Russian Nationalism and Xenophobia in June 2024

In June 2024, we were aware of 11 victims of hate-motivated attacks. Some of the attacks were committed on behalf of the Sparrows Crew. Previously, this name was used by a Yekaterinburg-based group that published videos of xenophobic attacks on the Internet in 2011–2013, and may even have filmed such videos itself. Recall that in May 2021, the Supreme Court banned the activities of the organization "operating under the names of National Socialism/White Power, NS/WP Crew Sparrows, Crew/White Power, National Socialism/White Power."

The videos published in far-right Telegram channels suggest that some of the attacks committed between June 10 and 16 were timed to coincide with the birthday of Dmitri Borovikov, the leader of the St. Petersburg neo-Nazi Militant Terrorist Organization (Boevaya Terroristicheskaya Organizatsiya, BTO), shot dead during his arrest in the spring of 2006.

In the first six months of 2024, we recorded a total of 138 victims of hate-motivated attacks. In addition, we have information about four attempted murders.

We have information about two acts of xenophobic vandalism committed in June. In Tyumen, an attacker threw Molotov cocktails at the building of the Church of St. Dmitry Donskoy. And in Fryazino, near Moscow, an M.K.U. supporter blew up the entrance to a local Muslim center. Ultra-right Telegram channels reported that this explosion was revenge for the terrorist attack in Dagestan, where on June 23 militants carried out an armed attack on a synagogue and Orthodox churches, in which, among others, a priest in Derbent and a church guard in Makhachkala were killed. In total, since the beginning of 2024, we recorded nine acts of xenophobic vandalism.

Public activity of nationalists in June was low.

On June 10, some nationalist organizations laid flowers at the memorial to "The Son of the Russian People, a True Hero of Russia" Yury Budanov in Moscow.

The Society.Future (Obschestvo.Buduschee) association joined the fight against the proposed construction of a mosque on the Svyatoye Lake in Moscow's Kosino-Ukhtomskoye district: it began collecting signatures and released a propaganda video.

In June, the Russian Community (Russkaya Obschina, RO) and Northern Man (Severnyi Chelovek) continued their raid activity. In Murmansk, both these organizations organized and carried out document checks of migrants selling fruits and vegetables from small kiosks. In Yekaterinburg, RO participated in a nightclub and shopping center checking raid. In Pushkino, Yaroslavl, Nevinnomyssk, and Cheboksary, RO members patrolled the streets and carried out checks of retail outlets and markets, and in Tyumen participated in nighttime “preventive raids.”

In addition, RO activists appealed to the prosecutor's office and Roskomnadzor with a demand to block "satanic resources" in social networks, which "involve young people in devilry, superstition, and idiocy." This refers to a number of VKontakte groups and Satanic Bible, a book by Anton LaVey.

We have information about three sentences handed down in June for violent crimes committed with a hate motive. Among those convicted last month was well-known Volgograd far-right activist Alexei Malyovanyi (Monakhov), who received 300 hours of community service under Paragraph "b" of Part 2 Article 115 of the Criminal Code (CC) (intentional infliction of minor bodily harm motivated by political, ideological, racial, national, or religious hatred) for an attack in late January on a teenager who had reprimanded neo-Nazis for shouting Nazi slogans and displaying a Nazi salute. In St. Petersburg, the Moskovsky District Court sentenced three former members of the above-mentioned banned neo-Nazi group BTO Andrei (Marduk) Romanov, Denis (Parry) Burakov (Kharchev), and Roman Orlov (Kostrachenkov) to imprisonment for murders and attempted murders committed in 2003.

We have information about two cases opened in June for xenophobic violence and another for xenophobic vandalism.

Since the beginning of the year, we have information about 11 sentences for xenophobic violence against 27 people and five sentences for xenophobic vandalism against five people.

In June, we recorded 18 convictions for aggressive public statements against 18 people. These include:

• 11 people were convicted under Article 205.2 CC (public calls to carry out terrorist activities). Most of the sentences were related to the approval of the attack on the Kakhovskaya HPP, raids of the Freedom of Russia legion, etc., expressed on social networks (VKontakte and Telegram). Two people were punished for radical Islamist propaganda in the pre-trial detention center.

• Five people were convicted under Part 1 of Article 282.4 CC (repeated propaganda or public display of Nazi symbols) for public display of their own tattoos with Nazi symbols or showing A.U.E. symbols to fellow inmates.

• Two people were punished under Article 354.1 CC (rehabilitation of Nazism): one for his own photo with his hand raised in Nazi salute on the barrel of a trophy howitzer at the Mount Sapun Defense of Sevastopol Memorial, published on VKontakte on May 7, and the other for posting videos and comments on a social network approving "the actions of the German Nazis during World War II" and "expressing clear disrespect for the Day of Defender of the Fatherland."

13 people were sentenced to imprisonment, two to fines, two to correctional labor, and one to forced labor.

The majority of those sentenced to imprisonment were convicted under a combination of other articles of the Criminal Code or were already imprisoned. In June, three people were sentenced to imprisonment for statements without any known circumstances which should entail imprisonment. Among them, Alexei Kuzin, citizen of Ukraine from Sevastopol, who was sentenced to one and a half years in a penal colony for aforementioned posting of his photo on a howitzer. In Altai Krai, Vitaly Pirogov was sentenced under Part 2 of Article 205.2 CC to four years in a minimum-security penal colony for comments in a Telegram community calling for violent actions. In Samara, Yegor Zhitnikov was sentenced to three and a half years of imprisonment under the same article for publishing texts in a social network calling for "actions aimed at violent change of the constitutional order" and comments in support of the bombing of the Kakhovskaya HPP.

In total, since the beginning of the year, we have learned of 123 convictions against 136 people for aggressive public statements.

In June, we received information about 17 new criminal cases opened against 17 people for public statements.

We learned of seven convictions against 12 people for participating in the activities of the banned organizations M.K.U., Taliban, Columbine, and A.U.E., as well as one new criminal case against seven antifa activists under the article on participation in an extremist community.

Since the beginning of the year, we have learned of a total of 165 sentences against 212 people for involvement in extremist and terrorist communities and organizations.

We have information about five people fined in June under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) (production and distribution of extremist materials) for sharing via VKontakte popular ultra-right materials, such as the film Romper Stomper, the song “Unknown Soldiers" by the band Molot, the song "I am drawing 14/88 with white chalk" by the band Dyushes, and an anti-Semitic video titled Extermination of Christians is a Necessary Sacrifice! for Jews." In total, since the beginning of the year, we have learned about 61 people fined for distributing xenophobic materials that are on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

We also learned about 21 people punished in June under Article 20.3 CAO (promotion or public display of banned symbols), mostly for sharing materials with Nazi symbols and symbols of banned Islamist organizations such as the Caucasus Emirate or Al-Qaeda via social networks (primarily on VKontakte). Seven people were punished for acts committed offline: one drew the Wolfsangel, emblem of Ukraine’s Azov regiment, on a wall. Six (three of them prisoners of colonies) were punished for displaying their own tattoos with Nazi symbols. Eight of the 21 were assigned administrative arrest, the rest were fined. In total, since the beginning of the year we have learned about 319 cases of punishment for such offenses.

Since the beginning of the year, we learned of 203 court decisions issued under Article 20.3.1 CAO (incitement to hatred) for aggressive statements. We have information about eight people fined under this article in June. All of them were prosecuted for publishing in VKontakte and Odnoklassniki and mass mailings in Telegram and WhatsApp of xenophobic statements directed against natives of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Jews, and law enforcement officers. In addition, in the Astrakhan region, a man was fined for presenting his four friends with flash drives containing his memoir, in which experts found "statements aimed at inciting hatred and hostility on the grounds of nationality, race, and membership in a particular social group" and "signs of discrediting the Armed Forces and the current government of the Russian Federation." We are not familiar with the content of this memoir, but we doubt that its distribution among four friends really qualified as a public statement.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials was updated once, on June 19. The song “Columbine” by the band Myortvaya Vera (Dead Faith) was added to the list under item 5427.

The Federal List of Extremist Organizations was not updated in June. The Georgian National Legion, which was recognized as a terrorist organization by the Southern District Military Court on 18 April 2024, was added to the list of organizations recognized as terrorist.