On December 22, 2023, Irkutsk Region resident Aleksandr Matkheyev was sentenced to 10 years in a maximum security penal colony for treason and terrorism. According to investigators, he was planning to join the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”, in which Russians serve on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At the same time, Sasha is being monitored in a neuropsychiatric dispensary: he can take care of himself at home, but he cannot hold down a job or think abstractly. ASTRA explains in detail why the case against Sasha looks very much like a provocation by the special services.
27-year-old Sasha Matkheyev was detained as if he was a real terrorist. It happened on the night of November 14, 2023: in an operational video, a big guy in camouflage pants is put face down on the floor by FSB officers right on the platform of the train station in the city of Tayga in the Kemerovo region. In the video, Sasha’s face is blurred out, the “big child” with a developmental disorder in him is given away only by the way he whines like a child in fear when the security forces shout out questions.
Two days before that, Sasha’s mother saw him for the last time. In a conversation with ASTRA, Matryona recalls that she was almost not worried that day. From the village of Osa near Irkutsk – where the family fled from Sasha’s father – to their native Ulan-Ude by train is only seven hours. And anyway, Sasha had already traveled this way, he shouldn’t get lost.
As they parted, Matryona blessed her son on his journey – traditionally, in the Buryat way, by dripping milk out the window to appease the spirits.
Sasha told his mother that he was going to Ulan-Ude to get off the register at the mental health clinic, and from there to the military enlistment office. However, the woman still felt that her son was not telling her everything. Sasha went in the other direction.
Before his arrest, he managed to call his mother again: “I heard the sound of wheels, I thought, you should have arrived by now!” Matryona recalls. “No, he says, I decided not to go to Ulan-Ude, I decided to go straight to the Smolensk region [Sasha told his mother that he was going there to earn money]. And after that, when I called him, he didn’t pick up the phone anymore…”
In the footage of Sasha’s detainment, the FSB officers are shouting to get a clear answer from the guy – where he was going, what organization he wanted to join, and what to do there. Sasha is confused, the officers shout. In the end, he says: “I wanted [to join] the “Legion “Freedom of Russia” <…> Well, to fight against Russia. <…> I wanted to be an assault group <…> Yes, with weapons in hand.”
In mid-April 2024, Sasha was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The appointed lawyer, as usual, did not work in the interests of her client. Certificates that Sasha suffers from dementia were also not presented at the trial. His mother and sister did not come to the announcement of the sentence – they were not informed about a single hearing, and Matryona herself “doesn’t really understand computers” – “they were obliged to warn us in advance, right?”
It will only become clear after the trial: in exchange for signing a confession, the FSB promised to send Sasha to war. He is generally very keen on everything related to the security forces. Most likely, he does not even care whose side to fight on. Sasha’s relatives are convinced that his diagnosis makes him very easy to manipulate. His lawyer believes that the special services could have taken advantage of the guy’s gullibility.
“Reliable” interlocutor
Sasha spent his free time at the computer. His mother doesn’t know what he did on the Internet. It is known that Sasha liked to correspond with his grandmother, who emigrated to the USA to be with her daughter several years ago.
Sasha: White, blue, white, this flag [symbolical flag of anti-war Russians thats also used by “Legion “Freedom of Russia”], for the freedom of Russia. Against Putin’s regime. They call Putin a fascist.
And Kazakhstan is for Ukraine, Mongolia too.
For Ukraine.
Grandma: Well, yes
Sasha: Kazakhstan approves of the Buryats, and sends the Russians to hell.
Mongolia is the same.
Grandma: Sanya, don’t write about this on the Internet
They are checking and they can arrest you
Please!
Sasha: Well, yes, it’s all just offensive.
I don’t want war,
I don’t want war
Grandma: And no one does!
In his correspondence with his grandmother, Sasha repeatedly raised the topic of war. At the same time, he watched videos on YouTube, read various political articles – despite the fact that Sasha understood almost nothing about politics, this topic worried him greatly.
Sasha: Grandma, how I want to be with you.
Without war. <…>
Yes, war is bad, Now they blame everything on Putin. But NATO really was falling apart. 21st century, and Who needs this message War.
Grandma: Yes!
Sasha: Everyone wants to build and develop.
Grandma constantly warned Sasha not to go to war. Of course, she never even thought that he might go to fight not for Russia, but for Ukraine.
Grandma: Don’t even think about going to war
You used to be against war
Sasha: Yes, that’s right, I’m against everything.
The last video Sasha sent to his grandmother was a reel from Radio Liberty about the Siberian battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In it, Buryat servicemen defending Ukraine say that the small peoples of Russia live “under colonial oppression.”
[10/27//23, 11:23:20 AM] Grandma: See. You still wanted to go there!
[10/27//23, 12:03:17 PM] Sasha: Yeah, everyone’s tired of Putin.
[11/21/23, 6:52:52 PM] Grandma: Sanya! How are you?
[11/21/23, 10:26:05 PM] Grandma: Sasha!
[11/24/23, 10:49:43 PM] Grandma: Why aren’t you writing, Sasha?
[12/18/23, 4:55:29 PM] Grandma: Sasha!
Sasha was detained on November 14. The indictment states that Sasha had previously attempted to join the “Legion “Freedom of Russia” through correspondence with an anonymous VK user under the name “Kostya Abramovich.”
A Moldovan number is linked to Abramovich’s VK page. In a conversation with ASTRA, the user of this account said that he lives in Moldova. He met Sasha in some political chat and really discussed joining the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”.
According to “Abramovich”, he is “no longer connected” with the “Legion” unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Previously, the young man was a member of the “Freedom of Russia” chat, where various protest activities were coordinated: “We are like the civil wing of the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”. We drew “Legion” flags, tore down the letters Z, V [Russian war symbols] where we could. There were also moments, like with Alexander Matkheyev, when our guys were caught by the FSB and imprisoned,” “Abramovich” said in correspondence with ASTRA.
He described Matkheev like this: “He is a harmless person. It is clear from his communication that he has problems with thinking.
In September, the court documents say, someone advised Sasha to come to Moscow to join the “Legion.” But no one met Sasha in the capital, “and he did not know how to leave the territory of the Russian Federation on his own,” which is why he “could not complete his illegal actions aimed at committing treason due to circumstances beyond his control.” It’s not true, Sasha’s mother says, in fact he went to Moscow to work part-time.
On November 3, an unknown person with a Ukrainian phone number instead of a nickname wrote to Sasha on Telegram. He allegedly did this in response to a request that Sasha left in the Telegram bot of the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”. Sasha recorded several video messages to the anonymous person and showed the equipment he bought on AliExpress, as well as a Ukrainian flag. Then someone with the nickname “Nadezhny” [meaning “reliable” in Russian] wrote to him on Telegram – this person will be in correspondence with Sasha until his arrest.
For some time, Sasha communicated with “Kostya Abramovich” and an unknown person on Telegram in parallel – and Sasha even thought that the FSB was corresponding with him in the messenger. “Abramovich” responded to Sasha’s suspicions: “if these were FSB officers, they would have visited your house,” the court indictment quotes their correspondence.
The indictment says that at first “Nadezhny” suggested Sasha to meet in Tayga, Kemerovo Region. However, right on the way, his “plans changed” – the anonymous user instructed Sasha that he now needed to go to Almaty and from there independently get to the Ukrainian embassy in Kazakhstan. Sasha had no money, he obediently bought tickets for the routes “Tayga – Novosibirsk” and “Novosibirsk – Almaty” with a credit card. He was detained while he was waiting for his train.
Sasha’s lawyer, who will represent his interests in the appellate court, Vladislav Astakhov, says that “Nadezhny” could have been an FSB provocateur.
“There is only the indictment, from which one can understand what Sasha was corresponding about. I have not seen or read the correspondence itself. I do not rule out the possibility [that he is a provocateur]. The number allegedly belongs to some subscriber from Ukraine, but he has not been identified, no inquiries have been made about this,” the lawyer says.
“He doesn’t care which side to serve on”
Lawyer Astakhov says that Sasha signed the confession under pressure.
“In fact, he wasn’t particularly interested in the conflict [in Ukraine]. The first question he asked me at our first meeting was: “Will I be able to serve? I was told that I could join the army, sign a contract and serve.” And it didn’t matter to him which side to serve on. When I told him that it was impossible, he was very upset, almost in tears. It turned out that he had been promised that he would be able to sign a contract and serve if he admitted his guilt. That is, they told him that you should agree to everything, nothing will happen to you and you will go serve as you wanted,” Astakhov explains.
But political prisoners can’t serve in the military under any circumstances.
Sasha Matkheev was born in Ulan-Ude as a healthy boy. He started walking and talking early and went to kindergarten. Of course, his mother noticed some oddities in him, but she did not attach any importance to them; rather, she saw that Sasha was much kinder than other children. At school, Sasha studied “like everyone else” until the third grade, without any particular problems. Learning difficulties were discovered in the next school. Sasha had a particularly hard time with mathematics – he continued to mix up numbers, so soon the medical commission recommended transferring him to a special school.
After the ninth grade, Sasha went to a technical school to study to become a cook. Graduates of a special school were not allowed to choose a profession – they were sent to where the contract was signed. It was not easy for him to study, although he tried, says Sasha’s mother. The reference from the school says that Sasha “is a mediocre student. He learns the program material. His memory is unstable, his attention is scattered, his vocabulary is small, his computational skills are low, and his emotional-volitional sphere is impaired.”
Sasha was described in a similar way at the mental health dispensary where he is registered. The discharge states that the boy has “weakened critical thinking, objective-concrete thinking, low ability to abstract, intellect and memory does not correspond to his age.” A couple of years ago, Sasha tried to get off the register at the mental health clinic in order to get a driver’s license, but he was refused.
“They moved from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk because the children’s father drinks, beats, causes trouble, and terrorizes everyone,” Sasha’s cousin Olga told ASTRA. “Because of the atmosphere in the family and his father’s aggression, Sasha grew up very timid and anxious.”
Sasha’s father does not help the family – even when they lived together in Ulan-Ude, the man did not work, drank a lot and beat his son. Matryona works as a nurse – it is not easy to support her son and his younger sister Dasha alone, so Sasha has worked all his adult life. First in his specialty – as a cook in a kindergarten, then he got by with part-time jobs in a supermarket and a tire service. In Autumn, he went to Moscow to work in a warehouse with his cousin, but in the end they paid him several times less than promised.
Once Sasha saved up some money from his salary and bought his sister Dasha a bicycle. “Sasha spent his whole life looking after his little sister. He took her to and from kindergarten. He sat at home, watched cartoons, played, drew – everything you do with a child,” says Olga. In addition to his sister, Sasha loves animals – at the age of 9, despite his allergies, he brought home a cat named Vesnyana, whom he has been babysitting for 18 years now. Soon the cat was joined by a huge dog, which Sasha also picked up somewhere on the street.
“Sasha is a quiet, homely boy, I can’t imagine him in prison or in a penal colony. And that’s why I’m so afraid, I don’t know how long he’ll last there,” says his cousin Olga.
In 2022, two years after his family ran away, Sasha’s father found them. He gave his son a blank-firing pistol. He always wanted his son to become a soldier, says Matryona. She believes that this is when Sasha developed an interest in military equipment. After his father’s gift, Sasha began ordering various ammunition, US and Ukrainian chevrons, holsters, rubber truncheons, helmets, etc. on AliExpress. He even walked around Osa in uniform from the Chinese market. His mother tried to ask him when she accidentally caught Sasha in a bulletproof vest, but he didn’t answer – and didn’t even react much when she was outraged that her son was spending money like that.
Sasha liked the idea of uniform so much, says Matryona, that he even tried to get a job as a security guard, but they didn’t hire him.
The blank-firing pistol gifted to him by his father will later appear in Sasha’s case file – according to the conclusion, he bought it legally in his own name in Irkutsk. In fact, Matryona says, she keeps a box with a receipt for the pistol in the name of Sasha’s father at home. And he could not have bought the pistol legally, because he is registered with the psychoneurological dispensary.
“My job now is just to sit in prison”
In 2023, Russian courts handed down 39 sentences for treason. This is a new record – last year there were only 16 such sentences. But these figures do not reflect the total number of cases, human rights activists say, in fact there are many more. “Such an impressive number of treason cases is largely the result of provocations by FSB officers,” wrote the human rights project “First Department.” Such provocateurs correspond with Russians on behalf of Ukrainians or anti-war Russians and obtain the statements or evidence they need, for example, the transfer of money to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
These concerns are confirmed by journalists – for example, in the spring of 2023, the SOTA publication discovered a network of fake telegram-bots for recruitment into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Journalists found out that the operators of unofficial bots, which are engaged in recruitment, including for the “Legion “Freedom of Russia”, are controlled from Russia. To find out this, they sent files with a virus (IP logger) to the bots, which showed them Russian IP addresses of alleged recruiters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“Maybe the legs simply grow from the fact that Sasha posted the flag of the “Freedom of Russia Legion” on the social network “VKontakte”. Probably, interested parties saw this and continued communicating with him,” says lawyer Astakhov. Sasha did indeed publish a white-blue-white flag with the logo of the “Legion “Freedom of Russia” on VK, which “popularizes the victory of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” At the preliminary hearing, this was even confirmed by witnesses, and one of them, M.V. Skopintsev, allegedly first saw Sasha’s page back in April 2023.
The full list of articles under which Sasha was sentenced to 10 years in a strict regime prison is Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code, Part 1 of Article 30, Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and Part 1 of Article 30, Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. These are propaganda of terrorism, treason, and participation in a terrorist organization – the “Legion “Freedom of Russia” is recognized as such in Russia.
So far, the only document available to the lawyer in Sasha’s case is the indictment, but even there are false facts. For example, the pistol that Sasha allegedly bought himself in Irkutsk. Or the Ukrainian flag confiscated from Sasha, which, according to the text of the indictment, was brought to him in 2014 by his cousin, Olga, who lives in Hungary. She told ASTRA that this was not true. Firstly, at that time she did not live in Hungary, and secondly, she never brought Sasha a Ukrainian flag.
“At the time, If you had asked me back then where Crimea was, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. I had my own personal life, career…” Olga says.
Sasha is currently awaiting an appeal in a pretrial detention center in Novosibirsk. He maintains contact with the outside world through a lawyer and letters – volunteers have given him two packages.
“My job now is to just sit in prison. But I hope for the best,” Sasha wrote in his last letter.
Lawyer Astakhov says that he does not even hope for the sentence to be overturned on appeal. One of the reasons for this is that during the court of first instance this wasn’t requested by the lawyer assigned by state. At the same time, Astakhov intends to demand a sentence “below the lowest.”
During all the time that Sasha has been in prison, Matryona has never managed to see him. Once she came to visit her son in the pretrial detention center, but she was denied a visit, citing the lack of a court decision. Perhaps she will be able to see her son at the appeal. In the village of Osa, at least until recently, those around him were completely unaware of the tragedy that had occurred – the family preferred to say that Sasha “went to earn money.”
Author: Liza Chukharova
