Will nationalist Vyacheslav Datsik be released on parole?

The court has granted the application of the nationalist who had been convicted of illegal border crossing.

In October 2020, the Tosno District Court of Leningrad Oblast granted nationalist Vyacheslav Datsik’s application for early release. He will most probably be released as early as October 13.

On December 22, 2019, Datsik and his friend Dmitry Vechkin were detained while trying to cross the Russian border with Estonia in an inflatable boat. According to Datsik’s wife, he was not planning to go to Estonia himself but wanted to help a friend who “had to urgently cross the border”.

On June 8, 2020, the Leningrad Regional Court found Datsik and Vechkin guilty under Part 3 of Article 322 of the Criminal Code (illegal crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation by a group of persons acting in collusion) and sentenced them to one year in a high-security penal colony.

Vyacheslav Datsik became famous in Russia after participating in mixed martial arts championships as a heavyweight; he played under the nickname “Redhead Tarzan”. In the 2000s, he was a member of the Neo-Nazi group “Slavic Union” (it was banned in Russia in 2010).

In 2007, he was arrested in St. Petersburg for serial robberies of mobile phone shops: he committed more than fifty robberies, stealing both money and goods worth about five million rubles. Datsik justified these seemingly opportunistic crimes with his ultra-right views. In the police footage shown during an episode of the “Dispatch” TV show, Datsik explains that the choice of targets for his raids was racially motivated — he robbed only shops that he thought belonged to “non-Russians”. He also said that Jesus Christ was a Mossad agent and that he, Datsik, was a great White Warrior and a son of god Perun.

In October 2009, a medical examination found him insane, and he was locked in a special psychiatric clinic.

In August 2010, Datsik escaped from the clinic, robbed a mobile phone shop again, and then illegally crossed the border into Norway. At the end of September 2010, he turned himself in to the Norwegian police, handed over his gun, and asked for political asylum. However, the Norwegian authorities refused to grant him asylum; he was arrested and deported to Russia. According to the Norwegian police, Datsik had been planning to kill employees of the Russian Embassy in Oslo and local Muslims.

In Russia, he had to undergo another psychiatric examination, which found him fully sane.

On December 7, 2012, the Nevsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced Datsik to 5 years in prison, finding him guilty of assault on a mobile phone shop.

After his release in March 2016, the nationalist immediately engaged in “social work”, namely, the fight against “brothels” and organized sex work.

On the night of May 18, 2016, Datsik forced both sex workers and the clients of a brothel located on 11th Line of Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg to walk naked to the nearest police department. According to media reports, Datsik was armed with a crowbar and threatened his “detainees”. He was arrested later that night during a raid on another brothel.

On March 19, 2018, the Vasileostrovsky District Court of St. Petersburg found Datsik guilty of hooliganism, beatings, and unlawful entry into a property, sentencing him to 3.5 years in a high-security penal colony. However, in February 2019, the St. Petersburg City Court changed the verdict upon appeal and released the nationalist from custody in the courtroom.

Less than a year after that, he tried to cross the Russian border with Finland illegally, hence his latest criminal case.