The following is our monthly review of instances of xenophobia and radical nationalism, along with any government countermeasures, for April 2022.

We recorded only two cases of individuals suffering from acts of ideologically motivated violence in April 2022. Since the beginning of the year, we are aware that four people in Russia have been targeted by such violence.

This month we also became aware of one episode of xenophobically motivated vandalism, in which vandals drew swastikas onto tombstones in the Krasnodar Region. Since the beginning of the year, we have recorded six such acts of vandalism.

As far as public activity of the Russian far right this month, we would note the actions organized by the Other Russia, in connection with the "Day of the Russian Nation," which is traditionally celebrated by their party on April 5. In Moscow, party activists gathered at the Delegation of the European Union in protest of EU arms supplies to Ukraine. Standing with a banner reading "Russian Blood on Your Hands," activists poured fake blood "symbolizing the blood of Russian people falling victim to European aggression against the Russians of the Donbas." In St. Petersburg, party activists gathered at the Polish Consulate General with a banner reading "Polacks, don't anger the Russians, or you'll be sorry!" They shouted slogans including "No to Russophobia!" "Fuck off, NATO!" and "Russia – everything else is nothing!" The St. Petersburg action lasted a few seconds before police began arresting participants. Aside from these, on April 5, the bookstore Listva announced a lecture by Andrei Dmitriev, coordinator of the Other Russia. The lecture was entitled "Limonov and Ukraine: How Prophecies Come True." As a result, police came to the bookstore, arrested three employees and several shoppers, and seized books including The Origins of Ukrainian Separatism by Nikolai Ulyanov and Kyiv Kaput by Eduard Limonov.

We are not aware of any court rulings delivered in April (*) on the basis of hate-motivated violent crimes. Since the beginning of 2022, we are aware of only one individual having been convicted for xenophobic violence, in St. Petersburg, and of two individuals convicted for xenophobic vandalism, in the Tula Region.

However on April 25, several members of the banned neo-Nazi terrorist group NS/WP were detained, then arrested on allegations that, on instructions of the Ukrainian Security Service, they had planned the "murder of well-known public figure Vladimir Solovyev." It was also reported that they discussed the murder of other principal propagandists: Dmitry Kiselev, Olga Skabeeva, Margarita Simonyan and Tigran Keosayan. Police seized components for the manufacture of an explosive device, an arsenal of weapons and ammunition, drugs, Nazi symbols and fake Ukrainian passports from the suspects.

The NS/WP members are charged with Part 3 of Article 144 (obstruction of the legal professional actions of journalists), Part 1 of Article 30 and paragraphs b, f, g, and h of Part 2 of Article 105 (attempted murder for hire of a person in connection with his professional activities by an organized group in a generally dangerous way) of the Criminal Code.

Among those detained were:

• Andrei "Bloodman" Pronsky, who Russian mass media refer to as the group's leader and the administrator of the Telegram channel Oderint, Dum Metuant (lat. "they hate as they fear"), operating under the pseudonym "Signature Illegible." In 2013, he had been committed after a court found him guilty of the xenophobic murder of an acquaintance. (At the end of December 2011, Pronsky, wanting to make a New Year's "gift" for his far-right comrades-in-arms, killed an acquaintance, an ethnic Jew, and then posted a video of the abuse of the corpse on the Internet). In June 2021, Pronsky was detained after a fight between far-right activists and anti-fascists on Dubninskaya Street in Moscow. As a result he was placed under house arrest on charges of hooliganism (Article 213 of the Criminal Code), which was extended until April 28, 2022, when he was due to appear before the Timiryazevsky District Court for consideration of the case on the merits.
• Vladimir "the Young" Stepanov and Vladimir "Scout" Belyakov, who in 2012 had been charged in the case of the Yemelyan Nikolaev (Yan Lyutik) gang and sentenced to 8 and 10 years for racist murder, attempted murder and hooliganism, all motivated by national hatred. They were both released on parole.
• Maxim Strizhakov, who had previously drawn criminal sanctioning for distribution of narcotics and attempted murder, and was sent to compulsory treatment.
• One Maxim Druzhinin.

Following mass media reports of the arrests, a statement from NS/WP appeared on ultra-right Telegram channels, confirming that those detained were members of the group but denying any link to Ukrainian security or special services.

This statement is consistent with an e-mail entitled "NS/WP ARE BACK" received by SOVA Center on April 20, Adolf Hitler's birthday. In the message, NS/WP claimed responsibility for the arson of cars marked with the letter "Z."

Also during April, the organizer of an unnamed group in Kabardino-Balkaria was issued a suspended sentence of two and a half to four years for involvement in an extremist society. According to the FSB, "as part of so-called religious patrols, they exerted psychological and physical pressure on residents of several municipal districts” of Kabardino-Balkaria. In total, since the beginning of the year, nine sentences against 22 people have been handed down for participation in the activities of extremist communities and organizations.

We now have information about ten individuals charged on the basis of xenophobic statements in March, received following the publication of our monthly review. Three of these people were convicted only under Article 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls to extremist activity), and of those, two had been charged for social media posts calling for attacks on law enforcement; the other was a colony inmate who posted a flyer calling for attacks on Jews. Three others were convicted under Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code (public justification of terrorism online) for their stated approval of terrorist acts in Moscow and Beslan, as well as school shootings in Kazan and Perm. Two individuals were convicted on combined charges of both articles for calls to attack the president of Russia, FSB officers, and Jews.

One individual – a participant in the movement "Citizens of the USSR" – was convicted under a combined charge from articles 280, 205.2 and 282 (incitement to hatred) for posting antisemitic and anti-police materials online.

Another person was fined under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism) for social media posts featuring text indicating the "liberating nature" of the Nazi attack of June 22, 1941 on the Soviet Union, territories "occupied by Bolsheviks, Jews and Asians." The post called those people subjected to the attack "subhuman" and "parasites" while calling the actions of the Nazis "sacred."

By our count, since the beginning of this year, Russian courts have convicted 48 individuals, in 48 decisions, on the basis of xenophobic statements.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials was updated twice, on April 12 and 27, to account for new entries 5273–5282. The list was supplemented by The Satanic Bible of Anton LaVey; the latest issue of the Islamist journal Istok ("Spring”); songs popular in the ultra-right community (including numbers by groups like Gangs of Moscow and White Terror, etc.); the latest article by Boris Stomakhin; a pseudo-historical article insulting Ukrainians; and the anti-Christian novel Night of Svarog by one Suncharion.

No fewer than five people were fined under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (manufacture and distribution of banned materials) for reposting materials from the Federal List of Extremist Materials on social media.

Meanwhile no fewer than 13 people were fined under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (incitement to hatred) for the social media publication (primarily on VKontakte) of materials intended to incite hatred to Jews, Muslims, natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia, Blacks, Arabs, Chinese, Mongols, ethnic Russians and, separately, Russian girls.

Finally, no fewer than 32 individuals were sanctioned under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi symbols and symbols of banned organizations). Eleven (seven of them being colony inmates) had demonstrated their own swastika tattoos. One drew a swastika on the front of an apartment building, another put Nazi-symbol stickers on a car, and a third shouted a Nazi slogan aboard an airplane. The rest posted Nazi symbols to social media. Six of these individuals were placed under administrative arrest, while the others were fined.

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(*) Data about criminal and administrative cases are reported without reference to rulings that we consider to be patently improper.