Let's throw checkers

Neo-Nazis and anti-fascists found a common enemy

Not much is known about the "career" of 17-year-old Ilya Petrov from Penza. At first he was an anti-fascist punk, and then he abruptly went over to the other camp. He pinned brass knuckles on his chest surrounded by oak leaves (symbols of radical nationalists), quit smoking and began to study explosives manuals. The investigation believes that in six months Petrov committed at least eight arsons and explosions in Penza - police departments, Orthodox chapels and the local TV channel. By planting explosives, the terrorist was not looking for fame. “Just such an ideological fighter with the system,” a law enforcement officer shrugs his shoulders. “And his nickname on the network was original - Schizophrenic.”

The explosions and arsons that the Penza teenager arranged were reported by two hostile Internet resources - the National Socialist news.nswap.info and the blog of anarchist antifa, which recently appeared on blackblocg.blogspot.com. Irreconcilable enemies, it seems, were united by a common enemy. Both nationalists and anti-fascists receive from the security forces. Both of them are dragged for interrogations, beaten in "monkey houses" and put in prisons.

Last year, one of the leaders of the nationalists, Maxim Bazylev, opened his veins in the isolation cell - and in response, his associates staged a Day of Wrath: they tried to burn down the police station and the district court in Nizhny Novgorod, and set fire to the Perovsky military enlistment office in Moscow. At the same time - last spring - anti-fascists also showed themselves. After their comrade was convicted, they burned the district council and the local police station.

Radicals have previously blown up railway lines, markets, Orthodox churches and change houses of migrant workers. But now the ultra-right are correcting their image, declaring that they are no longer scumbags with sharpening, but resistance fighters. “Attacks on police stations and United Russia offices are supported by the broadest sections of society,” nationalist resources report on the new tactics of struggle.

“The threat of retaliation will hang over every cop,” is what the anarchists are already frightening on the blog. They have their own accounts with the police. During May Day, the Nizhny Novgorod patrol detained 14 antifa. The guys were taken for interrogation and, as they claim, were beaten. Soon - already in Moscow - the cars of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Eastern Administrative District caught fire, and in Konkovo ​​policemen were thrown with smoke bombs. The first to report on these actions was the same blog on blogspot.com, aesthetically designed in the spirit of Caucasian separatist websites. It is updated several times a week.

Recently, all informals have been dragged to Petrovka, from the National Bolsheviks to antifa, trying to identify the arsonists. In the meantime, more and more videos of arson appear on the network. Among the radicals there are those who consider the actions to be intrigues of the Okhrana. One of the proofs is the absence of victims. Buildings and cars are on fire. Bombs don't explode. “You can understand why people do this: the opportunity to protest legally in Russia has been turned into a circus. But everything looks like a specially rigged topic, so that it would be convenient for the “E” center (for countering extremism. - Newsweek ) to plant people, ”says Pyotr Snegirev, an activist of the Autonomous Action organization.

GOOD LUCK IS TURNED AWAY

No one died in the explosion in the building of the Penza TV channel Express on March 13. The watchman went to the toilet, and this saved him. He locked the lobby door with a key and left, and at that moment a guy with a pipe bomb ran up to the door. The terrorist pulled the handle and left a box with a burning wick at the entrance. The explosion took out the door and injured the watchman. A note was found nearby - this is how Penza found out that terrorists of the "Russian Liberation Movement" appeared in the city. Rodovites took responsibility for almost all the recent arson attacks. The United Russia office, two Orthodox chapels, the Pervomaisky District Department of Internal Affairs, an intimate shop in the city center…

On May 6, employees of the regional police department No. 2 on Lenin Street were already worried. There they found double-action explosives - such as terrorists in the North Caucasus like to set. First, the firecracker went off, and then, when the policemen came running, a second, more powerful explosion was supposed to thunder - a canister stuffed with nails and screws. The sappers said that the explosive device was handicraft, but not without imagination. Instead of a wick, a regular cigarette was used. It was extinguished by a gust of wind or a wave from the first explosion.

The terrorist hurried to correct the mistake. On the evening of May 8, a smoking bundle flew into the window of the strong point on Zhemchuzhnaya Street, where local district policemen were sitting. “The guys jumped out of the office onto the stairs, and at that moment it exploded. Screws and nuts scattered around the office, ”says one of the eyewitnesses to the attack. A few minutes later, a tall guy in a black T-shirt and camouflage shorts was caught up on a street named after another terrorist, Karakozov. “He sprayed us in the face with a can, twisted around, and ran,” recalls one of the policemen. They tied him up on the bus. “He fought his fight alone and worked out every little thing. But on the day of his arrest, luck turned away from him, ”nationalist websites reported not without pathos.

COULD WORK IN A BANK

The family of Ilya Petrov lives in a residential area on the outskirts of Penza. At the entrance, local drunks and talkative old women are sitting on a bench. Neighbors assure that Ilya never hooligans and always said hello. He is the third child in the family. Mother, a former chemistry teacher, worked in the market. Husband is disabled. There is an empty wall in the hall - no books, no crystal, no photographs. Sticky linoleum on the floor. A surprised kid in shorts and a T-shirt rides around the room on a tricycle. The mother, a tired, excited woman, greeted the journalists with hostility: “I won’t say anything. He studied with me for five, what kind of terrorist is he? A drunken male voice is heard from the kitchen: “Get them out!” The man did not dare to leave.

At the school where Ilya studied, they remember that he loved geography, history, and he didn’t have triples right up to the ninth grade. Then he entered the local polytechnic college for a prestigious specialization - information security. “We call them anti-hackers, they are always in great demand. I could work in a bank,” says Evgeny Belousov, director of the college. Petrov did not want to study - he flunked the winter session, and on April 1 he was expelled. In his personal file, an extremely negative characteristic: closed, uncommunicative, did not strive to study, skipped classes. In the photo - a serious guy with a goatee beard, short-haired beyond his years. “Well-read, they say he loved the classics,” recalls the director.

During interrogations, Petrov stated that he blew up and set fire to it alone. Before the attack, he always went out for reconnaissance. “He knew when we came to work. He came, studied the escape routes, ”says one of the police officers. Ilya left his cell phone at home.

MESS IN MY HEAD

"Guys, don't get caught by them! Don't leave fingerprints, remember the cameras," anarchist bloggers warn. At the inconspicuous door of the Moscow club is a group of guys with a sporty look. They are dressed in olympics and protective pants - battalion commanders. Pockets are drawn with knives and traumatic pistols. This is antifa protection. From those who want to get to a concert in a club, they take away knives and gas cartridges. There are even hammers. Then, when the concert is over, the weapons will be returned and taken to the subway.

Security does not interfere - Nazi skinheads periodically attack visitors to such concerts. There are two hundred people in the hall. “Blogspot arsonists are unlikely to go to such parties,” says Ilya, one of the guards. “It happens that FSB mask shows with riot police are arranged here - all visitors are detained, filmed and “rolled” fingers.”

Anarchists lived quite peacefully. They published magazines, rallied for the abolition of conscription and against compacted buildings, set up environmental camps. And now, for the first time since the 1990s, a small section of anarchists have moved beyond the boundaries of legal political struggle.

On April 27, radicals threw bottles of Molotov cocktails at the department for organizing an inquiry of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate in Yuzhny Butovo. Two days later, checkers flew to police station No. 66 on Open Highway. The last entry is dated May 16th. In Rostov-on-Don, a 30-year-old FMS officer, a 21-year-old student and a 28-year-old manager were detained, who left a canister with 2.4 kg of explosive mixture and striking elements near the police building.

The anarchists themselves believe that the appearance of the rebels is a reaction to the pressure of the security forces. “In the Caucasus, after all, a lot of people came to the Mujahideen because of police arbitrariness,” says security guard Ilya. An employee of the "E" center is sure that the pressure has nothing to do with it. “Whom to press? They are children - everyone comes to talk with their mothers, - he is surprised and slaps the monitor in annoyance: - Everything comes from here, from the computer. And in the heads - porridge!