Andriy Antonenko (Riffmaster): you are not sitting because you are not guilty, but because we 'did not finish the job'

Riffmaster does not understand why and for what he was chosen.

In a new episode of the program 'Antipody' on the Iceland TV channel, Ukrainian serviceman and rock musician Andriy Antonenko (Riffmaster), accused in the case of the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, spoke about his conditions of detention, the case materials, the guilty and the innocent, as well as a conversation with President Zelensky.

What is a modern Ukrainian prison like and how acceptable are the conditions of existence in it? What did your cell look like?

Well, I have been in several prisons, let's say. In principle, the conditions of an IDF (temporary detention isolator) are a kind of moral torture chamber in a certain sense. Well, imagine a cell where I was for the last eight months. It is a room three steps forward and two steps to the side. It is a small cell for two people, where the bunks are arranged in the shape of the letter 'G', they are narrower than an ordinary bed, less than a meter, probably, well, maybe like a shelf on a train.

There is such a couch, like in old medical offices, bolted to the floor. And this headboard, on which after two weeks your back starts cracking and vertebrae fly out. I, for example, slept with my head in the other direction. The windows are two layers of organic glass, of this thickness, which do not open and are painted over. That is, you cannot see what is outside. This drops your vision to minus. The lighting is like in those same trains, not daylight but like night lights.

Is that why you put on glasses?

Yes. Because everyone there smokes, there are brown little drops of nicotine on the walls. Because it does not go anywhere there. They turn on some kind of exhaust fan, but this fan only does what prevents dampness from being on the walls, so that it simply does not drip. And gradually it turns on. And they took us out to the street from room to room into a stone little bag. It was good that there were parallel bars and a horizontal bar and there was a possibility to do sports.

Once a day?

Once a day. Shower once a week. Strictly. That is, you sit for a week, marinating in all of this, that is, people turn yellow there because of nicotine. Shower once a week. You know nothing, they tell you nothing, they simply come and present you with a fact. These were the conditions in the IDF.

Ah, there is no doctor at all. That is, you can call an ambulance, but if the cops try somehow to pressure you there, they do not call an ambulance for you. Such tasks are set by the investigators. As at one point they forbade me to use warm things and hygiene products.

Why? Because I did not admit myself?

And what was I sitting in prison for? Just like that, for nothing. Because that is how it is. Because they wanted it that way.

So the IDF is entirely dependent on the police and the investigator. I mean that you will be treated the way those who... those on whom you are listed actually say.

Exactly. But there people also see what kind of person you are, and when everyone understood that nobody is in charge and it is just such absurdity and chaos, it began to level out, they started treating people normally.

But they deprived you of warm clothing. What season was it?

Winter. We were arrested in December, and it was January. By the way, about the fact that it was the investigators who forbade it, I do ask questions, I am interested more precisely, in prison they do not ask questions, in prison they show interest. Allow me to be interested. Because when you ask, it is already a 'demand'. I say, for a month everything was normal, I could trim my mustache somewhere to make it more or less okay.

And they say quietly: 'The investigators said to take everything away.' I say: 'And warm clothes?' They say: 'Well, that is what they said.' I say: 'Okay, what to do?' Like, 'to nag' the lawyers. And then a month or a little less passes, and right then the investigator Khotynskyi shows up, the one who conducted searches here with lawyers. And he is somehow such a friend, like, 'Andryukha, hello.'

And I tell the lawyers 'They forbade me.' And this corridor guard, a sergeant, points his finger at him. He called and within five minutes everything was returned.

They do not even realize that this is a crime, according to all norms of international law. This is torture. If you leave a person without clothes in the winter period, it is deliberate torture.

Well, and how they waited a month and a half for a dentist, when my teeth started falling out. Nobody simply reacted. We wrote. There you write a statement. In general, it reached the level of people's deputies there. And the ECHR had already come. We exhausted them. They took us, like, to a normal office and did it. Then the second story was with the teeth. They simply began to fall out in the pre-trial detention center.

Probably from a lack of air, water, all of this is stress.

Yes, these are consequences. They passed me sports nutrition, vitamins, but I am telling you, no matter what you take there, no matter how many vitamins you take, the nervous system, the air. It does not get better.

Did you have cellmates? I remember there were 'fortieth' cells and 'triple-deckers', how was it for you? I mean in the pre-trial detention centre.

Yes, of course. In the pre-trial detention center I had a two-person cell. By the way, this is the new block. The one after renovation, there are paid cells there. I arrived there after the IDF. I entered, everything was like this, tiles, everything clean. I walk into the cell and stood there for about ten minutes. I say to the cellmate: 'Are these plastic windows?' Yes. I say: 'Do they open?' Yes. Wow. A courtyard, everything is there. And I look: the sanitary unit, the door is open, and I realize there is a toilet. I say: 'What do you mean, is that a toilet?'

And there is even a door.

That's it. Even a bunk bed, wide, full-fledged. But despite all that, still, a shower once a week. Medicine is nominal, but there are damn many problems, that is, green antiseptic, aspirin in fact. How do you feel? Badly. Well, get treated, recover. Well, they can do an ECG, they can even take a blood test. But there is no medicine as such there. It is all nominal.

Were special people planted on you in the IDF? I mean a 'stool pigeon'.

Yes. On the very first day. Only I had just arrived.

What does such a 'stool pigeon' look like? What does he do, how does he get into your soul?

It looks like an ordinary person from the criminal world who, judging by everything, is already cooperating.

So in fact this is a criminal?

Yes. And he talks like: 'What is this,' 'What is this.' And so carefully, carefully, in the hope that a person in a state of shock will start to say something, let something slip or start telling something else. Or, on the contrary, he starts telling some prison stories.

And is there such a thing as: 'I will give you better advice on how to get out of this'?

Of course.

But this does not presuppose that you have to confess to him first.

'There was one case, like this. Briefly, I say to him, listen, no, I am not telling you this, because you are something there. No. Just so you understand that here you can do this, and here you can do that.' Well, that is an ordinary such scheme. I am telling you, if we had something to confess to, we would have long ago all told something. I don't know.

There was such a story. Briefly, the doors open, a dude comes in. I am lying there, looking at those doors. The dude comes in and, like, once, a bedside table we share, and once, a little book with a swastika, both. And I say: 'Listen, what is this? I ask you, put it away somewhere out of sight. Why do I need this here, and there are cameras, they will come soon.'

I say: 'What are you counting on? Why did you put this?' Well, these were such funny situations. Just so naive.

And were there normal people there? If you remember the writer Charles Bukowski, who said that he saw far more people with style in prison than outside its walls. How true is this?

I will say it a little differently: I saw far more decent people in prison than outside of it. This is absolute truth.

Is it because it is tougher there and you have to somehow answer for your words?

I think so, and this is connected with it too.

And what, by your estimate, is the number of people who sit for nothing? Did you meet anyone besides yourself?

Of course. And even in very high-profile cases, which we all now know about.

Well, it is good that they are high-profile cases. There is a slim, but a chance, in particular in your case, after a year and a half, but it worked, and you are now free. Not finally, but the issue is resolved, I mean, God willing, that you will stay, of course. But you got out, you have a high-profile case.

But there are people who stole some 'cutter' or did not steal, but simply were passing nearby. Like the case in Kaharlyk, when something was stolen somewhere, some incomprehensible sausage, and then people were raped and everything imaginable was done to them.

Many such people sit. The percentage is very large. I think more than 50%. Only nobody knows about them, and again, I would even include such trifles there, a kilogram of plums or something like that, figuratively speaking. They are trying to knock someone out among politicians, someone else something.

And there the repressive machine works, with informational releases to the people, and people fall for it and do not want to figure it out. I will say this: even when you go there and talk with a person. One thing is that you see him on television, but once you meet him, you start communicating and understand that, in general, simply...

Can you name names?

No. Later. I will say off camera.

Yulia Kuzmenko, who was also arrested in this case, told me that she was not allowed to see her child. Were you also restricted in visits?

Yes. I do not even remember whether it was three or four months before I saw my wife. I know that they did not even let the lawyers come when they brought me in and measured me, saw that my height is 185 centimeters in shoes. Well, I am 180, and with shoes 185. They saw that by height it was simply off. They completely classified the information. They did not give it to the lawyers. For a long time they did not give it. Although by law they had to release me immediately. Apologize and release me in the morning.

This concerns the mismatch of people caught on surveillance cameras with your biometrics.

Yes. And moreover, with their two examinations from 2016 already prepared. They were submitted with errors in shoes and headwear. And we are talking about my data barefoot. And in shoes it is even higher. And likewise they specially arranged it so that we would not appear in one frame together, because the height difference was also obvious. Well, that was obvious. They specially classified everything.

And likewise they were illegally holding us in the IDF, making up some excuses that supposedly something threatens us, that there was some influence on us, that we could be killed there or something. Investigative experiments that were not carried out. How they specifically talked me out of investigative experiments. How they later reported that Antonenko and Kuzmenko refused the investigative experiments, although we did not refuse.

It was like this in general. The same lieutenant colonel Katynskyi came, who told me: 'Briefly, you have to refuse, because there are no lawyers there, there is something else, it is late already, let's just say it on camera.' And I say the following on camera: 'I do not refuse, we will gladly take part in the investigative actions, but since the lawyers were not notified, we ask to postpone to the next such period.'

And it was presented like this until they showed this video in court. The same story was with this case from the MON-50 mine. When they, like, showed: 'Now here it is, the explosives specialists, one, one, it opens, damn, but it is empty. Oh devil.' And right away a statement that it was not combat. That is all.

At the same time Anton Gerashchenko shouts on TV channels: 'They found a bomb, found a bomb, that's it, here it is.' And then half a bomb, we were already joking: well, give me half a mine and three bottles of kefir. And the most disgusting thing in that film was that an expert explosives specialist sat there and talked such nonsense. He hid his eyes from the camera.

You are a professional, what are you babbling? What sprayed mine? What halves of a mine? Are you sick? Who hired you for this job, idiot? Simply a dead end. They write: well, he is such a person, he has such regalia, I think he was even in the Russian GRU, a KGB school, something like that. In short, he is such a specialist. And what is this specialist carrying? What is he carrying? And then in court all of this is revealed. I am telling you, when he was running around there with these doors, they should have taken that building too.

The point is that we later saw that the person who appears in the video has black hair. There is a hairstyle from under the cap, 'little triangles at the temples', a Spanish goatee beard. The hairstyle, you can see, is black hair, and it is not cut short but about one and a half to two centimeters. And I have a shaved nape.

And moreover, when Borislav Bereza early on posted comparison photos. There is a photo from the 20th, and a concert on the 21st. A photo from my concert on the 21st, where I am three times thinner, different shoulders, beard. And I have no hair. If it grows back, it is white, it is gray. There is a shaved nape and temples. If they grow back, they are white. So how is that?

We saw this in court, your temples are all white.

Yes. What did they want? They wanted, what, for everything on me to have grown back. And as prosecutor Zuzak said, there in the appeal nothing matches, neither height, nor build, nothing at all. And there was such a phrase, the judges are sitting, prosecutor Zuzak is sitting, and such a phrase: 'Well, since Antonenko did not figure in the case at that time, there was no one to fit it to.' This was said in court. That is, people themselves admit that they are falsifying the case. There was no one to fit it to.

I remember well when we were first brought together in the summer of 2020, or in July or August, the two of us with Yulia, in a glass box in one room, and when everyone saw that our heights differ, there such a thing started, such a commotion on the internet. It was simply awful. I am telling you, what expertise are we even talking about, what case are we talking about. Just put us next to each other and turn on the camera there.

We clearly see: the person walks like this with such a butt, with such short thick legs, level shoulders, short neck. You can even see it from the shoulders. And there is a slender woman. And that big one, such a bruiser with boobs. Maybe it was even a woman, we do not know, with a glued-on beard. Theoretically, is it possible? It is possible.

What is your alibi based on now?

Alibi?

Yes. Why must we be certain that you are not involved in this?

Well, first, it is clear that I am not involved, that there were other people there. At the time it happened, I was in this same room, in the evening. My mobile phone also shows this, although they were shouting that the phones were somehow turned off. No, until the early hours after midnight I was communicating on Facebook, arranging things. I had a rehearsal the next day.

Please tell me, so this apartment, as they believe, was near Franko Street, where did it happen?

They believe it was my mother's apartment, which is on Honchar Street. But I was here. And the most interesting thing is that the billing shows this.

This was the night of the 19th to the 20th.

Yes. The billing of my phones shows this, my communication on Facebook shows this, exactly from the phone, exactly here. And it is especially interesting that in the morning, at seven and some change, this same person with this same print moves behind Sheremet's car along Franko Street. And the police themselves confirm that I was at home, because I was talking on the phone here. People came to me.

Were you at home alone?

Alone.

And your relatives?

As far as I remember, they were at the dacha.

The investigation, when I studied all these materials for a year and a half, said that you had your phone turned off that night. And they consider this indirect evidence that you could be involved.

I do not know, I honestly say, my position on this is that I always turn off my phone. I never use my phone at night. I hate being woken up. That is, I have such a habit. I do not understand how much this can be proof. But I understand that if they investigated some billing. Do you turn off your phone at night at all?

I just turn off the sound. I am telling you, all the billing shows and proves that the phone and I were here.

So they lied.

Of course they lied. From the first to the last letter.

They said that you had your phone turned off, but it turns out, from your words and the words of the defense, that there is billing that confirms this?

Yes. And moreover. Until one in the morning there is correspondence on Facebook. I was messaging, first of all, with my drummer. They are open, the investigation has them. I was messaging with the drummer, because on the 21st we had a charity concert to support the first volunteer hospital. We were collecting money. That is, on the 19th and 20th I had rehearsals.

I was here, talking with him and then with a person, about some spare parts, some volunteer story. Until one in the morning I was communicating on Facebook via the phone. That is, Wi-Fi. And then I went to sleep. I simply put it down. And from the morning, around seven, seven and some change, people called me, came over.

I was also dealing with various t-shirts. Both musical and our SSO ones. A person called, came here. It was around seven and some change, maybe seven twenty. They checked all of this, looked, a person came, looked at all these things. Then another came.

And at that time, again on the video, when I saw that there is a person with this print, well, when Sheremet's car leaves, this video, this person appears right there at exactly this time. And the investigators confirm: yes, at this time Antonenko was at home, talking on the phone, there are people, there are witnesses, everything is there. Well, how can that be? A simple teleport.

You mentioned this MON-50 mine or half a mine. At the very beginning, as soon as information about this mine appeared, your well-known photo was posted, where you are with all your gear. And then it was said, I will choose my words very carefully now, that at that time there was such a version that it was exactly that building from exactly that MON. Is this true?

Yes. It is exactly that. I brought it home, because it was raining then, we did this photo shoot at our unit for Sergeant's Day, I gathered all this junk, except for weapons, of course, and brought it home, because my car was parked nearby. I had to take it back, since I went on leave, so it was supposed to just stand here until the end of my leave and then drive back to the unit.

The police published an audio recording where you ask to remove it. Why?

Well, imagine the picture. You arrive in the yard, some comrades are standing there, they start telling you about the 'greatness of the Aryan race', you stand in shock. This whole information. And your brain simply understands that this story is still standing at your home. First of all, they will take it, and I need it. You know a hundred percent that it is legal, but they will simply see it now and something unbelievable will start.

You were afraid they would simply pin it on you.

Yes. Although I knew that it was absolutely legal, it is safe. There is nothing like that there.

There was no explosive in it?

No. What explosive. We were given it as a gift back in 2016 by the guys with Polozhynskyi at a concert. They showed: here, it is empty. You think: damn, this is cool.

After seven years of war, each of us has some attributes, either a mine casing or something else.

It is just a casing. My wife wanted to paint it, she wanted to stick a router in there or something, it is cool, it is just cool.

An art object.

Yes. It is just cool. And then this whole pack arrives and starts shouting at you. I say: 'Do you even understand where you are? What greatness of the Aryan race? Are you sick?' You could not even be scared, because the absurdity is such. And you are like, and I have such a thing up on the hill there. Now they will come in, see it, and now they will start sticking it there.

In this state I simply say: 'Remove it.' It is a completely foreign object. Completely unrelated, but it gave a reason for comrade Gerashchenko to run across all channels shouting that they found a bomb. Moreover, the one with which they blew up. The one with which they blew up.

A version was voiced that everything could be made from explosives that might be contained in this casing. But I later talked with the military many times. In particular, we raised your topic in almost every interview. With different people. Both with musicians, and with the military, and with politicians we raised this question.

And those people, whom I have every reason to trust and who were at war, said that it is not so simple to do this. You need to be a highly qualified saboteur. So I do not know who this was calculated for, but such a version was made public by the police. Just as a version was made public by the police that you faked your alibi.

What about the story with Oleksiy Yermilov, your friend, who at first said that on the night of the murder you were at his place, you played guitar, then drank, fell asleep, and you went home. And then he was recorded saying: 'I probably mixed it up,' and so on. What was that?

It is not like that at all. We did not communicate with him at all, this is some personal story of his. It was Chumak (Viktor Chumak, deputy prosecutor general) who sent him to the investigators so that he would tell it. This is his story. We never referred to it. When this story was voiced to me, I said: 'No, guys, come on.' I once taught him guitar. I was at his home once or twice. This was before the war.

Even Chumak himself said, his mother called him. Well, you understand, the deputy prosecutor general. His mother Yermilova called, saying, here is such a story, we know this guy, he was at our place. Then he came and already told the investigator that he had simply mixed up the years. The police used this in such a way that they began saying that supposedly we. We did not even claim this. I said so right away at the interrogation.

Avakov later said that at the briefing only 10% of some evidence they supposedly have was announced, accordingly 90% should be somewhere in the body of the case. Did those 90% appear during familiarization with the case materials, during the court hearing, or is everything based on what was shown?

First, let's put it this way: everything they showed is a complete lie from the first to the last letter, we know this. One can recount it, lay it out on shelves. Even starting with different t-shirts that they showed as the same one, pointing to a person's jacket, then pointing to the same jacket in Kherson. They found a video, showed the face of that person in Kherson. It turned out to be, oh wonder, not Antonenko, but an employee of the Kherson SBU.

You once mentioned the slanted temples, nothing gives away an operative like slanted temples. This is an old meme of ours with an old friend. I say that an operative is very easy to recognize. No matter what he puts on, the temples will still be slanted.

And from all our connections, acquaintances. Since I got to know Yana (Yana Dugar) in 2020 in the IDF during interrogation, with Yulia (Yulia Kuzmenko) we were acquainted virtually. By the way, at the last court session this was confirmed in the same way. Although the prosecutor said something like: 'You see, this confirms the acquaintance.'

Well, that is right, a virtual acquaintance, the fact that we communicated about the accident, about the traffic accident, when the taxi that Yulia Kuzmenko called hit my wife and child right here at the crossing. 'And see, they even had some courts.' Right, in the Shevchenkivskyi court, because the case was being delayed, these hearings were constantly postponed, and Yulia and I did not even cross paths there.

We had some meeting, but I do not even remember it, in some bar, I do not remember her, there I invited her to a concert on the 21st (July 21, 2016). And she came, and there too I do not really remember her, because, first, you had drunk, and second, there was a crowd of people. And this photo with her child. It was posted, by the way, by Borislav Bereza. It is clearly visible there. 'How did the beard grow back in a day,' he says. 'How did he lose 30 kilograms?'

Why am I saying this? I am saying that the briefing was based on that 10% of lies, the remaining 90% is also lies, that is, waste paper, these fake incomprehensible things, some supposed examination, which the Ministry of Justice even recognized as invalid, because there are no such methods, and people simply invented 'psychological examination of gait' or something. In what sense? 90% of lies, waste paper, and that is all.

Are you acquainted with the Hryshchenko couple? Bucha and Puma?

I got to know Bucha in a prison van in 2020.

Ah, so that was when you were already arrested?

Yes. They put us in the prison van, I get in, someone is already sitting there, and a voice from the darkness: 'Are you Riffmaster?' I say: 'I am Riffmaster.' 'Let me at least look at you, I am Bucha, Hryshchenko in the sense.'

And I got to know Inna (Inna Hryshchenko 'Puma') in August 2019 at a military hospital. My command sent me, I had to go and sing songs. And so I went, just as I had been released from service. They said: 'Take the instrument, go.'

I arrived, and a girl comes up to me and says: 'I have just spoken with your former commander, with Sasha Hagai from PDMSh, he said that I can take a photo with you, that you are a normal person.' I say: 'What, was it necessary to talk with Sasha Hagai in order to come up to me and take a photo?' We took the photo, fine.

And this post appears on Facebook, where she wrote: 'That's it, Hagaev, envy me, now I have a photo with Riffmaster.'

And this is also evidence?

And this is also evidence. 2019.

And what do you think? Your assumption, purely your subjective opinion, could Bucha and Puma be involved in the murder of Sheremet?

I think not. It is the same absurdity.

What gives you grounds to think so?

There is the film. In the film it is visible that it is not Bucha. I have seen Bucha, well, where on him, well, where? Well, where? And Inna? Inna is quite stocky, limps, and where is Bucha there? Well, when such questions arise, I say: 'Damn, people, do we have different eyes?' What expertise are we talking about now, if it is obvious.

And did you communicate with them? Because there were all these wiretaps, what was connected with suicide, and these conversations, that it was necessary, so to speak, to 'cheer up'. Yulia Kuzmenko told me that if you listen to a person for long, you can cut out any conversation. This is her position, articulated in my interview. And how do you assess it? Did you listen to all these conversations?

No, I read what there is, but well, what is there?

You do not accept this?

No, not at all. I simply know Yulia and, well, listen. If we are talking about 'Grad tapes', something like that. Well, that is complete nonsense, well, listen. I even know it from myself.

When a person is at the front, you understand that here there is 'star-shooting' and all that, and you understand that you are coming back from rotation or just there with volunteering, you arrive, and here everything is all fancy like this, and people simply do not care about what is happening. About the fact that there is a war in the country, this: 'We did not send you there.'

It is not one person who can say the phrase: 'This is needed, so that something flies in here, so that it reaches a person that there is a war going on in the country.'

I confirm.

I am more than sure that in this sense it was said.

I confirm. My niece at three years old was already hiding from shelling in Luhansk in a bomb shelter. And now, when all these lovers of fireworks start their shenanigans, yes, I confirm that I have repeatedly noted that you should be sprinkled a little with what is happening in the East, you would probably reconsider your attitude to this, so you can take me in principle.

And I think that somewhere close to a million people who experienced this, resettlers from the East, can likewise, I am not even talking about participants in combat.

How do prosecutors behave, by the way, in court? Do you have the impression that they themselves believe it? I once refused the charge when I worked in the prosecutor's office, because the case was sent to me. It was not investigated. It was sucked out, not even from a finger, but from another place.

I said that I will not support such charges. A prosecutor, in principle, has the right. Do they believe it? What is your impression?

Investigators came up repeatedly: they understand and know. Even we laughed at what is on the video. 'Here, this is your Vasya, do you see?' Well, they understand, not that they understand, they know that it was not us, that it was other people.

Prosecutors, we can talk about the same Zuzak (Serhiy Zuzak, prosecutor of the procedural leadership department), who refused to sign the transfer to court. And when this commission of the Ministry of Justice also recognized that the gait examination is nonsense, he said: 'Well then...'

I am curious. I was at an OfRecords meeting when, right after your arrest, about 30-40 people were gathered and then a normal dressing-down was arranged, nobody took this on board. Well, there were some staff toadies.

I, as a person with experience, asked the question: 'This gait examination, what is it?' Well, it exists, but its, let's say, reliability, its informativeness is roughly like that of a polygraph, even less, probably.

It goes as an additional moment to something.

I was not answered the question. Maybe you know this. This expert Birch who conducted this examination, was he even warned about criminal liability?

We do not know.

What is this about? I want everyone to understand. Every expert who conducts such an examination, on the basis of which people are then jailed, is warned about criminal liability for giving a false conclusion. I am curious. I was never answered then.

I think not. Because, first, they were already waving the 'original' of the conclusion in front of our noses, but nobody saw it, it is not in the case.

It is not in the case?

No. There is no original, there is no English original. There is an interesting document, there is a Ukrainian document, in Ukrainian, signed at the end on the last page with Birch's signature. By a person who does not know the Ukrainian language. Who is a karate coach. And everything we sent there, all of it arrived at the gym.

And we contacted Scotland Yard on this issue. There they say that there is such a thing, but this and that. That is, there is an opinion that the guy was brought, 97%, on the 11th (December 11, 2019), paid him in cash, he put his signature under the Ukrainian text and he was sent back. That is it, the end.

An interesting version, but it is a version again, too. But the very fact that there is no original of the examination that the expert should have done, I will not say that the expert must be certified, accordingly he must go through certification in Ukraine as an expert. What have you understood about our judicial and law enforcement system during your imprisonment? What is it?

It is the same Soviet Union. A Soviet, Sovok punitive machine, which, as was said somewhere yesterday, was given cosmetic repairs around 2014. And later, after seven years, all this cosmetics began to peel off, and they tried to stick several new screws into the old rusty body. And this rust ate them again.

Yesterday I said something else. You, as a person who was trained in this, I think you will support this. The situation is that everything here must begin to change from educational institutions. Young people come out of there, and they are already trained to work exactly the way this whole system works.

Change must happen right here, because who are the teachers? Those who worked in the system, respected former employees, who became teachers, and they carry that psychology of this whole system instilled in their heads. While this happens, nothing here will change.

So there is no need for justice there, there is a need for the guilty.

If you are not sitting, it is not because you are not guilty, it is because we did not finish the job.

I see how this upsets you. You even became a bit pale right before my eyes. Let us dilute this sad topic with something good. Top 5 Ukrainian rock bands according to Riffmaster.

Well, 'Riffmaster' is obvious. 'Bumboks', 'Bez Obmezhen', 'Stoned Jesus'. And who else? 'Skai'. I also like a band called 'Hrymyt'.

Has our army, in general, broken away from the Sovok?

It has broken away. Very much, I think, it has been trying to break away since 2014. It has started to come out. Again, there are people who are capable of reformatting themselves in their heads, well, commanders.

Military people who graduated from Soviet higher schools, it is the same as in the police, let's say. This must be broken away from mentally from the very beginning, because there are those who even come into our structure, but there it stinks of this 'regulation thinking', 'Sovietness', 'Sovietism'.

But overall, is there progress?

Overall there is progress, but it seems to me that now it has slowed down a little.

In March 2020, then SSO commander Lunyov said that the service is waiting for you right after you are released from the pre-trial detention center. Are you planning to return to service? That is the first question. And the second: have representatives of the SSO already contacted you?

First, I want to do the main thing: thank Ihor Vasylovych (Lunyov) for support from the first day. To the current leadership, Hryhoriy Anatoliyovych Halahan, my commander, and to all commanders. There was a collective statement from all commanders and deputies that no one would refuse to support me, no one believed this heresy.

Of course, I am not going to leave the Armed Forces of Ukraine, I am going to continue service, moreover, I did not resign, I was not dismissed.

What is your official status now?

I am a serviceman of the Special Operations Forces. Active. The only regret is time. In May 2020 I did not manage to finish my higher education, to get a higher education. I had just one semester left. And I was supposed to receive an officer's rank around the SSO Day (July 29). And I was supposed to go on to become an officer. My goal has not changed.

And will they reinstate you in higher education later?

They must reinstate. By law they must reinstate. And the lawyers went, and everything is okay.

And which higher education institution?

Well, it is the Institute of Culture, but the Faculty of International Law.

Well, come on, now explain about 'ultranationalism and cultivating Aryan greatness'.

And what is there to explain?

Tell us about your views. Who are you ideologically?

Ideologically I am a Ukrainian patriot. I live in Yevbaz. This district is called Yevbaz, which is the Jewish bazaar. Where the circus and the Ukraina department store are, there was a Jewish bazaar. In general, it is a Jewish district. Let us say: in Podil they sewed, and over the hill they brought it here and sold it. And so, living in a Jewish quarter, we 'cultivate'.

I had such a school: all the teachers were Jews, let's say about 97%. My grandfather was a Polish Jew, my grandmother was Mordvin altogether, and I know the word 'kacap' from her, because 'kacap' is not 'kak tsap', but 'butcher', 'slaughterer'. They called these attackers 'kacaps'. And on my father's side there are Polish-Ukrainian lands here, Lemkivshchyna.

Not very much of an Aryan, then.

Not at all.

And how do you relate to ultra-right radical ideas?

I do not relate to them at all.

Well, you told the story about someone trying to put a book with a swastika next to you. You asked for it to be removed, because it was a setup, or because you find this topic unpleasant in principle?

In principle, this topic is unpleasant to me. Both because it is a setup and because it is unpleasant.

And do you really have a Star of David somewhere?

Yes, a small one. They even made me T-shirts with the inscription 'Yevbaz' and a Star of David.

I see, this is my observation, this topic, when we discussed events related to the case, they depress you. I see that you are now a bit emotionally embarrassed. What depresses you the most?

Well, you know, the injustice itself. This is not dithyrambs to myself. I am just such a person, I was brought up this way, what I said. In a certain sense it was not very hard for me in prison, because I am a decent and well-brought-up person myself, you know.

And this dishonesty, this simply insolent smearing with mud. I have such a natural revulsion to this. And then the logical question starts to surface: and for what? Just for what? How much has been done personally for the country and in general. Just for what?

And if I have such an opportunity and I one day meet Avakov, I want to say it to his face. Gerashchenko (Anton Gerashchenko, deputy minister of internal affairs of Ukraine) is no, he is a bastard, I apologize. And this Artem Shevchenko (director of the communications department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). Vermin, damn it, smearing with mud like this, knowing that people are not involved.

Coming to commanders, telling stories. Artem Shevchenko came to one of my commanders and declared: 'We know it is not him. He just had someone hiding with him, let him sit and think.' And these statements like: 'Markiv sat for three years and did not whine, let him sit, nothing, the acquittal is still far away.' How can such things be declared?

I know, because I was persuaded at least ten times, both through acquaintances and personally, some people are involved in this: 'Oh you do not understand, it is this, this, this.' I understand how this works.

I do not understand one thing: for what? Just for what?

Do you have any assumptions about who and why did this?

I do not know, the only thing is, I have said before, that this whole story very much reminds me of the rhetoric of the Russian Federation.

Well, an SSO serviceman is accused.

Moreover, a well-known SSO serviceman, the one who works with an open face, does recruiting, engages in recruiting people into the SSO, a known person, a respected person. And again, we can add here the trip to Normandy, the meeting with Putin. (The meeting in the Normandy format took place on December 9, 2019, before Antonenko's detention)

And after returning from there, such a formulation. Well, known people are simply taken, discrediting the Armed Forces, SSO, volunteers and volunteers. Moreover, think about it now. How illogical, so to speak, the steps are in general. First, people: a children's cardiac surgeon, a candidate of sciences, a musician, a singer, he is also a well-known person in the SSO and so on and so forth, a nurse, how can they be connected with some murder?

And then people who are engaged in completely different things in life. There is no logic at all either there, or there, or there. As far as I am concerned, these are information-psychological special operations carried out, like that briefing too, there in general by the canons, simply by the canons.

It is done so that a person cannot focus on one thing. Starts thinking about a person in one hypostasis: a serviceman, for example, me, and then a musician, as one thing combined with another. And here a children's cardiac surgeon, and what is this for? And simply the brain boils, and the person is driven into a stupor.

This is some kind of Russian trash. The way they love it.

And it is also interesting. When the materials of the case of covert investigative actions (NSRD) were opened to us, I read from 2018. You think: what kind of nonsense is this, NSRD, wiretapping, some parachute jumps, some domestic stories, some trips. Also Lutsenko (Yuriy Lutsenko), I watched the program, shouted that: 'No, are you crazy? Do you not see that this is a completely 'left' story. Where?'

And here, two weeks before the arrest (just when the process of the 'Normandy negotiations' began), they come again and ask for permission for NSRD, in which it is written: 'Taking into account the collected evidence and the conduct of search actions, there are insufficient grounds for serving a suspicion.' There is nothing. They knew that the people had nothing to do with it.

Am I right that all sanctions for investigative measures were given back in 2017-2018?

I do not know, there was a package of documents. And there are no grounds to serve a suspicion. They arrested us without even having grounds to serve a suspicion. And what did they write? They came to court and wrote, so: 'Unemployed, does not live at home, connections in the criminal world, is hiding.' And to judge Vovk, oops. The same nonsense applies to me and Yulia.

The court hearing lasted seven minutes, and the judge was in the deliberation room for 13 seconds. We have all of this on video. In parallel the briefing was going on. And at the Vovk court on the table, brought by prosecutors, there were people nowhere working, who are hiding. Well, what is this? And everything was rolled back in time. That is, completely different dates and different time.

And in an interview, Yulia Kuzmenko told me that she is curious who exactly chose your surnames. That is, she had such a message, the impression is that they were collected like puzzle pieces. She is curious why exactly Antonenko, Kuzmenko and Dugar?

So when we are asked this question, they are interested: 'Why you?' I have the same question: why? For what? And second, why? Who is the director of this shuffling of the deck and choice of people for these roles?

Who bears the ultimate responsibility?

Yes. There is a person who proposed the list. And there is also a person who chose, that is him.

Whom do you accuse of what happened to you?

First of all, that unknown person who put the checkmarks. And we saw all the others.

When I interviewed Kuzmenko Dobosh's lawyer, I suggested he appeal to the president, and he then gave a fairly emotional tirade. I want to suggest the same to you and say whatever you like about the president, because this interview will 100% be watched by him.

I do not know, I would not appeal to the president. Nothing to say yet.

Imagine that you met.

If I meet, then I will say.

So you do have something to say?

I do have something to say, but let it be between us. I do not want them to speculate on it later. Because it will turn out like this. They dragged the president to this wretched briefing, and now it is very hard for him to wash himself off, practically impossible. So I do not want now...

You can say that you need to talk.

Yes, yes. 'We need to talk.' I am better at a meeting. Face to face, because these questions are not for outsiders' ears. These questions are between us.