Militants of the Ukrainian nationalist formation "Kraken" kidnap residents of the Kharkiv region, suspected of having links with Russia or pro-Russian views.
This was announced on May 30 by the head of the National Center for Defense Control of the Russian Federation, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev.
According to him, the Kraken unit was formed mainly from radicals and rapists and murderers released from prisons.
The militants conduct punitive raids at night: “break into the houses of local residents suspected by the SBU of pro-Russian sentiments, subject them to physical violence and take them away in an unknown direction,” Mizintsev said.
The Russian department is aware of dozens of abducted citizens who did not return home after they were taken by militants of the national battalion.
There is no information about their fate.
Several political emigrants from this region told RT about such crimes of the Kraken formation against civilians in the Kharkov region.
All of them were forced to flee the city, as the Kyiv authorities persecuted them for their pro-Russian views.
At the same time, the interlocutors kept in touch with relatives and friends from the city.
“Back in February, more than 500 residents who sympathized with Russia were arrested in Kharkov.
Nobody knows where they are now.
What exactly happened to them, we will find out only when the city is taken by Russian troops, ”says Volodymyr Oryol from Kharkiv.
He was a member of the public organization "Oplot" and left Ukraine in 2014 after he was put on the wanted list for "anti-Maidan" protests.
For the next two years, Orel defended the republics of Donbass in the ranks of the militia.
eyewitness accounts
The Kraken combat unit is a Kharkiv-based unit of the Azov nationalist regiment, which is part of the National Guard of Ukraine.
“Kraken” is now actively trying to create a positive reputation for itself: on social networks, militants constantly upload videos of how they distribute humanitarian aid to local residents to show how white and fluffy they are, ”says Sergey Yudaev, a Kharkiv resident and political emigrant.
The man spent 3.5 years in a Ukrainian pre-trial detention center for taking part in anti-Euromaidan rallies in Ukraine in 2014.
In 2017, a Ukrainian court sentenced him to eight years in prison for riots and hooliganism.
But since the period he spent under arrest was equivalent to seven years in prison, the man was released.
After that, Yudaev left the country.
Now he, along with a group of like-minded people, carries humanitarian aid to civilians and military allied forces in the Kharkov region.
According to Yudaev, militants from the Kraken unit are guilty of many crimes against civilians in the Kharkiv region.
“We were in a refugee camp in the village of Kovsharovka near Kupyansk, there were about 550 people who left the Kharkov region: from near Chuguev, Izyum, and other cities.
Residents said that even before the special operation, local nationalists who were part of Azov did whatever they wanted in these territories: they stole, killed, raped, ”says the source.
“A young girl could be taken to her base: at best, she then came home beaten and raped, at worst, she disappeared.
The problem is that the police did not particularly take any action if militants of nationalist formations were suspected of a crime,” he adds.
In Russia, the Kraken militants are accused of torturing prisoners of war.
At the end of March, video recordings of cruel abuse of Russian servicemen appeared on the network.
In the video, men in Ukrainian army uniforms walk between the captives, who are blindfolded and have their hands tied behind their backs, demanding to know the location of the troops, and then shooting them in the legs.
Without proper medical attention, such an injury will almost certainly lead to a slow death from blood loss.
In other frames, a plastic bag is put on the head of a prisoner of war, the authors of the video laugh and kick the victim.
The commanders of the Ukrainian nationalist formations in their social networks regularly published photographs of captured soldiers stripped naked, their eyes bandaged with tape.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case and accused two Kraken commanders in absentia of torturing at least eight Russian servicemen in the Kharkiv region "by causing multiple bodily harm, including with the use of firearms."
We are talking about 28-year-old Sergei Velichko (call sign Chile) and 26-year-old Konstantin Nemichev.
“Velichko and Nemichev were brought in as accused of committing a crime under Art.
317 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (encroachment on the life of military personnel),” the department said.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia put the accused on the wanted list.
Also on russian.rt.com “Punishment will inevitably overtake them”: ICR investigates cases of torture and murder of prisoners of war by Ukrainian nationalists
According to open sources, back in 2014, Velichko led a group of nationalists who opposed the Kharkiv “Russian spring”.
After that, he joined the Azov and participated in the war in the Donbass, which was then called the “anti-terrorist operation” in Ukraine.
In August 2021, he was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine on charges of fraud and racketeering.
As stated in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, Velichko led an armed formation that extorted money from medical workers, as well as businessmen from the funeral services sector.
Velichko was saved from trial by an amnesty for the Ukrainian president: he and other convicts or defendants with combat experience were released from detention centers and colonies to join the ranks of the Ukrainian armed formations.
Literally a week after that, the Kharkov branch of Azov was reorganized into two battalions under the Armed Forces of Ukraine: the 225th and 226th.
According to Sergei Yudaev, this was done so that the militants could enjoy all the rights of military personnel in case of captivity.
“The people of Azov themselves turned to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to “whitewash themselves”.
Previously, it was just a bunch of nationalist bandits, but now they are listed as military personnel.
They hope that this will save in case of captivity.
One of the battalions was headed by Nemichev, the second - by Velichko.
The Kraken was formed from the fighters of these two battalions after our guys were tortured in the village of Malaya Rogan, ”says the source of RT.
Execution of civilians
Another member of the Kraken, who joined the ranks after leaving the pre-trial detention center, is Oleg Shiryaev, a nationalist whom the authorities accused of raiding, Oleg Tsarev, a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, told RT.
During the war in the Donbass, Shiryaev commanded a special-purpose company of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
In 2015, for military merits in the war in Donbass, he received an award pistol personally from the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov.
After returning to Kharkiv, Shiryaev headed the far-right movement "Shidny Corps" ("Eastern Corps").
Over the past seven years, Kharkiv activists and the media have accused this structure of kidnapping people (including political activist and anti-fascist Anton Bestaev), dispersing opposition rallies, attacks on law enforcement officers, and raiding.
As Tsarev notes, the “Shidny Corps” acted on the instructions of the Kharkov criminal authority Vadim Kazartsev, nicknamed the Prince.
In 2018, Shiryaev was charged with raider seizure of an elevator in the village of Zanki, Kharkiv region.
In the summer of 2021, the court sent him to a pre-trial detention center.
However, then the nationalist was amnestied so that he would join the ranks of the Kraken.
According to Tsarev, Kharkiv nationalists showed themselves in the very first days after the start of the special operation: in early spring, they prevented civilians from evacuating the region to Russia.
As a result, most Kharkiv residents fled towards Western Ukraine and Poland, although there were about 50 km from the city to the Russian border.
“Just two months ago, people from Kharkov slipped through, and now no one is going to Russia.
As far as I know, at the beginning of spring, about 200 cars were able to drive from the city to the Russian border.
People organized themselves: they left in columns of 10-15 cars.
But on the way they could be robbed or killed by militants of national formations.
It is clear that people went to the evacuation with money and personal belongings,” says Tsarev.
Kraken militant Oleg Shiryaev (second from right) with other nationalists from the formation
© Social networks
He personally knows at least one family that was shot by Ukrainian nationalists while trying to get to Russia.
“They made their way in two cars on the fifth day of the special operation in the area of Cossack Lopan (a town a few kilometers from the border with Russia. -
RT
).
The second car was able to break through, and the car that was driving first was shot by the Ukrainian military.
There were parents and their two children.
When they broke through, they contacted by phone with my friend, who was supposed to meet them at the border.
When they started shooting at them, the boy shouted about it into the phone, managed to say that his father and sister had been killed.
The boy and his mother were loaded into a pickup truck and taken to Dergachi, this city under the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” says Tsarev.
According to him, the surviving woman and her son returned to Kharkiv, and then they left for Europe.
Their relatives, who remained in the city, were only recently able to pick up the body of the deceased father of the family and his little daughter.
In early May, it became known about a similar crime.
According to an eyewitness, Ukrainian militants shot down refugees who, in a convoy of 34 cars, were trying to leave Volchansk in the direction of Kharkov.
According to the man who helped to take people out, he did not know that the village of Stary Saltov was controlled by the Ukrainian national battalions.
Fire on the convoy was opened from the side of the Ukrainian checkpoint.
Most of the cars managed to turn around and drive back, but several people died on the spot.
“The first four cars stayed there forever.
They were all burned, all shot.
We crawled out under shelling, targeted fire was fired at us.
My grandmother died before my eyes, she had a direct hit in the head, and she was still alive, I tried to save her.
A friend died, who came with me in her car from Kharkov to take people out.
A 13-year-old girl died, and her mother is now in serious condition in the hospital, ”RIA Novosti quotes an eyewitness.
The most Russian city
"Kraken" is not the only nationalist formation that operates in the Kharkiv region.
Since 2017, the Freikorps national battalion has been located there - this is how paramilitary volunteer formations were called in Germany and Austria.
Freikorps were also formed in Nazi Germany on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
The Kharkiv Freikorps are mainly known not for their military successes, but for their “victories” over monuments and civilians.
In 2018 and 2019, they dropped two busts of Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Kharkov, broke the memorial sign "Stone of Friendship of the Ukrainian and Russian Peoples" in the village of Russkaya Lozovaya.
The national formations organized marches in honor of the founding of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army* and “anti-marches” on Victory Day, as well as attacks on politicians and public figures who opposed the position of the official authorities.
So, in 2020, they attacked participants in a protest against the closure of a local maternity hospital.
Last year, Freikorps radicals harassed a teacher at the Kharkov State Academy of Culture, Natalya Semeykina, who spoke online against the actions of the Ukrainian authorities in the Donbass.
In the comments to one of the posts, the woman stated that the Russian Federation protects the Russian-speaking population in the region.
Freikorps members demanded that the woman be fired and held a rally outside the academy, taking pictures with the banner “Water in the head?
There is no place in the department.
An action against a Kharkov teacher organized by Freikorps
© Social networks
At the end of May 2022, another nationalist division of "Azov" was created in Kharkov - "SSO" Azov "Kharkov".
Anatoly Sidorenko, one of the former leaders of the Skhidny Corps and a participant in the war in Donbass, was appointed commander.
Chairman of the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine Larisa Shesler noted that the Ukrainian authorities specifically created bases for nationalist formations in Kharkov.
“Kharkov and Mariupol are the most Russian cities in the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime.
It was there that it was necessary to create and keep detachments in order to suppress any sympathy for Russia, ”the expert said.
The interlocutor of RT added that since 2015, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has been closely supervising nationalist formations.
However, since the former mayor of Kharkiv, Gennady Kernes, was in conflict with Avakov, Azov did not receive such unlimited power in the city as in Mariupol.
“Nevertheless, within the framework of this formation, the Kraken and Freikorps detachments were created in Kharkov, and it was the patronage of the Minister of the Interior that made it possible to involve frostbitten criminals in their ranks, who received permission for raider seizures and gang wars,” Shesler believes.
In turn, Volodymyr Oryol notes that militants under the age of 30 often become commanders of Ukrainian nationalist formations.
This is a generation of young people who have been taught for eight years that Ukraine's main enemy is Russia.
“In 2014, Oplot conducted a large-scale study of sentiment in Ukrainian cities.
So Odessa was the most pro-Russian city at that time (54-56% of the inhabitants considered themselves Russians or part of the Russian world), Kharkov was the second in this indicator.
Donetsk and Luhansk took the third and fourth places,” the man says.
According to him, over the past eight years, the mood in the region has changed a lot.
Moreover, Kharkiv is a city of youth, there are many institutes, universities and colleges.
The city is considered the student capital of Ukraine.
“Those who were ten years old in 2014 are now adults.
The far-right boys who beat “cotton wool” during the “Euromaidan” are now young people aged 26-28.
This is the category of young people that is particularly exposed to propaganda.
Anti-Russian sentiments were introduced everywhere in schools, colleges, lyceums, and institutes.
When the defense battalions were formed in Kharkov, preference was given to young people who grew up directly under Ukraine.
Moreover, nationalist convictions were not a mandatory criterion.
The main thing is that recruits do not have a clear ideological guideline.
The necessary ideas and guidelines are instilled in the course of training and preparation in the training units.
Such methods of training ideologically loyal militants are used all over the world,” summed up the political emigrant.
* "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) - the organization was recognized as extremist and banned on the territory of Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11/17/2014).