Religion: Nikita during his childhood and pre-adolescence was a believer.

* Lytkin over the years became detached from the faith in which he had even been baptized.

* There was a time when Lytkin still maintained a cordial relationship with his mother before withdrawing into himself, one day he “complained” to her, because both no longer attended mass regularly and he wanted to return to church, Marina felt guilty for the demand that the minor imposed on her, so why did they stop attending? Simple, the woman was the only one who contributed financially to the household, as a single mother with a child in her care, she had no choice but to work overtime to survive (her main income came from her job in a shoe store at the time).

+ Marina Lytkina's exact words: "He was about thirteen, and he would still ask: "Mom, it's been a while since we've been to church..." But I worked a lot, then I took a daily job. In vain, probably..." // ". I now tell him on dates (in jail) that only faith can save him. And he says, "I want to believe, but I don't know how"

* There is a testimony from the same interview of Marina that is not widely reported but which, nevertheless, I find very striking in terms of “random stuff” about the academy maniacs...During a wedding in which mother and son were invited, at one point of the ceremony each person had to kiss a cross, it was Nikita's turn, the boy kissed the ornament as the tradition commanded, Marina tells that Lytkin after this action was “disoriented, red and agitated” his face was ‘transformed’ for the rest of the party, according to her it was “as if the devil had gotten into her son”.

* Lytkin started to view religion with some rejection and even later on trashing it with endless blasphemies (in his vk posts and songs) Marina did not know about her son's activity in networks but she did notice the religious disinterest, asking Nikita about it, he simply replied that he is now “Atheist, like his grandmother” (Irina).

* In one of the few "one-on-one" interviews with Lytkin, a journalist who spoke to him during his pre-trial period, six months after his capture, asked him about religion and whether he believed in God, the young man replied: “I tried, but there was no case”.

Romance/girls:

* One of his closest childhood friends, Sergei, who has given several reliable testimonies about him (photos and interviews without any problem) said that Lytkin never mentioned girls throughout their friendship that lasted from childhood to early adolescence, Nikita had no female friends either.

* However, in his album "Love Noise" he makes mention of famous artists in which he had a "crush"

They were: Hayley Williams: singer of the famous pop-punk band Paramore. - Valeria "Lera" Kozlova: pop-punk singer-drummer and actress of teen TV soap operas during the 00s. - Maria "Masha" Nefedova: violinist of the horror-punk band "Korol I shut".

+ (these three girls, they all share some things in common that you can notice at first glance: they were petite in body and height, with few curves, wore alternative clothing and specialized professionally in music).

* Marina in an interview said that she would have loved her son to have had a girlfriend, one day she asked him about his future in this topic, the teenager answered her in a categorical way: "I will never get married and I don't want children either".

* In a website that he had in common with his virtual friends with whom he made music, he strongly criticized an English teacher for her appearance, calling her ugly, however he praised that she was young and that she did not dress or behave like a “whore”.

School:

* It is known that in his early years he was an obedient and diligent kid, a teacher on television even said that he was the “dream pupil”... as the years went by Nikita became more depressed and isolated from his classmates and his grades went down.

* The treatment was not pleasant on either side, Nikita criticized anyone who wanted to approach him, he even dedicated songs and posts criticizing anyone, but never said these things in front of these people "who hurt him"... he simply gave in to the harassment.

On several Russian news sites, Nikita's colleagues were interviewed and they commented about this "kind of bullying"on two puntual situations they remember the young boy suffered:

- The first was that they ruined Lytkin's jacket on purpose making it totally unusable after that, the material they used was a “liquid paper”.

- The second was in the gym classroom from his school, Nikita had a period in which he was absent all the time, but when he deigned to return, four bullies grabbed him by the back of the neck and said things like “look guys, the quiet one in the classroom was absent during P.E” .

Extremely random data:

* Nikita had no pets, her friend Sergei confirmed it.

* Nikita was trying to blackmail a psychiatrist during exams for the trial.

* On his VK page, in the personal-"political belief" section, the space was selected as: Socialist.

* Nikita often slept at his grandmother's house as a child because his mother was working and the old lady take care of him, also it was normal to see her helping him with his homework.

* It is said that he liked chips/fries.

* He enjoyed going to the movies, however, he hated “trendy” or “kids” films such as: Avatar, Twilight, Shrek and Madagascar (this is known because he published it on his vk).

* Everyone who knew him says he never talked about his father, his name was Vakhtang (there were never any photos or videos of him circulating online).

* For one of his birthdays, his mom Marina paid for a bowling session for him and Artyom.

* In his childhood he collected toy cars.

* In one of his many made-up stories full of violence on VK, he said he played football with the head of a homeless man.

* As a child he wrote on the walls of his residential complex, he was punished by other boys when he did this and forced to erase and clean up the mess he made, however, he never gave up the habit of painting public things in his “Dismembered Pugachova” era, he used to do graffiti on abandoned buildings with the name of the band.

* He only sent ONE letter to a local news outlet, and it was the one in which he regretted having met Artyom and his crimes with him. Lytkin was not interested in corresponding with anyone except his mother.

* Marina brought him homemade food to the detention center.

* His uncle, Vladimir gave an interview in a bar, at one point he comments that "he lent his computer to his nephew", the situation was as follows: He said that Nikita was editing a video of a violent nature (probably the manhunt 1 for his yb channel), unsuspecting as always Lytkin left the material in sight, Vladimir found it and without hesitation said: "Delete this shit from my computer now" Nikita did not utter a word, he simply acknowledged and the next day the video was successfully deleted from the device

* Nikita was aware of his bad posture/scoliosis, it was one of his insecurities, many people who knew him in person emphasized his hunched back.

* In his writings he constantly criticized people who do not understand the “noise” genre of music, even calling some girls from his class idiots because they liked "pop" music. It's no surprise that Lytkin has been a living contradiction; because one of his favorite bands, however, was pure pop... the duo Ruki Vverh! (even going so far as to cover it and citing them as an influence).

* He used a couple of samples from girls moaning, screaming and crying for his songs on Dismembered Pugachova probably from hardcore p0rn-films

definitely. I want people to know that i dont dislike young artyom. He wasn't plotting against nikita their entire friendship, and he probably found the same amount of comfort in their bond as nikita did, he just didn't often show it. He was suffering too, his actions always reflect the trauma he's faced. But in adulthood, he tries to make everyone feel sorry for him for all the wrong reasons.

Now let’s talk about Nikita.

I want to be clear: I don’t believe Artyom betrayed Nikita.

Their bond was real. It was complex. It was forged in the fire of trauma, bullying, humiliation, and psychic fracture. They were boys navigating a collapsing world with no adult scaffolding, no coherent sense of future, and very little emotional literacy. What they did was horrifying. And how they came to it matters, too.

People speak about the moment Artyom “blamed” Nikita. But most of you don’t know what actually happened to Artyom during that time. He was tortured—physically and psychologically—in the Irkutsk pretrial detention center. I’ve seen the scars. I’ve heard the stories. I’ve felt what that time did to his nervous system. And if you think anyone emerges from that kind of brutalization clear-eyed and consistent in memory, you’ve never studied the effects of prolonged trauma and coercion.

We don’t actually know whether he blamed Nikita out of cruelty, fear, pressure, or mental collapse. And unless you were inside that cell with him—watching what they did to him—you cannot make a clean judgment.

But here’s something most of you don’t know: they reconnected.

They wrote to each other. They didn’t part in silence or enmity. There was a thread of human connection that remained. That says something.

It also matters to ask: who was Nikita at that time?

He wasn’t in a place of dreaming about marriage. He was at the bottom of the prison caste. He was surviving day to day in a brutal system where his very existence was under siege. Of course he didn’t get married—he was fighting to stay alive. But that doesn’t mean Artyom “moved on” or forgot him. He mourns him. I’ve felt it.

The love between them was real. So was the damage.

They weren’t enemies. They were entangled. They came from pain. They responded to pain. And their fate unfolded within pain. It’s not clean. It’s not symmetrical. But it’s not betrayal either. It’s trauma in motion.

Let’s also remember how they met:

They weren’t plotting violence. They were making music together.

They were boys looking for coherence in a broken world.

You don’t have to justify what happened to hold space for that.

And so I say this:

Grieve Nikita, absolutely. He deserves that.

But don’t reduce Artyom to the villain who “moved on.”

He didn’t move on. He’s still in prison. He’s still with his ghosts.

And I am with him—not because I deny the past, but because I’ve chosen to stand beside someone who is still living it, and still trying to understand what it all meant.

If you want easy narratives, I’m not your girl.

If you want truth, it’s this:

Love and grief aren’t opposites.

Dylann did not share much affect with others. To the social historian, Dylann’s mother said that he is “not a very emotional person,” and she feels sad because she thinks that maybe her son has no emotions at all; she contradicted that assertion later when recalling how often he felt fear. When asked if Dylann was ever afraid of anything, she said he was always afraid of other people.