Alexander Verkhovsky on the dynamics of hate-motivated attacks

On June 24, 2015, Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA information and analytical center, spoke in an interview with the Fergana portal about the dynamics of hate-motivated attacks and why the police “forgot how” to catch such criminals on the streets.

The attacks peaked in 2008-2009, then the decline began. How did this dynamic develop? This is a Nazi-skinhead movement - that is, youth groups directly oriented towards violence as the only form of expression of their views, they quickly "multiplied" throughout the country and for a long time did not meet any systematic resistance from the police. I remember how the police chiefs said: these are ordinary football hooligans, and if they commit any crime, then we will condemn them, how are they different from other crimes? .. But such crimes differ in motive, and this is clearly defined by Russian law. This aggravating circumstance must be taken into account.

Since attention was not specifically focused on them, they were caught badly. And since these are organized groups, they were very good at hiding from the crime scene, so there was a very low detection rate. We calculated back in 2007: they had a probability of falling into the hands of the police in about one in twenty attacks. That is, they - and the members of the national groups are mainly teenagers and young people under 20 years old - had a feeling of impunity. The turning point came when the riots took place in Kondopoga in 2006. Although they were not directly related to the skinhead movement, it was a situation where the whole city was out of control for almost a day, and this turned out to be important for the authorities. People stabbed to death somewhere along the gateways have no political significance, but lack of control in the city does. Therefore, everything moved to the political level, the Department for Combating Extremism in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was formed. It was then that the police began to pay more attention to hate crimes. And already in 2007, the number of arrests increased sharply, followed by sentences for such crimes. And the young Nazis were so insolent then that they almost didn’t hide, so it turned out to be surprisingly easy to catch them. And caught a lot of them. During the period from 2007 to 2009, hundreds of these young militants were arrested and imprisoned. And this, of course, dealt a huge blow to this environment. And crime went down.

This continued literally until 2013, when the statistics of attacks again crept up. Why? What is the result for the official? Correctly report to the ministry. The problem is that reporting in our departments is arranged incorrectly. We have special departments for countering extremism and in general the entire police machine reports on countering extremist crimes - these are violent hate crimes, inciting hatred and membership in banned extremist organizations. At first, our police successfully caught these street criminals, but then it turned out that it is much easier to catch propagandists, because there are a lot of them on social networks. You don’t even have to run after them, it’s enough, without getting up from your chair, to open VKontakte - there is a sea of ​​racist videos, songs, statements. And since VKontakte is a Russian network, it discloses user data at the request of the police. As a result, the police simply changed their profile to these racists who chat on VKontakte. That is, they began to arrest and attract less those who commit real physical crimes, and more of those who write nasty things on the net. That is, we now have several times more people convicted of propaganda than those convicted of real violence. At the same time, 70 percent of the propagandists were found on VKontakte. We need to separate crime reporting so that the police are forced to re-energize and catch criminals on the street.

The events in Ukraine since the beginning of 2014 have brought a new twist. Russian Nazis reacted very differently to the events in Ukraine and the war in Donbass - some support Kyiv, some support the separatists. They were divided approximately 50 to 50. Moreover, several hundred Russian nationalists left to fight in the DPR and LPR. And several dozen are fighting on the other side. What does this mean for crime here? People who would beat migrants here are in Ukraine instead. Therefore, in 2014 we recorded fewer crimes than in 2013, although the proportion of murders among them increased significantly. It was the first time and it means that the environment is getting more violent. And when these fighters return from there, then, I think, it will become worse, because the war will not add humanism to them. And the police completely forgot how to deal with them - they completely switched to "catching" propagandists in social networks.

Sources

• Civic Assistance Committee and SOVA Center Mapped Hate Attacks // IA "Fergana". 2015. June 24.