The Moscow City Court began considering a criminal case about an attack by Ukrainian neo-Nazis on the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kyiv in 2018. The defendants in the case are seven members of radical nationalist groups, including Sich-S14* and Right Sector**. They are accused of desecrating the Russian flag (Article 329 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and attacking institutions that enjoy international protection with the aim of provoking war (Part 2 of Article 360 ​​of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Under these articles, the participants in the case face up to 20 years in prison. According to RT, all defendants in the case are being tried in absentia.

Several dozen Ukrainian neo-Nazis stormed the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kyiv in February 2018, chanting OUN-UPA slogans*** “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!". At that moment, there were about a hundred visitors in the building, including children who came there for weekly classes. The center’s employees were able to take them to a safe place while the radicals were walking around the building, destroying the exhibition display and writing “Death of Russia”, “Get FSB”, “This is for Crimea” on the walls.

After this, the participants in the attack burned the Russian tricolor, which they found in the center, and took the Ukrainian flag with them. The radicals filmed their actions and stated that they were doing this because FSB agents were supposedly in the center, and the employees were helping to “recruit Ukrainian children.”

According to center workers, the attackers destroyed the building for about an hour. The Ukrainian police who arrived at the scene did not detain anyone or interfere with the radicals.

The Russian investigation established that the active participants in the attack were members of the neo-Nazi group C14 and its leader Yevgeny Karas, who has been spreading radical nationalist views in Ukraine for more than ten years.

“In Ukraine they don’t see any crime in this”

The C14 group was created in Ukraine in 2009 as the youth wing of the nationalist political party “Svoboda” of Oleg Tyagnibok. After 2014 and participation in the Maidan, members of the group became famous for attacks on journalists and politicians they disliked, as well as for searching for pro-Russian citizens.

In February 2014, neo-Nazis led by Karas seized the Kyiv city administration. Moreover, later his comrades accused Karas of having “ordered his hundred to run and hide in the Canadian consulate” during clashes with the police on the Maidan.

After the start of the war in Donbass, Karas became an active participant in the so-called anti-terrorist operation. In 2015, he was suspected of murdering Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzina, who was shot dead at the entrance of his house in Kyiv.

As part of the investigation, two suspects were detained - nationalists

Denis Polishchuk and Andrey Medvedko. The latter, together with Karas, was one of the creators of C14; in addition, they participated together in the ATO as part of the Kyiv-2 battalion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Initially, the police reported that three suspects had been detained, but the name of another person involved was never disclosed. According to media reports, it was Yevgeny Karas, who was soon released by the police.

The radical himself has repeatedly boasted of his connections with the Security Service of Ukraine, from which he, according to him, received information about the “separatists”, as well as direct requests for help with “pacifying undesirable citizens.” Thus, in 2017, Karas said that the SBU regularly transmits information about upcoming pro-Russian events to C14 and other neo-Nazi groups.

Two years later, information that Ukrainian special services were collaborating with right-wing radicals was confirmed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

“We unexpectedly recorded cooperation between the Security Service and far-right radicals from C14. Hiding behind the right slogans... in a certain connection with the employees of the SBU, S14 carried out very unseemly things,” said the then head of the department, Arsen Avakov.

For the last few years, Evgeniy Karas, according to his own statements, has been serving in the Ukrainian army as deputy commander of the 14th separate regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and is actively raising funds for the needs of the unit.

Meanwhile, members of the C14 group are also defendants in other criminal cases in Russia. Thus, on April 4, it became known that the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don sentenced the saboteur Margarita Kharenko, who had been a member of the terrorist organization C14 since the fall of 2022.

As the court's press service told RT, the woman was collecting information about the movements of the Russian army. In addition, she and an accomplice planted a bomb under the car of a man whom she considered to be a Russian serviceman. As a result of a car explosion in December 2022, the victim survived, but received serious injuries. 

The court sentenced Kharenko to 20 years in a general regime colony, and her accomplice Sergei Avramenko to 16 years in a maximum security colony.

Retired police colonel and former head of the Main Directorate for Combating Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Nizhny Novgorod Region (Center “E”) Alexey Trifonov notes that currently holding trials in Ukraine of active participants in neo-Nazi groups is impossible for ideological reasons.

“They are being tried not in Ukraine, but in Russia - and this once again suggests that all this neo-Nazism in Ukraine has been developing for more than one year and was condoned. Of course, such “actions” were carried out not just with tacit consent, but in agreement with the Ukrainian special services. In Ukraine they will remain unanswered, because there they do not see any crime in this. Neither in neo-Nazism and fascism itself, nor in the direct actions of these people against Russian symbols. For them, this is an ordinary everyday situation, which is there at every turn,” noted RT’s interlocutor.

* “SICH-S14” is an organization recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated September 8, 2022.



** “Right Sector” is a Ukrainian association of radical nationalist organizations, recognized as extremist and banned in Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of Russia dated November 17, 2014).



*** 

The organization of Ukrainian nationalists - “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (OUN-UPA) 

- is

a Ukrainian organization recognized as extremist and banned on the territory of Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of November 17, 2014).