Nadezhda Tylik
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Nadezhda Tylik is a Russian citizen, and the mother of submariner Lt. Sergei Tylik, who lost his life when the Russian submarine Kursk sank after an onboard explosion on August 12, 2000.
Tylik is best known for an internationally distributed news clip featuring her, filmed on August 18, 2000. In the clip, Tylik, who was very upset, accused the Russian leadership of lying to her and other family members regarding the Kursk disaster. During her outburst, the video shows another female produce a hypodermic syringe, and inject her with it through her clothes. Though the injection itself was not visible from the angle of the camera, shortly thereafter she lost the ability to stand and was helped back into her chair by those near her.
The video footage does not explain what she was given or why. Whether this was sedating a grieving mother as an act of compassion or an attempt to silence her voice is still unclear.
"I don't know what medicine they injected me with, but it instantly made me unable to speak," Tylik said shortly after it occurred.
In an August 25, 2000 article in the St. Petersburg Times (Russia) 'What will Putin Learn From Media Circus?', the event is confirmed (this article has since disappeared from the paper's website):
Navy officials in Vidyayevo confirmed she was given a sedative, both to The Times and to The St. Petersburg Times. "We've been giving sedatives to relatives since this began, and it is not such a big deal as you make it out to be in the West," said an officer who would not identify himself. "We are simply protecting the relatives from undue pain - it was for her own protection."
In February of 2001, Ms. Tylik reversed her story, suggesting that the injection was requested by her husband for a heart condition.
Regardless of whether Tylik recanted her story due to pressure from the Russian government or for some other reason, the situation has concerned people in Russia as well as the West that the former Soviet Union may be falling back into Cold War era methods of silencing dissent.
