Journalist Gleb Yarovoy, who received a letter from the political scientist, said Kynev is in a cast that cannot be removed for another three weeks. He is unable to walk in the cast because he has no crutches.
Kynev is currently in quarantine and has no access to information, according to Yarovoy's account. Yarovoy said Kynev sends everyone his warm regards, but his reflections on the present and the future are bleak. The journalist did not publish the full text of the letter.
The fractures became known on September 28, when Kynev was sent to a hospital after his detention. The Telegram channel Slovo Zashchite, citing a source, reported that Kynev suffered two fractures of the tibia as a result of a beating during his detention. Kynev's lawyer, Mikhail Biryukov, told Agentstvo that he could neither confirm nor deny that information.
Kynev was arrested in late September on charges of illegal production, sale or shipment of narcotics on a large scale (Part 4, Article 228.1, Item "g" of the Criminal Code). He does not admit guilt.
On Ekho's program Status, political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann said Kynev was tortured with electric current to force him to confess to treason, and after he refused was charged with narcotics. Biryukov told Ekho that the lawyers have no documents confirming those words.
The transfer to another detention center became known on October 14; before that, Kynev was held in SIZO-1 Matrosskaya Tishina. According to his lawyer, the reasons for the transfer are unknown.
SIZO-4 held politician Ilya Yashin during the investigation into the military "fakes" case. It also held "police ombudsman" Vladimir Vorontsov, former schemamonk Nikolai Romanov and former director of the Research Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service Bykov.
As far back as 2015, Elena Masyuk, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, described cases of extortion of money and driving prisoners to suicide in the facility. She cited an incident in December 2014 in which two inmates beat a cellmate for several hours while neither other prisoners nor detention center staff reacted.
In 2016, Masyuk wrote an article for Novaya Gazeta noting that, despite numerous publications, prisoners were still regularly beaten, extorted for money and driven to suicide at the facility.
In 2022, inmates complained to members of the Public Monitoring Commission about poor conditions of detention in the facility, wrote commission member Eva Merkacheva. The complaints concerned terrible medical care, poor conditions in punishment cells, a shortage of sleeping places due to overcrowding, and a lack of mattresses, towels, pillows and blankets. According to Merkacheva, some cells had rats, no ventilation, and rotting floors.