In Spain, they detained (and released, forbidden to leave the country) Anatoly Sharia, a blogger with millions of subscribers suspected in Ukraine in Gosizmen

He called the war a "nightmare", but constantly opposed the Ukrainian authorities

On May 5, the SBU announced the detention of Anatoly Sharia in Spain , which is suspected by the Ukrainian authorities in Gosizmen and in the inciting of the Rozel . The SBU called the detention by the result of a “multi -level special operation of Ukrainian law enforcement officers” and its “close interaction” with the office of the Prosecutor General and “international partners, in particular, the National Police in Spain and the Office of the Attache of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Spain in Ukraine”.

Shary was detained on May 4; The next day, as the Spanish media write , the court exempted him to be obliged by the judge of the 1st and 15th of each month and a number of other restrictions. He was forbidden to leave the territory of Spain. The Ukrainian authorities have 40 days to send an official request for its extradition.

The case against Sharia was announced in February 2021. The basis for the case, according to the SBU press release, was that since 2012 it “through social networks, electronic media and Russian television channels ... contributed to the state and non-governmental structures of the Russian Federation in conducting special information operations”, discredited the state policy of Ukraine, distributed “manipulative, distorted information about government initiatives and events in the east of the country”.

Anatoly Shari has been living in Europe since 2012. He received refuge in Lithuania. As the Ukrainian media wrote then , Shary declared his persecution by law enforcement agencies of Ukraine due to critical materials about the police. Cases of hooliganism were investigated against him (due to shooting from a traumatic pistol at the McDonald's restaurant) and a false notification of the crime (it was claimed that Sharia staged an attempt on himself). In 2013, Sharia was detained in the Netherlands at the request of Ukraine, but a few days later he was released - his lawyer claimed that the Dutch court considered it falsified. The search in the first case was terminated only in 2019, in the second -in 2020.

2.95 million people were signed on the UTUB channel of Sharia, 555 thousand on telegrams. Hundreds of thousands are gaining its videos, and often more than a million views (many hours of streams in the early days of the war counts several million views). Together with his wife Olga Sharia, who also leads a blog, he leads the Shariy.net site (“A multidisciplinary Internet publication with a clear priority for high-quality journalism”). The couple also head the Sharia party, which was created in 2019 and was positioned as Libertarian. In the Verkhovna Rada elections in 2019, the party did not overcome the five percent passing barrier, but in 2020 its representatives were part of the City Councils of Kharkov, Odessa, Nikolaev and Mariupol. After Russia's invasion, the party’s activities, together with the activities of a number of pro -Russian parties, were suspended by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine during martial law.

According to the site “Media Detector”, with whom Sharia sued due to the wording of the “Rupor of the Russian World”, Sharia grew up against the backdrop of criticism of Euromaidan and ridicule politicians who came to power after the flight of President Viktor Yanukovych. The Media Detector accuses Sharia of manipulations and the spread of false information about the war in the east of Ukraine, which he himself called the “civilian”. The Bellingcat project wrote that Sharia (according to the investigators, unreasonably) accused the SBU of falsifying evidence of the involvement of one of the separatists of Igor Bezler in the crash of the Boeing of the Boeing in the Donbass in 2014. Due to the charges of working on Russia, Sharia sued with former President of Ukraine Peter Poroshenko and lost .

Shary called the war in Ukraine a “nightmare”, but continued to criticize the Ukrainian power. On the morning of February 24, after the start of the Russian invasion, he spent a 10-hour stream, which collected 8.5 million views. “What is happening now, I can’t understand at all <...> that now is a nightmare <...> Putin announced a special operation and now the explosions sound in absolutely peaceful Ukrainian cities,” Shariy said during Stream. Speaking about how the decision was made to the start of the war, he remarked: “I'm afraid that this is connected with the diplomas that convinced that they know the country and that there will be flowers.”

Nevertheless, in the numerous videos that came out after the Russian invasion, Sharia continued criticism of the government of Ukraine and its president. In one of the videos, he called Vladimir Zelensky "temporarily acting president." In March, after the ban on the activities of his party, he called Zelensky a "dictator on the minimumines", which banned his party "on lawlessness and without any reason."

The BBC correspondent in Ukraine Svyatoslav Khomenko said that a few weeks after the start of the war, Sharia "returned to rhetoric, which many in Ukraine perceive as skilled manipulations created in the interests of Russia." In particular, Shary spoke in one of his videos that the weapons supplied to Ukraine Western countries could get to terrorist groups in Europe. Another roller of Sharia is entitled "a preventive blow to Transnistria?" According to Svyatoslav Khomenko, Shary works according to the "training manual of Russian propaganda, only adapted to the needs of the Ukrainian public."