"Biryulyovsky Front" is suspected of organizing pogroms

On October 18, 2013, the media, citing intelligence services, reported that the pogroms in Moscow in Biryulyovo were organized by the far-right group Biryulyovo Front. Previously, the leader of the group was Ilya Shutko (Luftwaffe), convicted in 2009. Active members of the group were Evgenia Zhikhareva and Svyatoslav Batyuk, also already convicted of neo-Nazi violent crimes. One of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Nazis, Andrei Malyugin, as well as Rodnover nationalists David Bashelutskov and Stanislav Lukhmyrin collaborated with the group.

According to the Rosbalt agency, the Biryulyovo Front group, which organized the pogroms in Western Biryulyovo, consists of approximately 100 activists. The core of the group lives in Biryulyovo and in the Prazhskaya metro area. Activists agree on the place and time of “actions” via the Internet. After the murder of Yegor Shcherbakov on the night of October 11, members of the group also decided to organize a protest. On October 12, about 100 young people, participants in the Biryulyovo Front, and local residents who sympathized with them gathered in Biryulyovo. However, those gathered did not go so far as to take radical action. Then the activists launched a call on the Internet resources of other groups, in particular the Moscow Front. After this, on October 13, several hundred members of various groups gathered in Biryulyovo and attacked the Biryuza shopping center and the Pokrovskaya fruit and vegetable base. On October 14, near the Prazhskaya metro station, participants of the Biryulevsky Front were mainly detained.

According to intelligence services, the Biryulevsky Front group emerged in the mid-2000s. It was created by students from one of the local schools. The group was headed by Ilya Shutko (Luftwaffe), who constantly took part in the actions. Among the participants of the Biryulevsky Front were Evgenia Zhikhareva and Svyatoslav Batyuk. Members of the group carried out several dozen attacks on visitors. Once or twice a week, a group of five or six people would go to one of the city's districts, find a victim there and inflict dozens of stab wounds, mostly in the chest and neck. Attacks were also carried out on trains. “Improvised” means were used - clubs, rods and iron sharpenings.

According to media reports, part of the “Biryulevsky Front” were the “Kolinichenko gang”, 13 members of which (Shutko was also involved in the case) were convicted in September 2008, and the “Ryno gang”, most of whose activists were convicted in December 2008.

For the first time, the Biryulevsky Front was reported by the Format-18 website, which belonged to Maxim Martsinkevich. A video has appeared on the website of several young people beating a native of the Caucasus on an electric train. At the beginning of the video there was a screensaver with the inscription “Biryulevsky Front”. Later, the Biryulevsky Front founded its own website, ns-wp.org, where video reports of the attacks were published. “Fighters for racial purity” renamed themselves “white wolves.” Moderated by the site "Molot88". (The site is currently not functioning, but a neo-Nazi forum is located at a similar address).

The nationalists communicated on the Internet with representatives of similar groups from other cities, in particular, with neo-Nazi Rodnovers from the Volgograd region and St. Petersburg. After the leaders of the Rodnovers, David Bashelutskov and Stanislav Lukhmyrin, were put on the wanted list in Volgograd in 2007 for an attack on a native of Azerbaijan, Bashelutskov and Lukhmyrin settled in Moscow with friends from the Biryulevsky Front. Together they staged acts of intimidation, during which 12 migrant workers were killed. In one of the apartments in Biryulyovo they made homemade bombs. Investigators suspect that Svyatoslav Batyuk could have taken part in this. During a search, components of explosive devices were found on him. On November 4, 2008, a bomb was planted on the railway tracks near the Bulatnikovo station. They also tried to blow up the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the Biryulyovo Zapadnoye area and the McDonald's in Kuzminki. (For a list of crimes of neo-Nazi Rodnovers, see here .)

Let us remember that most of the leaders and activists of the group were convicted. Ilya Shutko and Evgenia Zhikhareva were convicted on September 22, 2009, along with other Nazi skinheads, accused of three attempted murders and one murder of foreigners. They received long prison sentences.

Zhikhareva was also involved in another case together with David Bashelutskov and Stanislav Lukhmyrin. Neo-Nazi Rodnovers were convicted in October 2010 of a series of murders, attempted murders and bombings.

Svyatoslav Batyuk tried to hide from law enforcement agencies with one of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Nazis, a former member of the far-right Borovikov-Voevodin group Andrei Malyugin, who, as the special services suspect, could take part in the actions of the Biryulevsky Front. (Malyugin was detained in August 2011. His case was brought to court in April). Malyugin sent Batyuk to his “comrades-in-arms” from the group National socialism / White power (NS/WP - “national socialism / white power”) from Pikalevo, Mark Filippov and Alexander Nikitin, who eventually killed the Moscow far-right. In December 2011, they were convicted of Batyuk's murder.

Despite the loss of leaders, the Biryulevsky Front did not cease to exist. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, several activists of the movement studied in the same and in parallel classes with the murdered Yegor Shcherbakov.

As operatives note, in some apartments in Biryulyovo there are signs with the numbers “88”. In winter, near one of these apartments there was a mass brawl with shooting between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists.

According to journalists from Russian Planet, there are doubts that the Biryulevsky Front still exists as an organized structure. “Somewhere in 2003-2004 there really was such a formation, then they were some teenagers, and it is quite possible that they studied together with Shcherbakov.” However, there is no evidence that the group survived after the neutralization of its most active members. Investigators could simply pull up lists of people who were registered with the police and were listed as members of the Biryulevsky Front.

The intelligence services note that a similar situation is developing in the Tekstilshchiki region, where a powerful nationalist group also operates.

Sources

• Vershov Yu. Pogroms were organized by the “Biryulevsky Front” // Rosbalt. 2013. October 18.
• How the Nazi underground, which is still not officially recognized, works // Novaya Gazeta. 2008. December 22.
• Skovoroda E. Organized criminal classmates // Russian Planet. 2013. October 21.