| Nicolai Lilin Russian: {{nobold|Николай Лилин | |
| Birth Name: | Nikolai Yurievich Verzhbitsky |
| Birth Date: | 12 February 1980 |
| Birth Place: | Bender, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union (now Moldova) |
| Language: | Italian |
| Years Active: | since 2009 |
| Notable Works: | Siberian Education: Growing up in a Criminal Underworld (2009) Free Fall: A Sniper's Story from Chechnya (2010) |
Nikolai Yurievich Verzhbitsky (born 12 February 1980), known as Nicolai Lilin, is an Italian-Moldovan writer and tattoo artist from Transnistria. His first novel, Siberian Education, was published in 2009 and was adapted into a 2013 film starring John Malkovich. The novel, which Lilin claimed was based on his experiences living among Siberian criminal gangs in his native Bender, became a bestseller in Italy, but garnered criticism over its factual inaccuracies. Similar criticisms would be leveled at its sequel, Free Fall, which narrates the author's alledged experiences during the Second Chechen war.
While initially a vocal critic of Russia under Vladimir Putin, since 2014 Lilin has consistently taken anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western stances throughout the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War, and has attracted attention for spreading conspiracy theories, fake news and libelous comments.
Lilin claims to be the descendent of nomadic, Christianised, formerly tiger-venerating indigenous people from southern Siberia who adorned themselves with tattoos meant to symbolise their life experiences and to serve as identification, a practice dating back 5,000 years.[1] [2] These natives, which he calls "Efei", would raid Indian and Chinese caravan convoys in Siberia until they were purged by tsarist forces.[3] [1] A splinter group called "Urkas" took refuge in the taiga and resisted all attempts at subjugating them until finally being defeated by the communists.[3] By order of Stalin, the Urkas were deported to Bender, Moldova in 1938.[4] In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lilin stated that the Urkas were sent to do the Soviet regime's "dirty work" in ridding the city of pro-European Jews, Ukrainian nationalists, Romanians and Moldovans.[5]
Lilin's claims regarding his heritage have been disputed. Former Kremlinologist and La Stampa journalist Anna Zafesova, as well as criminologist Federico Varese, noted that "Urka" does not denote an ethnic group as Lilin claims, but is a term first recorded in the early 20th century referring to professional thieves.[6] [7] Historian Pavel Polian noted that the Efei never existed, and that the victims of population transfer in the Soviet Union were sent to Siberia, but never from there.[6] Anthropologist Michael Bobick and Kommersant journalist Elena Chernenko further noted that Stalin could not have deported the Urkas to Bender in 1938, as the city was part of Romania at that time.[8] [4] According to Lilin's uncle, Vitaly, the Verzhbitskys originated in Poland, and settled in Moldova during the 19th century. A rehabilitation letter regarding Lilin's great-grandfather shows that he was not a Siberian-born criminal, but a factory worker from Tiraspol who was executed under suspicion of being a pro-Romanian counterrevolutionary.[9]
Lilin was born Nikolai Yurievich Verzhbitsky to Yuri and Lilia in Bender, in the Moldavian SSR.[9] He describes a poverty-stricken childhood with no bathroom and where gas and electricity were considered luxuries.[10]
Lilin claims that at the age of 12, with the outbreak of the Transnistria War, he was handed a firearm for the first time, and was involved with other children in gathering intelligence during the battle of Bender.[11] He alledges that during the conflict he lost an uncle and a cousin to a gang of neo-Nazis lead by Andriy Parubiy.[12] He states that after the war, he took part in a gang war alongside his father, who was a bank robber. His parents separated after his father suffered three assassination attempts and moved to Greece, while his mother moved to Italy, leaving Lilin with his grandparents.[13] [14] Lilin describes his grandfather as an elder member of a criminal gang who first taught him the ways of the Urkas and acted as a surrogate father.[15] In several interviews, he claimed that his grandfather was a Siberian hunter and Gulag survivor[16] who, despite being anticommunist, fought as a sniper during World War II and was on the same convoy that took Vasily Zaitsev to Stalingrad.[17]
Lilin has repeatedly stated that he was a troubled child, claiming that at the age of 12 he was incarcerated in a maximum security juvenile prison for attempted murder after stabbing a drug addict in self-defence. He also claims that he maimed a man who had driven a young boy to suicide.[13] Lilin states that he killed for the first time at age 14, with the victim being a "Gypsy" drug dealer whom he shot with his grandfather's revolver.[14] [18] Still at age 14, he stabbed a boy in the back, leaving him paralysed for life.[18]
According to Igor Popushnoy, a resident of Bender who knew Lilin since he was 19, Lilin habitually invented stories about himself, and had never served time in prison, having instead earned a living in law enforcement. Another aquaintance from Bender, Viktor Dadetsky, implied that Lilin was influenced by the action movies he had borrowed from his video rental shop.[4]
Lilin claims that at age 18 he began serving in the Russian army.[15] In a Vanity Fair interview, he claimed he was drafted while studying yoga in India,[5] while in an interview with Oliver Bullough he stated he volunteered.[19] He further claims to have served for two years and three months in the antiterrorism corps of the GRU during the Second Chechen War.[20] [13] Some Italian sources state he served in the 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment.[4] He stated to Bullough that he had briefly taken part in the battle of Grozny[19] and said in an interview with Il Giornale that he had participated in torturing prisoners of war.[21]
Inquiries undertaken by Elena Chernenko however show that his name does not appear in any sources close to the Russian Ministry of Defence, and his old aquaintance Igor Popushnoy stated that he had never served in the army.[4]
Lilin claims that after leaving the army, he attempted to find work in Saint Petersburg, but was rebuffed for being a war veteran.[5] Per his narrative, he later worked as a private security guard for a Russian opposition group with links to Chechen terrorists.[22] He later spent three years[17] working for a private Israeli security company as an antiterrorism consultant. His job took him to warzones like Afghanistan and Iraq,[15] and concluded his service after his right leg was injured by a landmine in Iraq.[23] [24]
Lilin moved to Italy in 2003[25] [7] or 2004.[10] [26] He had originally moved to Ireland to work as a fisherman with his then girlfriend, but was tricked into going to Italy by his mother, who lied about having cancer.[5] [10] He remained there and briefly lived as an illegal immigrant after his residence permit expired. His situation remained precarious until he found employment at the Libre cultural association in Turin.[25] [27] He claims that in 2005 he also worked with the Italian police in monitoring Satanic cults, and credits himself with uncovering the presence of MS-13 in Turin.[28]
In 2005,[29] while working for Libre, Lilin was asked to write stories for the association's website. His writings were discovered by the Einaudi publishing house, and he was commissioned to write what would become Siberian Education.[23] The novel is based on Lilin's childhood experiences among exiled Siberian gangsters in Transnistria.[3] [30] It quickly became a bestseller in Italy, ranking number 10 on la Repubblicas list of top ten most sold books in April 2009.[31] By July of that year, the book had sold over 50,000 copies domestically[32] and had been published in 40 countries by 2011.[4]
Roberto Saviano wrote a positive review in la Repubblica, which Lilin credits with popularising the novel.[10] [33] [24] Saviano commented that "in order to read this book, you must ready yourself to forget the categories of good and bad as you know them and cast aside your feelings as they've been formed in your soul. You just have to read it, full stop".[3] Irvine Welsh, writing for The Guardian, praised Lilin for writing "not so much [...] a crime biography as a detailed account of an amazing culture, one that, in the face of globalisation, is sadly disappearing in front of us. I say sadly because, despite the often extreme violence and the fetishism of knives and guns inherent in the Siberian criminal culture, it operates on higher principles than the mainstream ones pursued in the west".[30] Richard Poplak of the National Post summarised the novel as "a bracing, true-crime curiosity that should interest those who want their understanding of the region massively shaken up, or their knowledge of knife fighting thoroughly upgraded".[34]
The novel was adapted into a film directed by Gabriele Salvatores in 2013. Lilin helped write the screenplay,[25] and applied tattoos on John Malkovich in order to portray his character.[24] A stage adaptation followed in 2016.[29]
The factual accuracy of the novel was disputed by numerous journalists and historians.[15] Anthropologist Michael Bobick criticised the novel's portrayal of the city of Bender as particularly crime-ridden, and wrote of Lilin as "having forsaken his criminal upbringing in favor of a successful literary career in which he peddles Westerners their own deepest, darkest fears about Transdniester and Russia. Astutely aware of the region's outsized reputation, Lilin has found a literary niche, a captive audience uninterested in the facts".[8] Zakhar Prilepin compared the premise of the novel to "a modern German author writing about how a squad of ex members of the SS robs trains in the woods near Berlin with their children and grandchildren while listening to Wagner and beating drums".[35] Criminologist Federico Varese wrote that while the scenes depicting the brutality of prison life may have been based on Lilin's personal experiences, the rest of the novel was probably derivative of prior books and TV series.[7] La Stampa journalist Anna Zafesova went to Bender to investigate the claims made in the book on Siberian gang culture, and interviewed several old acquaintances of Lilin, as well as historians of the region, who concurred that the story was an invention.[6]
Lilin later claimed the novel is not an autobiography, being instead a collection of stories recollected from his childhood and the narratives of elders. Nevertheless, it has been presented as autobiographical on the covers of both the original and German editions. Per his interview with Elena Chernenko, Lilin stated that he had no control over it, and that it was done for marketing purposes.[23] Federico Varese noted that the English translation includes a disclaimer warning that "certain episodes are imaginative recreation", though this is absent in the original Italian version.[7] When confronted about these issues by Piero Chiambretti and Paolo Bianchi on a 2010 episode of the Chiambretti Night variety show, Lilin proceeded to threaten them.[36]
The novel has never been translated into Lilin's native Russian.[37] [4] Efim Shuman of Deutsche Welle wrote of allegations that Lilin had forbidden the sale of rights to sell his book in Russia and the former USSR over fears of its factual innaccuracies being exposed,[37] while Chernenko, during her interview with him, mentioned a rumour that Lilin had prohibited the novel's translation for fear of reprisals by Russian and Moldovan criminal gangs.[23] Lilin has denied these allegations, stating that he had approached two Russian publishing houses, but refused to sell the rights to his material because they wanted to present the novel as a denunciation of criminality and include a preface written by a convicted Russian fellon.[38] [29]
In 2010, Lilin released Free Fall, a sequel to Siberian Education set during the Second Chechen War. Per an interview with Francesca Colletti, Lilin's aim in writing the sequel was to give a realistic, non-partisan depiction of living through a war.[25] Although widely reported as autobiographical,[39] [40] during a 2011 interview with Oliver Bullough, Lilin denied the novel was a memoir and stated that it was actually based on the experiences of a fellow soldier rather than his own.[19] In 2018, he said that Free Fall was the most fictionalised of his works and that he had deliberately omitted the names of locations and soldiers in order to protect his former comrades-in-arms.[24]
In 2012, he released Storie sulla pelle, a novel in which tattoos act as a metaphor for the evolution of the modern world.[41] He released Il serpente di Dio in 2014, a novel set in the Caucasus regarding the peaceful coexistence of Christian and Muslim communities.[42] In his 2016 novel Spy story love story, Lilin narrated the stories of characters living through the upheavals following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[43] In 2022, Lilin relased Ucraina. La vera storia ("Ukraine: The True Story"). In a review for Il Foglio, Adriano Sofri criticised the book for promoting the idea that Ukrainian national identity was invented by Poland in an effort to destabilise the Russian Empire, minimising the significance of the Holodomor, and completely ignoring the Executed Renaissance.[44]
Lilin claims to be a "kol'sik" (stinger), a hereditary title given to Siberian tattoo artists who act as "psychologist, judge or confessor" to those they mark. He has stated that he first began tattooing at the age of eight and that he was mentored in the art of traditional Siberian tattooing while serving time in a Russian juvenile prison.[45] In 2013, Lilin opened a tattoo parlour in Solesino called Il Marchiaturificio,[26] opening another branch in Milan in 2017.[45]
In 2010 he founded the Pro Patria Italia sports association, whose membership included military veterans and law enforcement officers.[25] A year later, he founded Kolima, a venue for aspiring young artists.[10]
In 2013 he hosted the Italian version of on Italia 1. Three years later, he hosted the second season of 60 Days In.[46]
He has collaborated with Maserin and Paolo Pinna in designing knives, and released teaching material for Tadpoles Tactics. He has also written articles for l'Espresso, la Repubblica,[15] and TgCom24.[46]
While describing himself as apolitical,[47] [48] [1] [49] Lilin stated during a 2024 interview with the Huffington Post that his values are leftist but "not as they are defined in Italy", and that he is "for better or for worse, a product of the Soviet system".[12]
While previously he praised the European Union, in particular over its assistance to Bulgaria,[50] he later praised Italian right-wing youths for advocating for the withdrawal of Italy from the EU.[51] In a 2014 opinion piece, he called Eurasianism a "worthy and logical alternative to American dominion",[52] and stated in 2021 that he would be prepared to vote for the right-wing Lega party if it mended diplomatic relations with Russia.[17]
In September 2009, Lilin garnered criticism for having presented his debut novel at a CasaPound conference centre.[53] [1] In 2021, Lilin became a Green Europe candidate in the Milan municipal election, but dropped out after his prior links to CasaPound and members of the neo-Nazi group Lealtà Azione were brought up on social media.[54] [55]
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Lilin spoke out against mandatory vaccinations and the EU Digital COVID Certificate.[56] In 2024, Lilin became a candidate for Peace Land Dignity during the 2024 European Parliament election in Italy.[57]
Lilin was initially critical of Vladimir Putin and his administration. In a series of interviews in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Lilin denounced the beating of Oleg Kashin and the murder of Russian journalists,[58] blamed Putin for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings and voiced support for the 2011–2013 Russian protests.[59] In a 2013 interview with la Repubblica, Lilin stated:
I am appalled by how things are going with Putin, his homophobic laws, the censorship, pedophilia used as a criminal means of earning money. Western-style corruption has taken over, which is why Putin and Berlusconi are such friends, and even look like each other: both of them have undergone plastic surgery to look younger, but only Satan never ages. They are demons. [...] I no longer have the stomach to live in such a country, where the only way out left is suicide. [...] We need a new revolution, of ideas, not weapons.[60]After the Russian annexation of Crimea, Lilin deleted his previous critical posts and began expressing views defending Russia's conduct.[61] In a 2014 interview, he stated that Putin's negative reputation in Italy was based on distortions created by "people who support the Atlanticist bloc".[62] In a 2020 interview with il Giornale, Lilin expressed the view that "true" Russians desired a tsar and that Putin was fulfilling their wish.[16] When asked a year later whether or not he considered Putin a dictator, Lilin answered: "He surely is, according to the concept of dictatorship within the modern political vision. But today we all live in dictatorial systems, in every country".[63] Regarding the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lilin has said:
[...] Russia has never started colonial wars or [wars] to expand its territory. [...] Russians don't want to invade anyone. The only reason they wage war is to ensure the integrity of their borders. That's why Putin has sent the army to Ukraine, because NATO has been doing military activities there since 1998, threatening Russia's borders. Saying that Putin wants to invade Poland and the Baltic states is nonsense. Putin wants to live in peace, not have a NATO pistol aimed at his face.[64]
After the Revolution of Dignity, Lilin made extensive allegations of genocide in Donbas and of the presumed Nazism of Ukrainians. Lilin denies Ukrainian statehood, declaring that Ukraine is Russian[65] [66] and refers to the Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine as "Novorossiya".[67] He believes that the 2014 Revolution was a foreign-backed coup[68] and that America is using Ukraine to prevent Europe from forming closer ties with Russia and China.[65] In a 2014 opinion piece on L'Espresso regarding the Donbas War, Lilin wrote:
To avoid further deaths and douse the fire of this civil war, Ukraine must cease to exist as a State. The government, law enforcement and the army which have stained themselves with crimes against humanity must be arrested and tried for their responsibility. NATO should be dissolved immediately, seeing as the bloc of nations comprising the Warsaw Pact hasn't existed for more than two decades. What's needed is a military intervention by the UN to disarm both sides involved in this war. The criminal Nazis of Kiev, their Washington collaborators and advisors should be brought before the International Court of Justice in Hague and judged with all the severity that the law allows. Only this way and only from that point on will true and coherent news start arriving from that scarred nation: only then will the world be able to breathe freely.[67]
During his candidacy for Peace Land Dignity in 2024, Lilin's only policy position was to stop arms shipments to Ukraine.[12]
He has spread conspiracy theories on 9/11,[67] [69] the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya,[62] Malaysia Airlines Flight 17,[67] [70] [52] the assassination of Boris Nemtsov,[71] the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel,[69] and the Crocus City Hall attack,[72] [12] holding the West and its allies responsible for some or minimising Russian involvement in others. He has also spread conspiracy theories on George Soros,[73] [74] in particular blaming him for the exclusion of Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics.[75]
He blames the United States for creating Islamic terrorism in the Caucasus in order to destablise Russia,[73] and claims that Chechen rebels during the Second Chechen War were equipped with American-made monitoring devices provided by Georgia, which he accuses of fomenting Wahhabism in the region.[52] He also asserts that he had killed several Chechen fighters carrying American passports.[17]
He claimed that Anna Politkovskaya had been "bought" by Russian opposition leader Boris Berezovsky, and that it was a "documented fact" that her assassination had been comitted by American-paid wahhabists attempting to prevent her from exposing links between wahhabists and corrupt Russian military commanders.[62] He described murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov as "obsessed with pussy" and alleged that he had been killed by the husband of one of his lovers rather than the secret services.[71]
On 9 July 2014, Lilin wrote that the promotion of LGBT rights in Ukraine since the 2014 Revolution is a ploy to mask the Kyiv government's true nature from westerners, comparing it to the USA's promotion of far-right regimes under the guise of spreading democracy during the Cold War.[76]
He believes that the Russian-backed side of the Transnistria War was fighting foreign mercenaries "from all over the world", including Hungary, Germany and the Baltic states, rather than the Moldovan army.[24] [17]
On 9 July 2014, Lilin wrote an article in which he included a photograph alledgedly showing a Ukrainian government building displaying the Ukrainian flag flying alongside a Nazi one.[76] The image was later shown to have been a production still from the Russian film Match.[77] Later that year, he shared an article from the German conspiracist website Wahrheit fuer Deutschland claiming that a Ukrainian pilot had confessed to having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.[78] The website subsequently specified that the source of the information was a satire page.[77]
In 2015, during the Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo kidnapping crisis, Lilin posted a photo on his Facebook page of an armed woman he claimed to be Marzullo working for her terrorist captors. The subject of the photo was later revealed to be a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter.[79] Later that year, he shared an article from Imola Oggi stating that the Iraqi armed forces had shot down two British planes carrying armaments for ISIS. He deleted the post after a backlash, but posted the same story from the Fars News Agency.[80]
In 2023, he posted a video on his Youtube channel claiming that a Ukrainian war veteran in Ternopil had murdered his wife and children after mistaking a French flag on an inflatable castle they were using for a Russian one, providing no source for the information.[81] In September of that year, Lilin spread the Russian-fabricated allegation that Human Rights Watch had accused Ukraine of using cluster munitions against civilians.[77]
In the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall attack, Lilin's Twitter account was briefly suspended after having shared a video from the Russian talk show 60 minut showing a deepfake depiction of Ukrainian politician Oleksiy Danilov claiming Ukraine's responsibility for the attack, and posting a tweet saying that one of the attackers had a Ukrainian passport.[57] [82]
After the 8 July 2024 Russian strikes on Ukraine, Lilin posted a video on his Youtube channel claiming that the missile that struck Okhmatdyt children's hospital was American.[83] On 10 July 2024, Lilin shared a video on his Telegram channel claiming that Joe Biden had comitted adultery with the wife of Jens Stoltenberg.[84]
On the morning of 19 August 2017, Lilin posted a tweet accusing the then President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini of being "friends" with the perpetrators of the 2017 Barcelona attacks. In subsequent tweets, he claimed that the post was in response to Boldrini's meeting with far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy, whom Lilin accused of being in league with Islamic terrorists.[85] Boldrini, after initially ignoring the tweet, sued Lilin for libel after he had given interviews claiming that she supported Nazis and ISIS.[86] [87] [88]
On 9 August 2024, Lilin uploaded a video on his YouTube channel in which he claimed that his Italian passport had been confiscated and that he had "escaped" Italy on account of legal inquiries and of being declared a Russian foreign agent.[89] [90] On 19 August 2024, it was announced by Tommaso Foti that Brothers of Italy would open a parliamentary inquiry on a series of death threats Lilin posted against journalists Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini for their coverage of the August 2024 Kursk Oblast incursion.[91]
Lilin has two daughters from separate women. As of 2022, he is in a relationship with a Milan-based woman from his native Bender who owns a cosmetics company.[92] He is a practising Catholic.[48] In 2023 he started living in Saudi Arabia.[69]