In Moscow, Konstantin Olmezov, a mathematician from Donetsk, committed suicide after being unable to leave for Ukraine because of his arrest for 15 days. This was announced by his lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov.

Olmezov came to Russia in 2018 and entered the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He said that after the outbreak of the war on February 24, he wanted to go “to defend his country”, but he was detained and sent under arrest.

After his release, he received an invitation to study at one of the universities in Austria and bought a plane ticket to Turkey to leave Russia, the lawyer added. “And just now I received news that in the morning he committed suicide, leaving a suicide note that he is dying because he cannot bear the horror of what is happening,” Zakhvatov wrote.

Damn you - those who started this war and those who are waging it.

Constantine's suicide letter

"On February 26, I tried to leave the territory of Russia. It was an act somewhat stupid, but only to the extent that it was ill-conceived. I don’t regret it, but I only regret that I didn’t do it on the 23rd when there were all the reasons for it.

I went to defend my country, to defend it from someone who wanted to take it from me. To protect my president, whom I myself chose, the same duty that a boss feels when protecting his subordinate. By the way, in 2019, in the first round, I did not vote for Zelensky. And in 2023 I would not vote for him. But, no matter how unpleasant it may be for me, the freedom of choice and the freedom to be responsible for what is chosen, responsible up to the full experience of the consequences, are vital for me.

It is tough to explain to many Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians how forced changes from the outside that improve well-being even in all respects can be unacceptable simply because they are also forced from the outside. This is something like pulling out from under hyper-custody.

While boarding the bus, I was arrested. The reason for this, I think, is my lousy tongue and one person with whom I rashly shared my plans. When I was arrested, I considered that my freedom was taken away forever, and I directly told the FSB everything that I thought about what was happening. It was stupid, but it couldn't be otherwise. It was the last thing I could hit them with, and I hit with all my might. I was even amused by how helplessly they tried to answer me, how unsophisticated they repeated the crudest propaganda clichés with an absolutely innocent face.

Once in the cell, I began to look for only one thing - death. I made at least ten attempts in seven different ways. Some of them, looking from here, are ridiculous, and their doom seems obvious, but these were sincere attempts. And the only thing I dreamed about, sitting there, was to be released to be able to commit the last one, with normal chances of success (by the way, I still don’t understand why they let me go anyway).

Unfreedom is worse than death for me. All my life I have striven to have freedom of choice in everything - in food, in a profession, in a place of residence, in what soap to wash my hands and for which party to vote. I always ate only the food that was tasty to me, and if this was not possible, then I preferred to endure the hunger.

There are only two ways to deal with unfreedom - repression and rejection. Repression is if you freely choose how to live all your life, and then you are locked up, and you start choosing which book to read while you are locked up. I can fight lack of freedom only by not accepting, refusing to stay in the very situation of lack of freedom - if they prevent me from choosing how and where to live, I would prefer not to live.

I love Donetsk very much, albeit with a strange love. Despite the disgusting childhood, this is still the city where I wrote my first program, my first poem, went on stage for the first time, earned my first money.

The city, in the center of which every shop and turn of the path in every park is saturated for me with some kind of rhyme, some kind of problem that I solved there, names, faces, pleasant and terrible events. Every corner of every street.

I love Kyiv very much - the city where I first found an independent life, I experienced hunger and loneliness for the first time, I truly fell in love for the first time, wrote my best poems. While there, at some point, I wrote 2 verses in 3 days, as much as ever. Every bridge over the Rusaniv Canal, every tree in the forest behind Lisovaya, every bench in the Victory Park are saturated for me with their pain and their love.

I love Moscow very much - the city where I first "got on my feet", gained financial independence, where I proved my first and only theorems, where I truly believed in my strength for the first time. Where is Tsaritsyno!

It hurts for every side in this war, but I see with my own eyes who is defending their land and who is taking over someone else's.

I see who defends the right to responsibility for their own lives and who justifies their own degradation with my own eyes."