Pavel was born on 25 May 1997 in Brest.
At the age of 16, Pavel’s parents died and he became an orphan. He had to become an independent man. Before his arrest, he studied at Brest State Technical University, specializing in economics and enterprise management. He studied English and programming. Worked at a factory in Brest.
Paul is a vegetarian, and loves animals. He was involved in helping homeless animals: finding ways to help them, feeding them, finding a shelter.

Views

*We are unaware of his political views, but since he is detained under the anarchists’ case, we consider it important to support him in every possible way.

The history of detention and the case

March 2, 2021 in Brest a number of activists and young people, who were probably on the list of Main Department for Combating Organized Crime as politically unreliable, were actively detained. During the week Aleksandr Kozlyanko, Andrey Marach, Pavel Shpetny, Nikita Dranets, Daniil Chul’, Aleksey Golovko were detained.
Each of the detainees were charged with gross disorderly conduct and participation in the international criminal organization Revolutionary Action.
It later became clear that the activists Akikhiro Gaevsky-Khanada, Andrey Chepyuk i Aleksandr Frantskevich, detained back in August-September 2020, and human rights activist Marfa Rabkova were also charged with the same case.
By the beginning of the trial the majority of the detained guys were charged under three-dozen articles of the Criminal Code. The grounds for the charges were the anarchists’ actions against the battery factory (blocking the Brest-Minsk highway), the participation of anarchists in the march of non-slackers in Brest in 2017 and graffiti. Interestingly, at one time the march of non-slackers was qualified as a mass event and some anarchists received an administrative arrest for it. For some reason, 4 years later, they decided to initiate a criminal case.

Sentence

On April 25, 2022 in Minsk city court the hearing of the “international criminal organization” of anarchists began. According to the investigation, the activists of the Revolutionary Action in Belarus, Revolutionary Freedom in Ukraine and People’s Self-Defense in Russia created a criminal organization to undermine the regimes.
On September 6, 2022, Judge Sergey Hripach pronounced the verdict to the 10 defendants in the case of “international criminal organization.
Pavel was sentenced to 6 years in a reinforced regime colony and a fine of approximately €5,600.

Detention conditions

During the investigation he was periodically summoned for conversations by officers of the Main Department for Combating Organized Crime and pressured to testify against the other detainees in the same case. Pavel tried not to answer questions and not to react to threats.
The first year in prison Pavel was very sad, it was hard to adapt to the conditions and the realization that he would be sentenced. Now he is used to it and has decided to educate himself – he is studying programming and English (he asked his sister to send him books).

Relatives

Pavel’s sister and her whole family are waiting for him outside: “My brother is my own little man who is a part of my soul. Parting with him is like tearing my heart apart. He is someone I can rely on and who will always be a support and a shoulder to lean on and boldly go on with my life. I believe that soon we will be reunited and my heart will start beating again”.

In his letters, Pavel is very caring and grateful:

“Dear little sister, I am very glad to hear that you are pregnant! Most importantly, devote all your free time to yourself, take care of yourself and eat well! Thank you for your support, care and attention! I am grateful to all the people close and dear to me for their support and thank you for remembering me! I hug everyone!”

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