Maria Kirsanova grew up in a family defined by abuse, debts, and betrayal. Sergey was the tyrant brother, the grandmother the pension-chaser, and the father the perennial debtor. Maria got nothing — no inheritance, no protection, only scars. Today she lives in Rome with a sociology degree gone nowhere, pulling coffee shots and drifting between K-pop, anime, and alcohol binges. She refused to speak about her brother. She didn’t need to. Her life is the testimony: Moscow scars served with Roman silence.

From Gusino to Moscow

Maria and Sergey grew up in the village of Gusino, Smolensk Oblast — a household marked by poverty, debts, and dysfunction. Their father was a perennial debtor, unable to provide for anyone, remembered only for failure. An ex-military man, he had once studied at a Soviet facility in Ukraine, training in communications.

When their mother fell ill with cancer, the family’s focus shifted to Moscow. There Maria finished high school and went on to study sociology. But even before university, she had her brush with the absurd: despite being an average student at best, she somehow appeared at the Kremlin’s official graduation party — an event supposedly reserved for the country’s most “talented” pupils. Merit had little to do with it; connections explain more than grades.

During those Moscow years, her father clung to the past. He often attended reunions with his old military classmates — the Russian вечер встреч выпускников. Most men brought their wives, a few came alone. He brought Maria. Nothing says “family values” quite like dragging your teenage daughter to a veterans’ drinking session.

But the true poison was at home. Her mother, a religious fanatic, treated Maria with constant psychological abuse — belittling her, telling her she wasn’t good enough, grinding down her confidence day after day with Sergey’s help. He was the golden boy, the one the mother worshipped, and together they turned Maria into the family scapegoat. The result was predictable: Maria grew up with rock-bottom self-esteem laced with aggression, carrying the scars of a household where cruelty was teamwork.

In Moscow, however, there was no reprieve. Sergey, steeped in arrogance and zealotry, refused chemotherapy for their mother, pushing “alternative cures” instead. She died anyway.

Alumni meet up, Moscow, March 2018

Abuse and Inheritance Games

Inside this collapsing household, Sergey appointed himself tyrant. Maria was his target: beaten, insulted, even denied food. Years later, she would vent her fury online — hatred for her mother, open loathing for Sergey, contempt for a father drowning in debt.

When their mother died, the grandmother from occupied Crimea appeared — not to grieve, but to claim her deceased daughter’s pension. Later, when the grandmother herself died, she left behind an apartment in Crimea. On paper, both Maria and Sergey inherited it. But when the property was sold, the documents showed something strange: Sergey’s name was listed openly, while Maria’s was hidden. Her share was marked only as “part owner,” with no name attached. In Russia, such concealment is typical for people tied to the FSB, police, or other state organs. Whether this was a bureaucratic mistake or something darker remains unclear.

Flight and Shadow

Right before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Maria fled the country — first to Poland, then to Italy. On what grounds she received asylum remains unclear, but the timing was striking. For a short period in Italy, she even lived with Sergey. During that time she helped manage his Telegram channel, posting on his behalf and assisting with administration. She also became a courier in his paranoia: when Skrypetsky sent a parcel filled with magic mushrooms and LSD, Maria was the one to receive it and forward it on, because Sergey was too paranoid to reveal his own address.

Today

Maria now lives in Rome. The sociology degree led nowhere; she works as a barista, drifting between pop obsessions and alcohol binges. On Twitter she has at times described herself as bisexual, and often slips into writing as if she were male. Whether it is secrecy, rebellion, or confusion, it mirrors the chaos she grew up in — a household where her mother and brother teamed up as tormentors and she was left to construct an identity out of fragments.

There’s one more twist: Maria is also listed in the Myrotvorets database. After 2014 she flew from Moscow directly to Sevastopol several times, bypassing Ukrainian checkpoints and entering occupied Crimea illegally. Sergey, meanwhile, shouted more than once — even posting on Telegram — that she had gone through Ukraine. It was a lie, another loud cover story. The sister broke the law; the brother provided the alibi.

From K-pop to blacklists — Maria Kirsanova found her way onto every kind of list but the one that mattered: a life of her own. She refused to speak about her brother. Instead, she flipped her social media accounts to private — not cutting ties, just hiding evidence. Abuse made her the victim, but it also made her his accomplice. Same family, same tactics.