Prisoners of Far-Right Conscience
Authors’ note: this text was written about half an year ago for a webmagazine, but was not published because the latter went out of funds. Here it is published without any updates.
Right radicals usually support their prisoners, accused for different reasons from hooliganism to murders, and often speak about “political persecution”. The definition of a political prisoner, according to a 2012 PACE resolution, includes those who have been prosecuted selectively or sentenced disproportionately when a case is politically motivated. The history of interaction between police and judicial system in Ukraine, on the one side, and far-rightists, on the other side is quite long, partially independent from the current political regime, and includes not only cooperation, but also a confrontation, besides the fact that both of these institutions are not trustworthy enough, and their actions and conclusions cannot be taken just on trust. So, we tried to get things straight into several stories of far-right prisoners which may be true political since are based on anti-police issues or similar driving motives.
A War Child
A mind-blowing story of Vita Zaveroukha was widely reported in Ukrainian media. A young woman after volunteering in Aidar battalion was suspected as an assistant in a murder.
On May 4, 2015 a group of masked people attacked a petrol station in Kyiv, wounded a checkout worker and stole money. During the runaway they killed and wounded policemen. According to another version of the story, no robbery took place, and the policemen had been the participants of Euromaidan shootings. One of the attackers, Vadym “Morgan” Pinus, also an ATO participant, was killed during the shooting; the others — Andriy Romanyuk, Mykola Mnishenko, Yevhen Koshelyuk and Danylo Sytnikov — were detained. On a flat a number of weapons were found. The fifth detained person was Victoria or Vita Zaveroukha, 18, who knew the others.
Vita’s relatives claimed that she was in her home city Vinnytsya while the murder took place, but nevertheless she was arrested and suspected that she helped to transport weapons. Her lawyer also stated that Vita got married a month before and had a honeymoon, as a more important thing to do in this time period.
Vita was not a member of any far-right organization, but her page in social network vk.com included photos with swastikas and Nazi banners, and, as such, she was a “heroine” of Russian propaganda and an object of cyberbullying. She was ironic to those accusations, and, upon her own statement, said what one wanted to hear from her. Whether this is a real far-right political position or just trolling responding to the accusations of after-Euromaidan Ukraine as “Nazi junta”, is still a question.
Vita was kept in a pre-detention center for more than a year, and at last, during the trial on a pre-trial restriction she cut her veins. On January 19, 2017 Zaveroukha was assigned a bail in the amount of 1 600 000 UAH, and on January 24 went out on bail. The bail was paid by Oleksiy Tamrazov, ex-businessman in the oil and gas sphere, now an owner of The Insider media. In two weeks after the release Vita and her boyfriend Oles Chernyak, also an ex-prisoner, had a conflict with a wide-known far-right C14 initiative, close to Svoboda party, on an issue of their and far-right MPs’ roles in her support. Both of them were beaten by C14 activists.
Ukrainian Minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov himself commented the story with a strong dissatisfaction with this murder, explaining his position with “there could be Azov fighters in the car” and “they did not understand whom they were shooting at”.
Constitution Defenders
This is a story of a grenade thrown during a rally at the parliament, which received a name of Constitution Defenders Case.
On August 31, 2015 while the parliament was looking at the decentralization changes to the Constitution of Ukraine, far-right activists, mostly from the “Svoboda” and Oleg Lyashko Radical parties, were holding a protest rally. A moment of controversy was in the statement of the new Constitution project on the “particularities of local self-government in some parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions”, which was believed to be strongly inappropriate. After a positive decision on changes was voted, a clash with police began and suddenly a fragmentation grenade was thrown from the crowd into the police. Four policemen died, 141 persons more, including 131policemen, were injured.
An incident was qualified as a terrorist act and was attributed to two persons — Igor Gumenyuk and Sergiy Kraynyak, both far-rightists and participants of the anti-terroristic operation in the East of Ukraine (“Sich” and “Karpatska Sich” battalions respectively). The former was said to throw the grenade, the latter to use the smoke flare in order to help Gumenyuk run away. Both defendants refused to acknowledge their guilt. Their expected punishment, if proven guilty, is up to life imprisonment.
Currently the trial is in progress, and the defendants are kept in detention. The colleagues of accident victims are skeptical about the trial progress and are not convinced that Kraynyak and Gumenyuk are the real culprits. During the trial the clashes between court guards and prisoners’ supporters took place. Besides this, fifteen activists, supposed to be the clash participants, are put on another trial for civil unrest, in progress as well.
Murder, He Wrote
An infamous anti-Ukrainian author became a victim of somebody offended by his writings, and the story itself seems to resemble a crime fiction.
Ukrainian infamous anti-Orange publicist and writer Oles Buzyna was himself accused for incitement of ethnic hatred in 2001, though later amnestied. In a non-fiction novel Taras Shevchenko The Ghoul , he provided a very negative interpretation of writer’s life and works. For a dozen years his figure was a symbol of anti-Ukrainism. Finally on April 16, 2015 the story took a new turn: Buzyna was shot dead near his house in Kyiv by two men who came on a car. This information was momentarily commented by President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who had a press-conference a few hours later at the same day, and he called this murder “political”, which made Ukrainians worry whether it is organized from Kremlin. Another strange thing was a letter sent by email to a political pundit Volodymyr Fesenko, where a credit for the assault was taken by Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an unknown and probably fake organization. It seems that nobody believed in this story, however.
Finally, in June two rightists were detained as suspected. These two were Andriy “Manson” Medvedko, a member of mentioned above C14, and Denys “Allah” Polischuk, a number 52 on a list of a tiny party Ukrainian National Assembly on 2012 parliamentary elections. Both ATO participants, they stated that at the murder day they were not present in Kyiv. First, the DNA examination was reported to prove their guilt, but soon, however, the defendants were released from the pre-detention center to home detention. Oleksiy Tamrazov, mentioned above, paid a bail for Polischuk. During the trial a witness from a local shop informed that she could not recognize two men from a car in Medvedko and Polischuk.
In February 2016 “Ronin”, a member of so-called Lisnyk Group, a part of a Right Sector, provided a video interview to the 17th TV channel, where stated that this group is responsible for the writer’s murder. In August 2016 Right sector also installed a plaque commemorating “tragic events which became a cause for unfair criminal charges and repressions toward Ukrainian nationalists” at Buzyna’s house.
Later, Buzyna mother’s advocate, an ex-first deputy attorney general at Yanukovich times Rinat Kuzmin, stated the murder is contract and ordered by law-enforcement. The case seems to be not investigated now, and resembles an unfinished crime fiction itself — we don’t know who wrote the letter signed from UIA, what police undertakes about “Ronin’s” confession and so on.
A Spy Story
Whether Stanislav Krasnov is really a double spy — is still a question. An organizer of Azov-Crimea volunteer organization and also an active participant of the Crimea blockade was accused as preparing a terroristic act in Kyiv as a double agent of both Ukrainian and Russian secret service.
Stanislav Krasnov and Olexandr Kostenko, both from Crimea, were detained in Kyiv in May 2014 for keeping a large amount of weapons and explosives in the flat they rented together. Having worked as policemen in Simpheropol before, they state they found out a channel of women trafficking from Ukraine to Russia, “covered” by police and involving Russian parliamentarians. Their statements were widely reported, and, reportedly, were a reason for them to leave Crimea for Kyiv. Soon they were released with the support of Crimean Svoboda member Eduard Leonov, and Krasnov became an activist of Azov-Crimea volunteer organization and a participant of the Crimea blocade. But later in February 2016 the activist was detained near Kyiv, reportedly while packing a hiding place with explosives.
Secret Service of Ukraine informs that Krasnov handed to secret services of RF a list of Azov regiment participants, had a meeting with his Russian curator in Belarus and also was preparing a terroristic act. His far-right supporters state that the real problem is, besides the one with the story on human trafficking, with the Crimea blockade, a controversial issue in the Ukrainian society. They also mention that he participated in OUN volunteer battalion and was cooperating with a foreign intelligent service. Krasnov’s advocate declares that his client’s problems are caused by the confrontation between Secret Service of Ukraine and Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
Krasnov’s term of detention has been repeatedly renewed in the courts, but since September 2016 he is released from the pre-detention center. Meanwhile Kostenko is imprisoned in annexed Crimea since 2015. According to the investigators, during Euromaidan he threw stones at riot police, and the policeman who had been hurt was from Crimea as well. After an appeal claim, his final term of imprisonment is 3 years and 11 months.
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According to the Committee of Political Prisoners Liberation, an initiative close to Oleg Lyashko Radical party, the list of the prisoners they support counts near 50 positions. The activity of the committee is not only a classical human rights defence, but also a support for those who may be really guilty, but are considered patriots and pro-Ukrainian.
Among those, who are supported by the committee, are a group from Tornado battalion (suspected for sex crimes against children in a closed mode; stating themselves that they are prosecuted for making difficulties to contraband in and out ATO zone), White Hammer rightists who attacked “drug dens”, arrested for the confrontations with pro-Russian policemen Mykola “Yama” Agapov and Mykola Chepil (the latter is said to be in a hospital at the time of policeman’s murder), and other delightful stories.
