Olga Kalatskaya has been in cus­tody since Jan­u­ary 15, on that day she was detained dur­ing her Eng­lish lessons. She is defend­ed by lawyer Yury Stashke­vich. The case is being con­sid­ered by judge Alla Sku­ra­tovich. The pros­e­cu­tion says that Olga Kalatskaya slapped Grig­o­ry Azarenok two times. She is charged under parts 1 and 2 of arti­cle 339 of the Crim­i­nal Code [malig­nant hooli­gan­ism – Ed], for which she could face arrest, restric­tion of free­dom for up to three years, or impris­on­ment for a term of six years.

As fol­lows from the text of the charge, the first time she hit a TV host near house no. 30 on Pri­tyt­sko­go Street. “Act­ing out of hooli­gan motives, with­out rea­son, dis­re­gard­ing gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rules of behav­iour and moral­i­ty, in the pres­ence of strangers, open­ly oppos­ing the inter­ests of soci­ety,” she struck at least one blow in the cheek area, there­by caus­ing Azarenok phys­i­cal pain and suf­fer­ing. Then, in a peri­od from 1.30 pm to 2 pm, she gave him anoth­er slap in the face. Olga Kalatskaya ful­ly admit­ted her guilt, although dur­ing the ques­tion­ing she point­ed out that due to stress and extreme emo­tion­al stress, she had no rec­ol­lec­tion of the sec­ond episode.

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On 23 March, the court of the Frun­zen­sky dis­trict of Min­sk began to con­sid­er the case of inter­preter Olga Kalatskaya, who is accused of mali­cious hooli­gan­ism. She alleged­ly hit STV employ­ee Grig­o­ry Azarenok sev­er­al times dur­ing one of the ral­lies. The state pros­e­cu­tion request­ed two years of restrict­ed free­dom in an open pen­i­ten­tiary for a slap in the face.

Olga Kalatskaya has been in cus­tody since Jan­u­ary 15, on that day she was detained dur­ing her Eng­lish lessons. She is defend­ed by lawyer Yury Stashke­vich. The case is being con­sid­ered by judge Alla Sku­ra­tovich. The pros­e­cu­tion says that Olga Kalatskaya slapped Grig­o­ry Azarenok two times. She is charged under parts 1 and 2 of arti­cle 339 of the Crim­i­nal Code [malig­nant hooli­gan­ism – Ed], for which she could face arrest, restric­tion of free­dom for up to three years, or impris­on­ment for a term of six years.

As fol­lows from the text of the charge, the first time she hit a TV host near house no. 30 on Pri­tyt­sko­go Street. “Act­ing out of hooli­gan motives, with­out rea­son, dis­re­gard­ing gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rules of behav­iour and moral­i­ty, in the pres­ence of strangers, open­ly oppos­ing the inter­ests of soci­ety,” she struck at least one blow in the cheek area, there­by caus­ing Azarenok phys­i­cal pain and suf­fer­ing. Then, in a peri­od from 1.30 pm to 2 pm, she gave him anoth­er slap in the face. Olga Kalatskaya ful­ly admit­ted her guilt, although dur­ing the ques­tion­ing she point­ed out that due to stress and extreme emo­tion­al stress, she had no rec­ol­lec­tion of the sec­ond episode.

In court, Olga Kalatskaya explained her actions: “On Novem­ber 12, 2020, Roman Bon­darenko died. I was very sad and was in deep mourn­ing, felt real­ly sor­ry for the moth­er who lost her only son. I think my acquain­tances and rel­a­tives had the same feel­ings. I left the house at about 11 o’clock. How­ev­er, when at a bus stop, I saw that pub­lic trans­port was not work­ing. I wait­ed for about an hour. A minibus approached, it was the only type of pub­lic trans­port that worked at that time. I decid­ed to get off it at a Pushkin­skaya metro sta­tion. There I saw a small group of peo­ple with whom Azary­onok was talk­ing. He asked, “Why did you come here?”

Peo­ple answered him: “To express grief over the death of Roman Bon­darenko.” He kept ask­ing them whether they know his patronymic name. With­out receiv­ing an answer, he said: “How can you grieve for Bon­darenko, if you can not even call his father’s name?” It deeply offend­ed and out­raged me. In fact, it was claimed that the peo­ple gath­ered could not mourn the death of Bon­darenko, express con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly, because they do not know the details of the biog­ra­phy. In a state of emo­tion­al shock, I approached and gave him a slap. I did not want to hurt him, it was a pure­ly sym­bol­ic ges­ture. I’m sor­ry it turned out so bad­ly that I couldn’t help myself.”

Azarenok asked to stop criminal prosecution

Then the court began to ques­tion vic­tim Grig­o­ry Azarenok. The man is 25 years old, he works as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent for the STV TV chan­nel. The vic­tim said that on that day he went “to cov­er an unau­tho­rized mass event near the Pushkin­skaya metro sta­tion.” He arrived there at about 12.30–12.40 am togeth­er with a col­league, oper­a­tor Andrey Iva­nenko.

“Peo­ple gath­ered there to hold a small unau­tho­rized event. <…> A group of peo­ple sur­round­ed me, start­ed shout­ing, includ­ing with obscene lan­guage.”

“Did they insult you?” clar­i­fied the state pros­e­cu­tor.

“They tried, but I do not con­sid­er myself offend­ed,” he answered.

“What did you ask about as part of the edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment?”

“Stan­dard ques­tions for unau­tho­rized pub­lic events: “What did you come for? What is your goal?” Accord­ing to Azarenok, after he asked about the patronymic of Roman Bon­darenko, he was sur­round­ed by a “group of cit­i­zens” with whom he tried to have “some kind of dia­logue,” he said.

“At a cer­tain moment, this group of peo­ple began to grab my jack­et, toss me back and forth. Lat­er, the defen­dant came up and slapped me in the face. I didn’t see it then, because every­thing hap­pened very quick­ly,” the TV host added.

Azarenok not­ed that he did not write a state­ment against Olga Kalatskaya, “he for­got about what hap­pened on that same evening, but the law enforce­ment agen­cies found this per­son.” After that, Azarenok alleged­ly wrote a peti­tion to ter­mi­nate the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion against Olga Kalatskaya, he did not insist on bring­ing her to crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty, he has no claims.

“Have you for­giv­en the accused?” asked the judge.

“I do not think that she some­how insult­ed me, so I have noth­ing to for­give her for,” explained Grig­o­ry Azarenok.

The state pros­e­cu­tor insist­ed that the actions of Olga Kalatskaya were cor­rect­ly qual­i­fied by the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion author­i­ties. Accord­ing to the assis­tant pros­e­cu­tor, the inter­preter in an aggres­sive man­ner expressed “demon­stra­tive dis­re­gard” of social norms, and did it at least twice.

In her opin­ion, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the accused and the vic­tim is not enough to end the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. There­fore, the state pros­e­cu­tor believes, Olga Kalatskaya should be found guilty and she should be sen­tenced to two years of restrict­ed free­dom in an open pen­i­ten­tiary.

The ver­dict will be deliv­ered on 24 March, at 4 pm.