…The parents brought home oranges, which at that time were sold in net sacks. The brothers ran to get scissors to cut the sack open. After a few awkward moves the scissors landed right in his eye. Operation after operation was performed. His eye will be saved, but the deformity will remain with him for the rest of his life and become his sort of defining feature...

30 years later in a cell at the Matrosskaya Tishina, the Bible would be his only companion for two years, besides the rat that he will have time to make friends with (at least it didn’t crawl onto the bunk). Although he would already be almost blind by that time, he still somehow managed to read. He squinted his eyes tightly, brought the book closely to his eyes and read.

He came from an intelligent and religious Moscow family with intertwined customs and morals. His mother was Russian and father was Armenian and a Doctor of physics and mathematics. He went to a good school in Moscow and was accepted to Moscow State University's law department. He went on to study at Harvard Law School, where he was recognised as the best foreign student and received his master's. He did an internship and worked at famous international law firms Clearly, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton; then came work as the head of the legal department at SUN Group. That's when he sent his CV to Yukos, and he was hired. He was young but very demanding, so people from the legal department he headed were a little afraid of him.

Word had it that talking with him at times was difficult. Just think of the time the investigators had...

He would be sent to jail at 35 years of age, already having had enough time to prove to be a significant eye sore for investigators: at the beginning, apparently, for being Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev’s attorney; then for not fleeing the country. He had the chance, what with all the hints, wiretapping and following him. What apparently was the peak of insolence was that as the authorities were concocting Yukos’ bankruptcy, he became the company’s executive vice president and tried to save the company. Five days after being appointed vice president, Aleksanyan was detained. Operative agents burst into his house masked and armed with automatic weapons, as if he were the boss of a criminal gang.

He would spend almost three years at Matrosskaya Tishina prison. After he was diagnosed with a fatal disease, he wasn't given treatment. Then, the blackmail started: investigators offered Aleksanyan freedom for giving testimony against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. He told the Supreme Court of the methods of Karimov, Rusanova and Khatypov when disputing the illicit nature of the latest extension of his detainment.

“Karimov said to me: ‘The Prosecutor General’s Office knows that you need to undergo treatment, and maybe even abroad. We need you testimony, because otherwise we cannot prove the charges we are making against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. If you give testimony that satisfies the investigation, then we will let you go’… But I cannot give false testimony. I cannot defame innocent people. I refused to do this. And I believe that no matter how bad my condition is, the Lord protects me, that’s why I didn’t do this. I cannot buy my own life this way.”

No officials would step down and Aleksanyan would continue to stay in prison without treatment. By the end of 2007, his health was getting worse: his type-3A HIV was becoming type 3B; his temperature had hit 39 degrees; he had only 4% immune cells left and a viral load of more than a million copies per millimetre. The instrument used to determine the number of copies couldn't show more than a million; this kind of reading was off its scale.

Instead of being sent to a specialised civilian hospital, Aleksanyan was kept at the Matrosskaya Tishina prison's infections block. The only doctor attending to Aleksanyan in this section would issue the notes saying that the defendant can participate in judicial and investigate actions…

Then the endless court sessions with him requesting release and having it denied would follow.

Khodorkovsky reacted by going on a hunger strike until Aleksanyan was transferred to a specialised hospital, and he eventually was; however, he was handcuffed to his bed in the observation ward at hospital #60 and a guard was placed at his door. Bars were even specially welded in the window in his hospital room; they were the only ones in the entire hospital.

The doctors treated him out of their own good conscience. It seems they were able to handle the lymphoma, but the HIV was a different story.

Who knows, maybe if he had not spent those two years in prison, he would have lived longer. Aleksanyan went two years without receiving treatment. This man was intentionally killed.  

People tried to help Aleksanyan live longer. Andrei Vorobyov, an outstanding researcher and academic at the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, professor and MD, would quickly take on Aleksanyan's treatment and try to save him. He was motivated by his professional duty. But I am confident that's not the only think: his mother was a biologist and spent 10 years in Stalin's gulag; his father, a doctor, was executed...

Aleksanyan would come across many angels. Journalists Tikhon Dzyadko and Saken Aymurzaev gather signatures of famous people who agreed to post bail for Aleksanyan in court. The journalists took the initiative to do this themselves without any editorial board giving them the assignment to do so. Although many agreed to sign on, many also refused to. The last names of those who refused are not important: they have to live with their decision. The last names of those who signed on are as follows: Kozakov, Yasulovich, Akhedzhakova, Churikova, Voinovich, Simonov, Yasin, Eisenberg, Rubinstein, Ultiskaya, Bykov, Geniyeva, Rynska, Uchitel, Father Aleksandr Borisov...

Boris Akunin and Igor Yasulovich would come to the Moscow City Court, where Aleksanyan's detainment was being disputed. They brought along with them the signatures of the bailiffs. Judge Naidyonov, however, could not have cared less about all this. Prosecutor Vlasov accused Akunin of something having to do with “PR move”…

Then, all of sudden Aleksanyan was released in 2009 on the unprecedented bail of 50 million roubles. Everyone far and wide chipped in. When the case was dismissed, Aleksanyan would make some statements and call people like Akunin, and ask: what should I do about the money – return it to you or spend it on charity?

What did Aleksanyan do his last two years? Underwent treatment and stayed at him with his loved ones; he had also been following the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev trial. He called, for example, Ekho Moskvy radio station and asked to have his daily comments on the trial recorded. He commented on, among other things, Prosecutor Lakhtin's absolute ignorance of the ABCs of an audit, and on how witnesses' testimony would be interpreted. He talked about what really went on in Yukos and was adamant that Lakhtin undergo a medical examination...

Aleksanyan also did commentary for Novaya Gazeta. The last time I talked with him was at the end of April this year by email. I asked him what he thought about the tragedy involving another low-level employee of Yukos’ affiliates (the guy, under strange circumstances, threw himself out a window). His comments were abridged, with some parts left out here and there. He was offended and said that we had deleted what was most important, and that he wouldn’t write for us any more... I thought that we would still somehow talk this out, smooth things over, let bygones be bygones and have many more reasons to talk...

But that never happened.

He lived so actively these past years after being freed: he did not close himself off from anyone, did not flee the country, did not withdraw into his own shell. A lot of people thought they did not have to worry about him; it seemed that he would still have a lot of time ahead of him...

Vasily Aleksanyan would have turned 40 on 15 December 2011.

He is survived by his nine-year-old son.