Almaty Woman Appeals Sentence for Abusive Ex-Husband

An Almaty resident, Margarita Zvyagintseva, is appealing a court ruling against her ex-husband, who was sentenced to one year in prison for inflicting severe injuries that left her with lasting health problems, Orda.kz reports.

From Romance to Violence

Margarita and Alexander met in March 2023 at the gym. She, a rather petite woman, was training to gain weight; at 176 cm tall, she barely reached 55 kilograms. He, on the other hand, was keeping fit, practicing judo, and, according to our interviewee, weighed 150 kg at a height of about two meters.

Margarita called him a very handsome man, and he made a good first impression. She wasn't even alarmed by the fact that he somehow managed to get her phone number from the gym administrator.

She would later file a complaint against the administrators for sharing personal information, but at the time, it all seemed like part of a romantic courtship.

There were warning signs, but I ignored them. I'd never experienced violence before, not at home with my parents or anywhere else. But I'd studied psychology and read about it. When we first met, we'd go to the hot springs and spend time together. And he'd occasionally push me. It was like this: whenever we had a disagreement, a minor conflict, he'd push me. He never made light of it; it was obvious he had serious intentions, hidden aggression.

We've been together for many years; this is my second marriage and his second, too. I didn't want to drag it out; I wanted to have a child because I don't have any. Both he and I seemed to have serious intentions. He had an unfinished house, and we went there and started finishing it. He sold his car. I suggested, 'Before we move in, let's get married.' So we got married in November.

The Second Wake-Up Call

Margarita was reluctant to introduce him to her mother. She admitted that she had a hunch and was wary. 

When his parents and relatives came to visit before the New Year's holidays, his mother, while introducing her son, asked her new daughter-in-law, "Why do you need that idiot?"

When his mother asked this question, I ticked it off, but didn't ask again. It was a celebration, everyone was drinking, his brothers and their wives were coming, as were the nephews.

Her ex-husband only revealed that he and his wife had been married for eight years. But when Margarita tried to find out the reason for their separation and her ex-wife's first and last name, Alexander evaded the question and steered the conversation to other topics.

She tried not to be intrusive and didn't press for answers. Especially since she herself had been married for ten years before, and they separated because they were unable to have children. They separated without controversy or arguments, maintaining a normal, friendly relationship.

The First Assault

She recalls her first serious injury occurring after an argument in February 2024, when Alexander struck her:

Somewhere after New Year's in February 2024, he punched me in the solar plexus, punched me so hard that I lost my breath and squatted down. It was during an argument, when I said I should spend my weekends productively. I love studying English, go to the gym, and study law. He responded by saying, 'If you want to spend your time productively, look at those unfinished ceilings; go do them.' I replied that in my family, it's not customary for women to do ceilings. You could hire professionals to do everything. We got into an argument, and he hit me,
Margarita says.

That day, the couple was getting ready for a barbecue party at his parents' house.

The woman struggled to catch her breath and stood up, then cried all the way to the suburb where her ex-husband's parents live. Later, a doctor she knew said the blow could have caused serious internal injuries and that she needed to be examined.

Margarita hadn't done so and didn't report any injuries.

She went to his parents to discuss the situation:

His father told me that he sometimes starts fights out of nothing. I was surprised; we never had arguments without a reason; he always found a reason. He has a complete family, and I hoped his father would explain to him that this wasn't right. I thought he'd consider that I'm a lawyer and think it's better not to get involved, that it would stop him,
 our interlocutor admitted.

She tried to save the relationship, saying she “gave herself a chance.” She recalled the relatively successful case of one of her sisters, who had also experienced violence; her husband had once hit her in the face. The entire family then stood up for her, explaining to the man that if he did something like that again, he would simply be jailed.

Eventually, they talked and reconciled. The sister wanted to keep the family together for the sake of their child, who was still a baby at the time. They have been together for 15 years since then; their son is finishing school, and there has been no violence from her husband.

I said my sister had managed to save her marriage, so I didn't immediately get a divorce. But I moved in with my mother for three weeks. I spent three weeks talking it over with myself, and then I went back, knowing I was taking a risk. At that time, in the spring of 2024, the Bishimbayev trial was underway, and I was watching the live streams of the proceedings for work,
 Margarita said.

Returning 

When she returned from her mother's, at first everything was calm in her relationship with her ex-husband, but then he began to blame her mother for her behavior:

And then I realized — that's it. He's restricting me the same way Bishimbayev restricted Saltanat — don't go there, don't hang out with those guys. And I asked him, 'Why are you controlling me like this? Do you not trust me?' He didn't explain anything then, and later, in court, he claimed that it turned out I wasn't visiting my mother, but supposedly visiting men.

Although Margarita went to live with her mother, she only visited one sister after another and never left the house.

But her ex-husband still "found something:"

I was at home when he started arguing about it. Then I realized I had to leave and started packing. Luckily, my car was parked near the house; I slowly stowed everything away. But I couldn't even predict what would happen next; it all happened so suddenly. My ex-husband had just been lying on the kitchen couch when he suddenly came out into the living room, saw me getting ready, stood in front of me, and started insulting me, calling me a whore. I was shocked by his words, stood motionless, and he tripped me — there's a judo move called a leg sweep. He kicked both my legs out from under me and pushed me, and I fell backwards onto my spine. I lay there, unable to breathe, unable to move from the pain. And at that moment, I thought he was going to kick me and kill me, like Bishimbayev.

Having regained her breath a little, Margarita reached for her cell phone on the couch, put it on speakerphone, and called the police. Her ex-husband, she said, didn't expect her to contact the police and was even a little confused.

When she told police she might have a broken spine, officers practically shouted at her to call an ambulance immediately.

The police never arrived. Only an ambulance arrived, and it took 40 minutes. Even though it was late, there was almost no traffic. By that time, I was able to stand up, but despite the pain and fear, I had no choice but to run. I opened the door and spoke loudly so the neighbors could hear,
 said Margarita.

After that, he came in, picked up a vase, and in front of me in the kitchen, he struck himself in the temple. He came out of the kitchen and said, 'If you file a complaint against me, I'll file one against you too.' But I've taken forensics classes, I know how to prove when you hit yourself and when you were hit. I silently gathered my things, knowing he wouldn't be able to fake it and prove that I had hit him.

While the first responders were loading the woman into the ambulance, her ex-husband was busy taking all his gifts from her things.

After the incident, police officers expressed conflicting opinions. Some praised her, saying, "Well done for not being scared and calling the police," while others, on the contrary, said, "Go make peace with him; you'll have to live with him." 

I want to make this public because just the other day, the head of the Ili District Police Department, where the investigation was underway, called me and asked, 'Haven't you made peace with him?' That's the way the police operate. I even asked the police officer back then how he could tell me to make peace with this man after he traumatized me. And he replied that all women do that — they write statements and then withdraw them,
Margarita said.

Her application wasn't processed right away either.

At first, it wasn't even registered.

They only filed a complaint a month later, waiting for us to make peace. The investigation dragged on for a whole year, and because the complaint wasn't filed, the prosecutor's office repeatedly returned it for a new investigation. Then, apparently, the complaint was retroactively added to the database. During this time, I encountered harrasment, gaslighting, and sheer lawlessness. It got to the point where I felt ashamed of what had happened, blaming myself for choosing this monster.

Investigators, however, said her case was very straightforward to investigate, with all the evidence available. The injuries were confirmed by MRI and CT scans. A forensic expert concluded, based on the examination results, that the victim had suffered moderate bodily harm, which is a criminal, not an administrative, charge.

Margarita suffered a compression fracture (as a result of the blow) of her third thoracic vertebra. She experienced a long period of excruciating pain in her back and head, and her arms became paralyzed.

The treatment was expensive. She couldn't work, lost her income, and her insurance didn't cover all the procedures. The woman claimed the maximum amount of 30 million tenge in moral damages, plus an additional five million in compensation for lost income for the eighteen months she was unemployed.

Ultimately, the court ordered her ex-husband to pay her one million tenge. On July 27, 2025, Alexander was sentenced to one year in prison — the minimum sentence under Article 107, Part 2, Clause 3 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan ("Intentional infliction of moderate bodily harm to a person knowingly dependent on the perpetrator").

The position of his lawyers is that their client is not guilty of anything, did not commit a crime, the case should be dropped, and he should be released. He also insists that he did not break the woman's spine. The case is currently being reviewed by the appellate court.

Margarita is forced to wear two different corsets and cannot sit for more than two hours at a time.

I didn't want to appeal the sentence, only the moral damages, because I couldn't afford any serious medical treatment with a million. But then I learned that his lawyer had filed an appeal demanding that he be released from prison because he was allegedly innocent. So, in addition to that appeal, I wrote a request to increase my ex-husband's sentence to three years,
Margarita said.

During all the in-person questionings and court hearings, her ex-husband laughed and smiled in court when any questioning began; it made him laugh. At the appeals panel's online hearing on August 30, he also initially seemed cheerful, but then, when the victim presented her arguments, he suddenly began to cry.

According to Margarita, her ex-husband tearfully told her how hard it was for him in prison and stated that she still had to prove that he was the one who broke her spine.

The 'Saltanat Law' isn't working. We criminalized domestic violence and increased the penalties. But the court, despite such trauma, only gave the defendant a year. The law requires police officers to respond; now, a complaint from the victim isn't even required; a case must simply be opened based on the facts. But no police even came to my house, and then they didn't register the complaint; they dragged it out for a month, and then they offered to reconcile,
Margarita was says.

She decided that as a lawyer, she should go through this legal process, did not hire a lawyer, and is representing herself.

The next appeals court hearing will be held on Tuesday, October 7.

Context

The homicide committed by former Minister of National Economy Kuandyk Bishimbayev in 2023 shocked all of Kazakhstan. He had abused his common-law wife, Saltanat Nukenova, for years and then, one night, beat her to death in the BAU restaurant. 

In 2024, Bishimbayev was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Original Author: Anastasia Prilepskaya

Read also:

• More than a Year Later: How Has Kazakhstan Changed after Saltanat Nukenova's Death?
• Voices from the Shelter: The Hidden Struggles Behind Names Like Nukenova and Gosman