Directors of the Ukrainian Library in Moscow accused of extremism

The Investigative Committee (IC) of Russia opened a criminal case against the director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, Natalya Sharina, under the article “extremism”.

Sharina is suspected of inciting national hatred and enmity. SK claims that in 2011 – 2015, she distributed the books of Ukrainian nationalist writer Dmitro Korchinsky, who are recognized as extremist in Russia.

Searches in the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow were 28 October, after which Natalia Sharina was arrested.

Ukrainian Agency UNIAN reported with reference to a library employee that during the search the police “planted some kind of literature, obviously nationalist.”

The official representative of the department, Vladimir Markin, stated that during the search in the library, printed materials with anti-Russian and anti-Russian propaganda were seized.

Dmitro Korchinsky is the leader of the Ukrainian organization “Brotherhood”, whose activities are prohibited in Russia. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation previously opened a criminal case against Korchinsky under articles on public calls for terrorism and “unleashing an aggressive war.”

In addition, it became known that the co-chairman of the association of Ukrainians in Russia, Valery Semenenko, is going on in the case of the Director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature as a witness. After interrogation, he was released.

“They showed me the list... I even asked: is this, I say, literature officially declared extremist? They didn’t tell me,” Semenenko said about the interrogation Russian service BBC. – Although I myself can say that it is not, since I know from Ukrainian publications that a little more than a dozen names have been declared extremist, and they showed me a list with about forty names. I was even discouraged: I knew practically no one [of the authors] there. Of course, I knew some names, but I didn’t hold or read practically any works.”

At the same time, a law enforcement source told TASS that the library director Semenenko had been searched the day before.

On the website of the Ministry of Justice, in the list of materials recognized as extremist, there is a book by the Ukrainian nationalist Dmitro Korchinsky - “War in the Crowd”, published in 1999 in Kyiv. It was declared extremist by the decision of the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow on March 14, 2013.

The book was distributed among visitors to the Library of Ukrainian Literature in the center of Moscow, whose director Natalya Sharina was detained on suspicion of inciting national hatred and enmity, a source said. In total in the list of the Ministry of Justice there are more than three thousand different materials of printed, audio and visual products and Internet pages.