Nadezhda Tylik

Nadezhda Tylik is a Russian citizen and mother of the submariner Lt. Sergei Tylik, who lost his life in the Kursk disaster - a Russian submarine that 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 president Vladimir Putin of lying to her and other family members regarding the Kursk disaster. During her outburst, the video shows a woman producing a hypodermic syringe and injecting 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.

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."

Although at first denying she was drugged and later on saying the injection was requested by her husband because of a heart condition, Ms. Tylik, 4 months later, confessed her husband had lied to her to "save her nerves" and that he, in fact, "did not ask for help", completing that "the injection was done to shut her mouth" and that "immediately after it she just lost the ability to speak and was carried out."

The sedation 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.