Maksym is an activist of Direct Action, a Ukrainian syndicalist students' movement with branches in Lviv, Kryvyi Rih and Kyiv.
A year ago, police searched his apartment and took away his and his roommates' phones and laptops. Last week, they invited him to "arrange the return" of the equipment. Instead, they handed him over a document, "reasonable suspicion" of promoting communist symbols.
The document only lists dates of Facebook posts that supposedly contain criminalized symbols. Maksym insists that they are educational materials that he shared while studying.
"These were mostly articles by modern Western thinkers, philosophy-adjacent materials, my research. There also were publications by a British leftist journal that supports Ukraine", - Maksym.
"They were about Marxism, works by Marx, criticism of Marx and analysis of modern Russian ideology. These were not materials about USSR or Soviet political figures", - Olha Veretilnyk, Maksym's lawyer.
Shumakov states that this criminal harassment began after Direct Action organized campaigns for students' rights. The campaigns cover conditions in dorms, sexual harassment by professors and administration, and - this month - public transit price hikes (€72 per month in Kyiv, given €193/month minimum salary and €24/month student scholarship that only a few receive). Activists of the students' union in different cities report increased attention from law enforcement and secret services.