#roslyakov | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

techramonic · 7 months ago

Text

An Interview with Galina Roslyakova: Vlad’s personal life according to his mother

A year after the shooting, BAZA, a Russian news outlet, interviewed Vlad’s mother Galina Roslyakova. Here are several details she had disclosed about her son:

He was gifted in drawing and engineering, however was an average student.

When he was younger, Vlad attended a kindergarten in Kerch with a chess focus. His mother considered him as a normal child who had an interest in drawing. He had hobbies such as architectural modeling, construction, and designing. He had a particular fascination with airplane models that he would try to configure by himself, although his father would occasionally help.

He then continued to paint throughout his life and excelled at it, Galina believes he inherited this skill from his father, Igor. Vlad mostly expressed an interest in drawing domestic animals and portraits of people. He focused a lot on the details and drew rather thoroughly. Unfortunately, she has none of his drawings left to reminisce.

In school, he was “statistically average”. He studied for at least three to five hours and was in the middle line of poor to excelling. He didn't dislike nor have an interest in school and had no specific goal yet. According to Galina, “Not all dreams can be realized.” So in a pragmatic sense, his parents tried to instill something that would have perhaps helped him by trying to search for something suitable for his life and future. She had also described Vlad to be somewhat confused or unsure of himself:

“You can show a different side of yourself. You can realize yourself somewhere else. And this period of transition from school to college was somehow unconscious. A lot depends on how this might turn out. Every person's views and values change. Children must realize during this period that they are growing up primarily for themselves. He understood that he was not quite a child and not quite an adult.”

Vlad did not finish highschool and went straight to college, explaining why he was 18 during his 4th year.

Galina and Igor saw no point in enrolling him into 10th and 11th grade because it was unclear to them that he would graduate at all, seeing that his academic performance was mediocre at best. During his transition from highschool to college, Galina recalled it to be a stressful experience, “just like any other transition”, she says. She had attended all parent meetings and recalled that teachers would often describe her son to be socially inept. He was not keen on socializing but she figured this must have been his way of coping with his adaptation, since it was a contrasting environment to what he was used to.

“I went to all parent meetings. At the beginning of the training they were carried out. I talked with curators and other teachers. There was a phrase that he was not very sociable . Not all people are open and ready to communicate with others. At that time it was a period of adaptation. Everyone tolerates it differently, but I wouldn’t say that he had a difficult time with it.”

More on relationships, since their house was located in a residential area not far from other neighbors who lived nearby, Vlad easily could communicate with a few neighborhood kids whom his mother considered to be his “friends”. Rather, they were his classmates.

“I think Vlad chose exactly those friends who suited him according to his views and interests at that period of his life when he was at school. He also played Minecraft. Well, of course, communication there is no longer only with classmates.”

Vlad still kept in contact with his father despite his mother's wishes to not be so in touch.

Technically, Vlad's parents were not officially divorced. Igor’s traumatic brain injury which subsequently led to the development of a mental illness was seen by Galina as a danger toward her and her son if they continued to live together. Coupled with the fact that he developed a dependency on alcohol, she had figured out that she had to make the resolution to move out with her son to protect their well-being. Despite this, Galina mentions that even with their separation, Vlad still communicated with his father, since it is a relationship not within her control. At first, Vlad was offended but as he grew, he began to contemplate the idea of his mother’s decision. He continued to communicate with his father as he grew older.

“With age, he made his own decision. He begins to make his choice whether he should communicate with his father. What will this give him and does he need it? That is, he could decide for himself. That is, in this regard, I gave him freedom of choice.”

He would often go to the garage together on weekends, which developed Vlad's interest in technology and personal interests like motorcycles, which he would’ve liked to study. Vlad then on became a major in the course: installation, commissioning and operation of electrical equipment of industrial and civil buildings.

Signs of isolation and depression were under the radar since he barely communicated.

Apart from the detail that teachers have said he was rather not very sociable, closer to the third year he already became withdrawn and kept to himself. He would often divert this topic of his behavior as his ‘right to privacy’ whenever asked, so no further questions would ensue. He was silent most of the time, got ready to go to class straight away and sat in his room ("another office") to scroll through his phone. He was quiet, didn't talk about himself that much, which led her to not anticipate the events that would unfold soon after. However, she said that she could sense a slight change in him, since he became more private. She did respect his boundaries however, since she saw it as his right to personal space.

“Well, slightly, so to speak. Because, in principle, many people reach such a period and age, and so, in communicating with their friends who have children of this age, many children tend to have, so to speak, personal space. Personal life, this is how the period begins. You know, like “I have the right to personal space, ‘I have the right to privacy.’ Within reason, because we live together in the same apartment”

Did he need more attention? Galina expresses that although she didn't primarily focus on him at all times, she did care for him and paid attention. She tried to make him talk and actively made efforts to communicate with him to get him to open up more about himself, however to no avail. So, in an outward perspective, everything seemed rather normal for her, and with the lack of properly established and structured communication, it was difficult to see through her son. After all, you cannot properly fit in puzzle pieces when there are no pieces provided to arrange.

It was difficult for her to speculate about the topic of whether or not he was depressed, nor did she anticipate that somehow he felt abandoned because he would often just sweep things under the rug. The signs didn’t manifest in any way in everyday life because again, he was very secretive and rarely talked about himself in conversations at home, so things easily fell out of notice and undetected.

“What percentage of love do children want to receive from us? Do we feel this as parents? Or if they tell us, let’s say: 'Well, at the technical school there were difficult tasks and classes, I’m so tired that I don’t want to communicate.' And you are trying to do everything to make contact with him. The children say: 'Well, I don’t want to now.' You won't really force him too much... But you still have to try to do it. Basically, I tried to do all this. What provoked it, I can’t say anything. For me, all this still remains a big, big secret as a mother. I cannot put together logic and specific pieces of the puzzle for myself. Therefore, everything remains like this.”

Vlad's online presence was monitored until the age of 14.

Galina had monitored his online access until he was around the ages of 13 to 14. After the age of 16, this period however stopped because of the gap between parents and their children's familiarity with devices and the technologicaĺ world. So, she stopped keeping track.

“I wished in my heart that somewhere they had slowed him down.”

She was unaware of his online presence in crime communities since 2016. According to her, at home he only sat and played minecraft,

“I didn't see this. If a person really wants to hide something... Maybe he did it sometimes, but not in my presence. At home he sat and played Minecraft. He talked there with one, then with another, then boys, then girls - they all communicate with each other there, laugh. There were different emotions, there was laughter.”

She was aware that he went to study firearms in the summer.

Vlad shared a common interest with his father with firearms. He also said he would join the army. Galina speculated that this might be due to the benefits, since the income of military salaries was fairly high. Vlad earned an internship at a plant prior to this, and it was good news for her but in reality, Vlad's perspective was that he did not generally take a liking to the place.

According to him, “I talked to the people who work there, I don’t see much prospects in income and in general my place in this.”

During the summer, he then began to study firearms through the internet and via the Internet, register with government services, and collect documents. She was against this act because she saw no purpose to this, however, she couldn't stop him. He excused this by saying he had an interest in hunting. Though she initially thought that he had given up on this prospect and moved on, since these documents were rather complex and difficult to complete, he then went on to successfully buy a gun after passing the exams and receiving his license.

She hadn't known of this, of course, since it was reported that he hid his gun in an abandoned warehouse to avoid speculations from her.

Here's the article, if you want to read more:

https://baza.io/posts/1b2005f5-d53e-4380-989d-b6f846cd6aab

#vladislav roslyakov #kerch polytechnic 2018 #vlad #understandnotcondone

149 notes · View notes