The jailed director of Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature was reported to police by a former colleague

Earlier this week, Russian investigators raided Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature. According to the pro-Kremlin media outlet LifeNews, police seized 170 books. All the confiscated books are reportedly being studied by linguists to determine if they qualify as extremist materials. Most of the books, LifeNews reports, are about the Ukrainian nationalist figure Stepan Bandera and other nationalist movements.

Testifying against Natalia Sharina, the library's current director, is Sergei Sokurov, the library's former chief librarian. According to Sokurov, all the library's functions under Sharina were devoted to anti-Russian activities, and most of its books are extremist.

"When I started working at the library," Sokurov told LifeNews, "I saw that Director Sharina didn't know the Ukrainian language and culture, but at the same time she actively promoted Russophobic ideas."

Sharina stands accused of extremism. Earlier this week, she was jailed by police, after investigators raided Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature. A court is expected to rule on her arrest in the near future. According to the news agency Moskva, the authorities were looking for "Russophobic" literature that allegedly "distorts historical facts."

• This is not the first time the authorities have searched Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature. On December 21, 2010, police raided it on the suspicion that it was distributing anti-Russian books. Linguists even examined several of the publications found at the library, confirming that some materials propagated anti-Russian views. The library's director, Natalia Sharina, said police simply confiscated anything containing the word "nationalism."
• Three days later, on December 24, police returned to the library and seized its computer hard drives and library cards (obtaining the list of everyone registered at the facility). The library was closed and sealed until January 8, 2011, when Russian officials announced no further plans to interfere with its work.
• As hostilities between the two nations have grown over the past two years, Ukraine and Russia have both actively banned each other's cultural exports. Next month, Kiev will enforce a new "de-Communization" program that removes the monuments and names of figures like Lenin from public spaces. Kiev has also banned hundreds of Russian television shows and films.