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“I Admit That I Deceived You”

How a well-known Russian “human rights activist” Maria Chashchilova falsified her biography and gained access to information that posed a threat to people persecuted by Russian authorities

Доступно на русском
Date
31 Jan 2025
“I Admit That I Deceived You”
Illustration: Elizaveta Dobrovinskaya

The biography of Maria Chashchilova, a lawyer well-known in the Russian human rights community, told by herself, sounds like the script of an edgy movie. For many years she was working in various human rights organizations, where, according to her, she was involved in rescuing gays from Chechnya, helping victims of political repression, investigating cases of sexualized violence in Ukraine and handling other dangerous cases. 

Chashchilova has repeatedly given interviews to media and YouTube channels and commented on the news as an expert in various areas of law. Among her acquaintances are dozens of Russian journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists. IStories journalist Irina Dolinina met Chashchilova three years ago. Like many other lawyer acquaintances, she was impressed by her biography, full of suffering, heroism and self-sacrifice. Until she learned that much of it was untrue. 

Public interest

Maria Chashchilova, 33, is one of the most unusual heroines of IStories’ publications. For the first time, we had to investigate the activities not of some odious official, but of someone who for many years had been considered one of our own in the journalistic and human rights community. In the course of a months-long investigation, we talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with Chashchilova in the North Caucasus, Moscow, and Europe, and collected documentary evidence indicating that the public biography of the famous lawyer is more like a legend than the life of a real person. 

We believe it is important to publicize the facts we learned during our investigation. For more than six years, Chashchilova worked for Russian human rights organizations, where she gained access to information that posed a threat to people persecuted by the Russian authorities: those who work anonymously for “undesirable” organizations, lawyers defending Russian political prisoners and Ukrainian prisoners of war, and LGBT activists declared extremists in Russia. 

Acquaintance

We met three years ago at a closed training on digital and physical security for journalists and human rights activists. The story Chashchilova told then was impressive even by Russian standards: she was born in Khabarovsk Krai; her father was a high-ranking prosecutor; after working in the police, she learned how the law enforcement system works from the inside and decided to become a human rights activist; she turned a house in the Moscow Oblast, given by her father, into a shelter for LGBT people; and she personally drove gay men out of Chechnya. 

This story elicited sympathy not only from me, but also from the other training participants, among whom was Chechnya researcher Tamara [her name has been changed because she continues to write about Chechnya]: “When she [Chashchilova] started giving me all this information, that she had her own shelter, that she had rescued and transported LGBT people from the Caucasus, I thought: ‘What a strong-spirited, resilient woman. A feminist, fearless, giving her all to the people.’” 

After meeting, they became friends and kept in touch for several years. In 2024, Tamara was the first to tell me that she had doubts about her friend: Chashchilova was trying to find out the details of an ongoing investigation into the death of a human rights activist in Chechnya, explaining her interest by saying that she had been asked to do so by a mutual acquaintance. Tamara decided to check whether this was true: she wrote to the acquaintance, who replied that she had not asked Chashchilova for anything. 

When I heard about this, I remembered that I myself was embarrassed by Chashchilova’s questions about my work in IStories but I did not pay much attention to them because, first, I did not share any confidential information, and second, I trusted Chashchilova as a well-known human rights activist. After Tamara’s story, I looked at our correspondence with a different eye. First of all, Chashchilova was interested in the sources of our publications, how the editorial staff was organized, and with whom IStories worked in Russia. I shared my concerns with Roman Anin, the founder of IStories: first, we decided to check those facts from Chashchilova’s public biography that were easy to verify. 

“Advocate”

“It all started with cooperation with the Russian LGBT network. Then I was told about what was happening in Chechnya — it was 2016, the first wave of the Chechen hunt for gays... At that time I had an advocate status, and at first I thought that the person who was telling this was probably suffering from some kind of psychiatric illness, because it’s unreal, such a thing is impossible. But then I saw people myself, their cases — and then how can you forget this?” — this is how Maria Chashchilova talked in one of her interviews about why she decided to become a human rights activist. 

In her response, we paid attention to the statement about her advocate status. This information can be checked in the Unified State Register of Advocates: we did not find any information that Chashchilova had this status. 

The coordinator of the LGBT Emergency Network, who asked for anonymity, told IStories that Chashchilova did not cooperate with his organization and did not participate in the evacuation of gays from Chechnya. 

In 2019, Maria appeared in the media as the “advocate of Yulia Tsvetkova” — a young artist against whom the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article on the distribution of pornography because of drawings in her publica Vagina Monologues. At the time, Chashchilova was working with the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives (MCC), where she coordinated the legal service. In the contract for the provision of legal services to the center’s wards, which is in the editorial board’s disposal, she indicated that she was a member of the Murmansk Regional Bar Association. However, there is also no data about it in the register of the bar. 

IStories talked to Chashchilova’s former colleagues at the MCC: they have unpleasant memories of cooperation with the lawyer. Natalia [she asked not to publish her real name, because IStories was recognized by the Russian regime as an “undesirable organization”], the organization’s former financial director, recalls that at one point she had doubts about Chashchilova’s credibility and asked her to send all her documents, including her advocate license: “At first she told me that she had lost it. I thought, ‘Okay, I guess I should restore it, because it’s not the case: you work in this field.’ She was the coordinator of legal aid for the whole area until the last time. And when it came to the point where we were firing the person, she said: ‘I never said [that I had advocate status].” 

Photo: Maria Chashchilova’s social networks

Entering

Chashchilova is originally from Amursk in Khabarovsk Krai. In 2016, she moved to Murmansk, where she met Varvara, a well-known LGBT activist in the city [she also asked that her real name not be published due to IStories’ “undesirable” status]. It was with this acquaintance that Chashchilova’s human rights career began. 

“It’s hard for me to realize that she actually entered the human rights community through me, for which I blame myself a lot. It’s very hard to sleep in the same bed with someone you suspect. It’s given me gray hairs. We lived together for two years, and we were inside [the community] all those years. It’s like sex espionage...,” Varvara admits in an interview with IStories. 

She met Maria at a local karate club, where Chashchilova came to train in the second half of 2017. According to her, at first, communication with Chashchilova did not go beyond the walls of the club, until in 2018 the lawyer offered Varvara her help and advice on legal issues. The activist agreed because “there were not enough working hands.” 

In the same year, Varvara decided to move to Moscow, about which she informed Chashchilova. A short time later, Maria called her in tears: “She is crying, saying that she was beaten by her husband and has nowhere to go. I said, ‘Come to my place then.’ She’s not going to be on the street, is she? And I guess she’s got to get the beatings taken care of somehow. I expect a person with a law degree to report about the beatings to the police, to defend herself. She comes to me, there’s no sign of beatings. But I know that a person can beat you in a way that leaves no marks. But she is hysterical, and she stays with me to live.”

IStories contacted Chashchilova’s ex-husband. Denis was not at all surprised when he heard that we are checking some facts from the biography of his ex-wife: “Knowing this person, nothing surprises me. She may have worked in one place and told me she worked in another place. She lied to me at every turn. Almost as soon as we started living together, I started noticing the tendencies to lie. But that’s the thing about human beings, they believe. So I believed that people could be fixed.” Denis Chashchilov denies that he ever physically abused his ex-wife. They stopped communicating after Maria moved with Varvara to Moscow. Chashchilova told her ex-husband that she was leaving “because she chose her career.”

“Human rights activist”

In Moscow, Varvara and Maria settled in a shelter that the Moscow Community Center, together with other human rights projects, used to house endangered LGBT people (Maria later claimed that the house given as a shelter was a gift from her father; according to the Rosreestr, it was not). Varvara provided them with psychological help, and Chashchilova lived there as her partner. 

Maria then briefly took a job at the MCC, but did not work there for long — until the organization questioned her credibility and found out that she had probably lied about her advocate status and other facts from her biography. 

By the time she left the MCC, Chashchilova had already established a relationship with Dmitry Piskunov, a lawyer of the Committee Against Torture (CAT). To him Maria gave a different reason for her dismissal from the human rights organization. “Because she started dating a man, the LGBT organization perceived this as a betrayal, and they decided to fire her, she said. She had nowhere to live in Moscow, so I said: ‘Well, come [to me] to the Caucasus for now,’” Piskunov recalled in a conversation with IStories.

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At the time, he was head of the North Caucasus branch of the CAT and lived in Pyatigorsk, from where he regularly traveled to Chechnya to provide legal assistance and evacuate those in danger. According to Piskunov, Chashchilova was hardly involved in the work of the CAT: during their time in the Caucasus, she interviewed and met several times in her Pyatigorsk apartment those whom human rights activists had evacuated from Chechnya. 

Chashchilova herself described her activities in the North Caucasus differently in an interview: “We evacuated a girl who was suspected of homosexuality. She underwent a procedure of exorcising jinns at the Center of Islamic Medicine in Grozny: her mouth was sewn up, her ribs were cut, or rather, the skin along her ribs, and she was put in a bathtub with salt water and then they read the Koran. The skin on her body twisted from the salt water. It was very difficult. We were doing bandages and doing her evacuation by hand, so it’s probably still the most shocking case I know.” According to Piskunov, there has never been a case like this in Chashchilova’s practice. The CAT employees, with whom IStories spoke, confirm that she did not do anything like that, and the organization perceived her as “a girl who doesn’t really do anything, but is always meddling in the wrong business.”

Emigration

After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Russian human rights activists and journalists were forced to leave Russia. Maria Chashchilova was among them: in February 2022, she was already working for OVD-Info, a human rights media project about political persecution. 

While abroad, Chashchilova quickly and easily joined the emigrant community: she was invited to private meetings of human rights activists and lawyers, and began to appear in the media as an expert in various areas of law (IStories unfortunately, also quoted her as a lawyer for OVD-Info). 

Chashchilova actively made acquaintances with departed journalists and activists in Riga, Prague, Berlin, and other European cities. According to our interlocutors, she often gave generous gifts during meetings and invited her interlocutors to expensive restaurants and spa treatments in hotels at her own expense. Elena Trifonova, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Russian media People of Baikal, met Chashchilova in Riga. Trifonova recalls that the lawyer’s lifestyle was the first signal to her that “something was wrong.”

The lifestyle was not the only thing that made Chashchilova stand out: she asked questions that are not commonly asked in our environment. On several occasions, she approached the journalists of IStories and asked them to share data with her on the most sensitive topics. She was also interested in the legal and organizational structure of IStories and another investigative publication, The Project: for some reason she believed that both media outlets were one and the same. 

Rereading our correspondence, among other things I saw a question from Maria Chaschilova about my home address in Prague. I had completely forgotten that I had told it to her, because I had not received any gift from France and Maria never returned to this topic again. Then this address was used by an anonymous person to send threats to our editorial office
Rereading our correspondence, among other things I saw a question from Maria Chaschilova about my home address in Prague. I had completely forgotten that I had told it to her, because I had not received any gift from France and Maria never returned to this topic again. Then this address was used by an anonymous person to send threats to our editorial office

Another alarm bell sounded for Trifonova when, at one of her meetings, she asked Chashchilova to talk about what happened at a human rights conference in Berlin in April 2023, after which two participants, including the head of the Free Russia Foundation, Natalia Arno, complained of symptoms of poisoning. Chashchilova was one of the organizers of that conference, but when Trifonova asked her about it, the lawyer replied in an irritated and elevated tone that she was not there at all, the journalist recalls. 

This is true: Chashchilova invited me to the conference, but at the last minute she wrote that she would not be there because she was going to Ukraine to interview victims of sexualized violence by Russian soldiers. Maria vividly described how, upon entering Ukraine, a border guard “first searched her, turned her entire suitcase upside down, spoke to her in an absolutely rude manner,” and then threatened to “shoot her in the knees and tear up her passport.” And this, as we soon found out, was not true. 

Interview

Before publishing this article, IStories sent Maria Chashchilova questions, including about her trip to Ukraine in 2023. 

Before the interview, Chashchilova sent us copies of documents, among which were stamps in her passport about crossing the border with Ukraine. However, they were all stamped in 2019. 

— These are the stamps of 2019. I asked about 2023 — the period when you were involved in organizing an anti-war conference in Berlin, — said Roman Anin, founder of IStories 

— Yes, I did, — Maria confirmed. 

— Well, there you go. And during that period, during that conference, you traveled to Ukraine...

— I really wanted to enter, but I didn’t. I am very ashamed that I misinformed you at that moment, that it was rather, you know, such an embarrassing lie. I admit that I deceived you. 

— Why?

— It’s hard for me to explain. It wasn’t a very wise decision — not even that, it was a dumb decision because, as I already said, I had submitted my documents, I had a visa, and I was just about ready to go. I was fully prepared to leave and work. At that time, I was getting a lot of requests for help, and I really wanted to go there. I had tickets right up to the border — I was all set. But the problem was that I had applied for a visa twice at the Ukrainian consulate in Latvia… They called me in for an interview two times. I went, and they told me everything was fine, that I would get it soon. But in the end, they kept extending the waiting period.

In addition to asking Chashchilova about her attempt to travel to Ukraine, we also inquired about her education, as we had a copy of her diploma, which she had submitted when applying for a job at MCC in 2018. This document, issued in 2014 by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) under her maiden name, Pershina, raises several doubts: first, its serial number does not appear in the federal registry of Rosobrnadzor; second, it was printed on a form that had been discontinued in 2012.  

However, just 20 minutes before the interview, Maria Chashchilova unexpectedly sent us a photo of an entirely different diploma, allegedly issued by the same RANEPA in the same year, 2014. During the conversation, Roman Anin repeatedly asked her whether she had any other higher education diplomas and whether she had submitted them anywhere. Each time, Chashchilova insisted that she had no other diplomas. 

If in the first version of Maria Chashchilova’s diploma there are gross errors in the design (for example, instead of the direction “Jurisprudence” is written the name of the faculty), the second is already designed in accordance with all the rules
If in the first version of Maria Chashchilova’s diploma there are gross errors in the design (for example, instead of the direction “Jurisprudence” is written the name of the faculty), the second is already designed in accordance with all the rules
However, it was still “issued” within the timeframe for the completion of full-time studies, and Chashchilova claims that she enrolled in 2009 and studied on a part-time basis
However, it was still “issued” within the timeframe for the completion of full-time studies, and Chashchilova claims that she enrolled in 2009 and studied on a part-time basis

We checked the number of the document that Maria sent us before the interview: there is no diploma with such data in the federal register of Rosobrnadzor. 

Moreover, in her employment record book, a photo of which she also sent us before the interview, the word “secondary” in the education field was visibly altered to “secondary vocational,” and in the field where the specialization should be listed, the word “higher” was added. If information about higher education had been added by an employer after Maria obtained her degree, it would have been formatted differently according to established regulations, with a mandatory reference to the basis for the educational update.

In addition to the fact that the data on education is incorrectly corrected, this labor book was filled out after Chashchilova “graduated” from university. That is, higher education should have been entered first and only
In addition to the fact that the data on education is incorrectly corrected, this labor book was filled out after Chashchilova “graduated” from university. That is, higher education should have been entered first and only

When applying for a job at MCC in 2018, the lawyer also stated in her resume (a copy of which is in the disposal of the editorial team) that she had served from 2012 to 2015 in the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Amur District of Khabarovsk Krai. She claimed to have resigned voluntarily with the rank of police lieutenant.

The same information about her was given in a 2020 post in the Police Ombudsman group on VKontakte: “I, lawyer (human rights activist) Chashchilova Maria, retired police lieutenant, demand to immediately stop the illegal criminal prosecution of Vladimir Vorontsov [creator of the Police Ombudsman project, convicted of extortion and making pornography]. I believe that the case against him was fabricated in retaliation for his human rights activities and defense of the rights of ordinary police officers against the arbitrariness of the Interior Ministry leadership.” 

Maria Chashchilova’s page in VKontakte is indicated in the authors of the post
Maria Chashchilova’s page in VKontakte is indicated in the authors of the post
In addition, Chashchilova actively corresponded in the comments under this post — in none of them did she deny her “rank of police lieutenant” at that time
In addition, Chashchilova actively corresponded in the comments under this post — in none of them did she deny her “rank of police lieutenant” at that time

However, in an interview with IStories Maria Chashchilova began to deny for some reason that she was a full-time employee of the Russian law enforcement agencies. She claimed that she had never indicated such information about herself anywhere, and that she was not the one who wrote the post on VKontakte. “It wasn’t me who wrote the post. I posted a picture that I was picketing in support of Vorontsov, and wrote in this group that I support [him]. And the post itself was made by the advocate who represented Vorontsov,” Chashchilova said. 

According to her, in 2015, she worked for about a year as an intern with interrogators at the police department in Amursk, from where she left without enrollment and rank. Chashchilova claims she got into the police internship under the terms of a targeted university recruitment program paid for by the Interior Ministry. The minimum period of working off higher education on target training was then three years, not one. “Overall, I was no stranger to the opportunity to serve in the police force. Times were different back then,” Chashchilova told IStories. 

On Chashchilova’s VKontakte page, there is one photo in front of the Amursky Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia building, where she says she was an intern
On Chashchilova’s VKontakte page, there is one photo in front of the Amursky Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia building, where she says she was an intern

Family

Every acquaintance of Chashchilova I spoke with recalled that Maria often talked about her influential father from Khabarovsk — either an FSB officer or a prosecutor (different people heard different versions). According to her, he “kept the whole city in fear,” and even the local gangsters were afraid of him.

“All the time there were some references to some authoritative man whom she called father. Endlessly in her conversations she relied on this man: ‘Daddy wants this and that…’, ‘Daddy wants me and my sister to go to Turkey’ and so on. I got the impression that this was some kind of support for her. But no one has ever seen him,” recalls Chashchilova’s former colleague at the MCC. 

Chashchilova’s father was not seen in person by either her first husband (the father was not at the couple’s wedding), nor her ex-girlfriend Varvara, with whom they moved from Murmansk to Moscow, nor her second husband — Dmitry Piskunov. “Here she sent me a photo and wrote that this is her father with a new child in Spain,” says Piskunov and shows this photo during the interview. I found the man in VKontakte using this photo: he turned out to be the father of Chashchilova’s friend from Murmansk. 

However, later I managed to find the page of Chashchilova’s real father in Odnoklassniki. He turned out to be 65-year-old Valery Pershin. According to leaks from Russian government agencies, he worked as a trucker and mechanic in an automobile repair shop. In the 2000s, he was convicted under an article on document forgery. 

Photos of Valery Pershin, Maria Chashchilova’s father, on his Odnoklassniki page
Photos of Valery Pershin, Maria Chashchilova’s father, on his Odnoklassniki page

This man clearly does not fit the description of the “influential prosecutor” Chashchilova so often told her acquaintances about. Exploring Valery Pershin’s page, I noticed a photo of him standing in an embrace with another man — his own brother Vladimir. 

Valery Pershin is tagged on his brother Vladimir Pershin’s Odnoklassniki page
Valery Pershin is tagged on his brother Vladimir Pershin’s Odnoklassniki page

Vladimir Pershin, Maria’s uncle, fits perfectly into the image of the influential regional enforcer she so often spoke of. Furthermore: he played a key role in one of Russia’s most high-profile political trials of the last decade. 

Key witness

Vladimir Pershin is a 63-year-old Interior Ministry colonel and former head of the anti-gang unit. His name is known to many in Khabarovsk: not so much because of his work in law enforcement, but because of his role in the high-profile case of former regional governor Sergei Furgal, who was arrested in 2020 on charges of organizing contract killings.

Vladimir Pershin, Maria Chashchilova’s uncle, does not hide his police past on his Odnoklassniki page
Vladimir Pershin, Maria Chashchilova’s uncle, does not hide his police past on his Odnoklassniki page

The criminal case against the popular governor sparked an unprecedented wave of protests in Khabarovsk: thousands of local residents came out to rallies in his support, believing that the prosecution of the region's leader was the Kremlin’s revenge for his refusal to withdraw his candidacy in favor of a United Russia man. 

The Investigative Committee claimed in its press releases that it had irrefutable evidence of Furgal’s involvement in the murders. In fact, the politician’s accusation is based almost entirely on the testimony of a key witness for the investigation, Vladimir Pershin. 

According to case materials and Pershin’s own testimony, he was Furgal’s “protector” while serving in law enforcement, during the time when the future governor was engaged in business. “To make sure the gangsters, the criminal element, didn’t interfere with the business, didn’t put pressure on it,” Pershin explained his role.

In the late 2010s, Chashchilova’s uncle left the police, and their paths with Furgal diverged. In 2016, Pershin himself was convicted of extortion. According to three sources of IStories familiar with the details of Furgal’s case, while Vladimir Pershin was in the colony, operatives from the central office of the FSB visited him, having long conversations. A short time later, Pershin was released from the colony on parole and immediately testified against Furgal, which allowed the Kremlin to get rid of an unwanted rival in the region. 

During her interview with IStories Maria Chashchilova gave strange answers to questions about her uncle: first she said that her uncle on her father’s side was probably dead and she did not know him; then, when asked directly if she knew Vladimir Pershin, she admitted that she did, but that she had been in contact with him in her youth, until she was 18; later she said that she “stayed with him for a while” when she was a student and that he helped her with money. 

When asked if she knew what her uncle was up to in Khabarovsk, she first answered “no” (“when you visit someone, do you always ask what the person sitting at the table does for a living?”), then said that she learned about his work in the police almost by accident from a newspaper article that Pershin’s son, Yaroslav, had shown her. 

Yaroslav Pershin was serving in the FSB at the time, IStories found out. Chashchilova said in an interview that she knew nothing about it. 

— Do you have an uncle? — Roman Anin asked. 

— An uncle?

— Yeah. 

— Like, your mother’s brother?

— Mother’s, father’s, maybe on different lines. 

— I have two uncles on my stepfather’s side. And an uncle on my mother’s side. But he died a long time ago. Maybe my father's side died too, but I don’t know them. 

— You don’t know Vladimir Pershin?

— Well, I know him. But the last time I saw him was when I wasn’t even 18. He was trying to patch things up with our family. 

— So you didn’t keep in touch with him at all?

— Well, how should I put it... I tried to stay in touch with him when I lived in Khabarovsk. But no. I can’t say it really worked out. They invited me over, I visited them a couple of times, got to know their family. For a while, I even stayed with them when I was in Khabarovsk. But that was back in my student years, and it wasn’t anything serious... And no, I don’t have any relationship or contact with them now. Haven’t for many years.

— Did you know what your uncle was up to in Khabarovsk?  

— No. 

— You didn’t know he was in the police?

— I found out about it pretty late, when I was already in university. The first time I heard about it was when his son bragged that their family had been targeted and showed me a newspaper article. <...> I never asked those kinds of questions. When you visit someone, do you always ask what the person sitting at the table does for a living?

— Masha, if it’s a stranger, no, if it’s your uncle, of course you know. 

— Well, no, I didn’t know for a while, then I found out. What was that supposed to change? I was no stranger to the opportunity to serve in the police force myself. Times were different back then. 

Reaction

Almost immediately after we spoke with Maria Chashchilova, the website Sotaproject, owned by Russian oligarch Leonid Nevzlin, published excerpts from our conversation at her request. However, they completely altered some of her responses and cut out the parts where she admitted to lying or failed to explain the discrepancies in her documents.

In December 2024, OVD-Info parted ways with Maria Chashchilova. “We fired her not because of your investigation, but its preparation, which we knew about, became a reason to take a closer look at her. We found several situations of deception, failure to provide important information about herself. And we realized that we can’t vouch for what Masha tells us or our partners about herself, and it’s impossible to work that way,” Alexander Polivanov, director of OVD-Info, told IStories. 

But Chashchilova was not out of work: while she was still being audited by OVD-Info, she took a part-time job with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors to military service in Russia (MCO), a public association that counsels Russians who wish to leave the army for reasons of conscience, including those on the front lines in Ukraine. The MCO stated it had “conducted a security check that revealed no grounds for distrust” of Chashchilova.

“I am eaten up with guilt that she made some kind of move through me. That’s why I agreed [to talk]: it’s very important for me to share all the information that I have, because it’s a matter of the safety of others. And what can I do to remedy the situation? I believe that we all at some point believed her not for bad reasons, but our best qualities were used,” Chashchilova’s ex-girlfriend Varvara explained her motivation for giving the interview to IStories. 

I understand her well, because I myself did not immediately realize that sympathy for someone else’s misfortune and trust can be manipulated so skillfully and for so long.

Editor: Roman Anin

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