted suicide.
Her medical records, later obtained by her lawyer, confirm that she sustained self-inflicted injuries:
“A report was filed noting the presence of shallow cuts on the left arm. Due to this, she was examined by a psychiatrist, who prescribed fluoxetine and carbamazepine. She was diagnosed with ‘a depressive episode.’”
But even after this, Lyuba wasn’t transferred.
It was in this cell with her abusers that Lyuba managed to complete eighth grade. Her textbooks were finally delivered in February 2024 — only after her mother filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office. Most of her grades were barely passing. She was only moved out of her abusers’ cell in the fall, after a short news article about her case appeared on Lenta.ru.
In September, Lyuba was transferred to Butyrka Prison’s pre-trial detention center and underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute. Doctors diagnosed her with a “mental disorder” and recommended hospitalization.
Inspector Vozkov received the official recommendation on September 26, 2024. But it wasn’t until November 7 that he petitioned the court to transfer Lyuba to a psychiatric hospital. She has now been there for 79 days. “In the pre-trial detention center, they told her the psychiatric hospital would be even worse,” Olga says. “She was terrified, and so was I. But at least no one tortures her here.”
At first, Lyuba was placed in a small, monitored adaptation ward. Her mother says she resisted moving to a regular unit with more people. “Now, she’s terrified of people,” Olga says. “I tell her, ‘You’re so pale, don’t you want to go outside for some fresh air?’ And she says, ‘Mom, there are too many people out there. What if I do something wrong again?’”
On Monday, February 10, Lyuba is set to be transferred to yet another unit: a high-security intensive supervision ward, where adult psychiatric patients are held.
The hospital is a two-hour trip from Olga’s home. Regulations allow her to see her daughter for only 20 minutes, under medical supervision. Lyuba asked her to bring more schoolwork. “I don’t want to get all bad grades,” she said.
She is set to remain in the psychiatric hospital until February 16, 2025. After that, authorities will decide whether to extend her detention and return her to pre-trial custody — or keep her in treatment.
Olga has repeatedly asked for Lyuba to be placed under house arrest, but Inspector Vozkov refused every time. “Now we’re terrified that they’ll keep extending her hospitalization, just like they kept extending her detention. Some people are stuck in places like this for years,” Olga says.
On December 16, 2024, the city prosecutor issued an order demanding that the delays in Lyuba’s case be addressed. Prosecutors formally recognized the inaction of both Inspector Vozkov and the head of the investigative department. Despite this, in January 2025, Vozkov was honored as one of the top investigators in the Moscow region.
“I think an irreversible mistake has been made,” says Marina Kovalenko, Lyuba’s former English teacher. “I can’t imagine her in prison. I can’t even begin to understand how deeply this has scarred her. There has to be another way to handle cases like this — when a child with no criminal history makes a mistake. Rather than destroying a life.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of rape or sexual assault, please reach out to one of the following resources for support:
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (for U.S. readers)
Rape Crisis Network Europe (for E.U. readers)
Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime (for Canadian readers)
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
Reporting by Natalia Nekhlebova for Takie Dela