Skinhead sailor beaten in Baltic Fleet

On August 4, 2005, in the Baltic Fleet, on the large ship Minsk, a fight occurred between sailors.

One sailor, Mikhail Gordeenko, entered the living room with a naked torso, on which the sailors who were nearby discovered a tattoo of a swastika. “When asked what it was, Gordeenko stated that he was a skinhead and had a negative attitude towards people of non-Russian nationality,” the Baltic Fleet headquarters reported. A sailor from Dagestan who was nearby reacted emotionally to what was said. As a result, a fight broke out. The conflict continued, in which seven more sailors were directly or indirectly involved.

Eight sailors were taken to the Kaliningrad military hospital. The military prosecutor's office of the Baltic Fleet opened a criminal case under Article 335 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("violation of statutory relations between military personnel").

Some time later, however, representatives of the Baltic Fleet prosecutor's office denied the information that the cause of the incident was a demonstration of ethno-nationalist beliefs: “as the investigation showed, the sailor has nothing to do with skinheads and got the tattoo, according to his own admission, in his youth out of stupidity. It was established also that the fact of the tattoo was only a pretext for the beating."

According to the official version of the prosecutor's office, the cause of the fight was extortion.

Comm. Fighting, of course, is not a method of resolving conflicts. However, if the version of the “beating for the swastika” is correct, we have before us a typical case of spontaneous counteraction to the propaganda of radical nationalism.

Sources

• In the Baltic Fleet, fellow soldiers beat up a skinhead sailor // Yoki.Ru. 2005. August 13.
• One of the sailors who fled from the unit due to hazing could have been beaten again for having a swastika tattoo // Newsru.com. 2005. August 15.