There’s hardly anything to say about the trial itself.
First, you are officially banned from using Twitter. Then, when you give your Twitter password to friends, you are just as easily convicted for using Twitter.
All your arguments are dismissed by “the written evidence examined by the court, including the victim’s statement and a notarized screenshot.” You can read a report from the sentencing here, if you’re interested.
What matters more to me now is to say how deeply symbolic it is that it was Lisovenko, the United Russia (the ruling pro-Kremlin party) deputy who looks like a drug addict, who “won” this defamation case against me.
He is the complete embodiment of this regime. A 100% perfect match for it.
If you wanted to personify this regime in a single man, it would of course be Lisovenko, not Putin.
Three facts:
In his complaint, Lisovenko writes that one of the main reasons for bringing the case was that “drug addict” insults him because he is an “officer and military pilot—a combat aviation navigator.”
In court, we find out that Lisovenko never served in the army and never graduated from a military academy. His education is from the Forestry Institute. He attended a two-week military training camp and now, in all seriousness, tells everyone that he is an officer-pilot.
In his complaint, Lisovenko says that “drug addict” insults him as an Orthodox Christian and quotes the “Epistle to the Galatians.” In court, he cannot even answer the question, “Explain what the Bible is.” As for the “Galatians,” there’s nothing more to say.
A marvelous document was brought to court for us by deputies from the Babushkinsky District—Lisovenko’s colleagues:
In other words, while serving as head of the Babushkinskoye municipal district, Lisovenko installed his brother-in-law as head of the Babushkinskoye municipal administration. Here is a photo of this mighty administrator (open with caution).
Since the head of the municipal administration is a competitive appointment, Lisovenko’s brother-in-law won the competition by receiving the highest score (candidate No. 7 in the final protocol).
Guess who chaired the selection committee? That’s right: our combat aviation navigator, Lisovenko of United Russia.
And now for our traditional cherry on top: a few simple searches on the Entornet (a mocking misspelling of “Internet”), so hated by pilot Lisovenko (and possibly drug addict Lisovenko), will tell you that his wife, Anastasia Valeryevna Lisovenko, served as head of the municipal institution “Yenisey Sports and Leisure Center” of the intracity municipal district of Babushkinskoye in Moscow from September 2008 until the institution was dissolved.
That is what you call a family racket. No wonder even the prosecutor’s office was outraged.
Work, citizens, work hard, pay your taxes. And we, the United Russia people, will meanwhile settle our whole family into budget-funded jobs and municipal posts. And if you don’t like something, you’ll answer for defamation.
These three traits—incessant lying, hypocrisy, and an incurable attraction to public money—are the 100% reliable identifiers of those in power in Putin’s Russia. A friend-or-foe system.
Now for the moral.
Imagine that twenty years have passed. And we were too lazy, too quarrelsome, and too cowardly to remove all these Putins and Lisovenkos from power.
Because he—Lisovenko—will come to a school as a decorated veteran, with medals (the ones he and his brother-in-law will award each other)
And he will tell our grandchildren: Kids, I was a military pilot. A combat aviation navigator. In those difficult times, when we won back Crimea, I performed many heroic deeds. And once I took down a national traitor so beautifully that every newspaper wrote about me.
At that moment, the school principal (they’ll appoint the niece of Lisovenko’s housekeeper to the job) will say: Children, let’s applaud the hero who defended Russia. Glory to the veterans!
How do you like that picture?
It all depends on us.