Summary
Systematic Racist and Neo-Nazi Violence : Attacks against Ethnic “Others” : Attacks against Ideological Opponents : Other Attacks : Racism among Soccer Fans
Crimes against Property
Criminal Prosecution for Violence
Criminal Prosecution for Crimes against Property
Appendix. Crime and punishment statistics

This year, SOVA Center[1] has moved away from submitting a single large annual report encompassing both criminal and political activities of nationalists, and all measures to counteract them. The political activity is covered in our semi-annual reports, one for the summer-autumn and the other one for the winter and spring.[2] Our reporting on criminal activity and the legal counter-measures has been split in two: everything related to crimes against a person or property, as well as some information about racism in soccer can be found in this report, while everything that relates to the enforcement of the legislation against incitement to hatred or other illegal incitement and against activities of political or other groups will be presented shortly in a separate report. Thus, the present report focuses on the phenomenon, known as hate crimes – that is, on ordinary criminal offenses committed on the grounds of ethnic, religious or other similar enmity or prejudice.[3]

Summary

The number of attacks motivated by racist or neo-Nazi-ideology declined in 2017, according to the SOVA Center monitoring; however, the true scope of ideologically motivated violence is not known. The drop number of attacks against ethnic “others” accounts for much of this decrease, although they still remain the largest group of victims. However, the number of attacks against “ideological opponents” shows a substantial increase, with a large subset targeting individuals viewed by their attackers as national traitors.

Conversely, the activity of vandals, motivated by religious, ethnic or ideological hatred, increased in comparison with its level in the preceding year. This growth also reflects an increase in attacks against the sites of “ideological opponents.” These “opponents” include state agencies as well as buildings associated with the “fifth column.” The number of attacks against religious sites remained constant, comprising about two-thirds of the total.

As for the law enforcement practice, the number of sentences for hate-motivated crimes has been decreasing year after year. This drop can be partially attributed to the decrease in the actual number of attacks, but racist and other ideologically motivated violence has by no means disappeared, and the reluctance of law enforcement agencies to step up work in this area is alarming.

Systematic Racist and Neo-Nazi Violence

In 2017, at least 71 people became victims of violence, motivated by racist or neo-Nazi-ideology. Fewer than 6 people died; the others were injured. As usual, our data does not include victims in the North Caucasus and Crimea or victims of mass brawls. We see a drop in numbers compared to 2016, when 10 people were killed, 82 injured and 3 more threatened with murder.[4] Of course, our conclusions about the trend can only be preliminary – the 2017 data is still far from final, and, alas, these numbers will inevitably grow,[5] since, in many cases, the information only reaches us after a long delay.

Unfortunately, collecting the statistics on the attacks is becoming increasingly difficult every year. The media coverage of this topic has long been either suppressed or delivered in a way that a hate crime is almost impossible to identify. Information from unofficial sources is also very hard to obtain. The victims are not at all eager to publicize the incidents; they rarely report attacks to non-governmental organizations or the media, let alone the police and law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, attackers, who often used to post online the videos of their actions, have grown more cautious. Quite often, we only learn about the incidents several years after the fact.

The attacks of 2017 occurred in 19 regions of the country (vs. 18 regions in 2016). Unexpectedly, St. Petersburg is in the lead with the highest level of violence (1 killed, 24 injured), while victims in Moscow were uncharacteristically few (9 injured). A significant number of people were attacked in the Novosibirsk Region (5 injured), the Republic of Tatarstan (1 killed, 4 injured), the Rostov Region (2 killed, 2 injured), the Oryol Region (3 injured), and the Khabarovsk Region (2 killed, 1 injured). When compared to 2016, the situation has improved in the Moscow Region (2 people injured in 2017 vs. 6 in 2016), but deteriorated in Tatarstan (1 killed, 2 injured in 2016).

A number of regions (the Vladimir Region, the Lipetsk Region, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Omsk Region, the Samara Region, the Primorye Region and the Stavropol Region) have disappeared from our statistics this year, but, on the other hand, crimes were reported in several new places (the Belgorod Region, the Kirov Region, the Oryol Region, the Yaroslavl Region, and the Mari El Republic).

According to our data, in addition to Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Moscow Region, the centers of ethnic tension in the last seven years (2011-2017) can be identified as the Novosibirsk Region, the Orenburg Region, the Rostov Region, the Sverdlovsk Region, the Tula Region and the Republic of Tatarstan. However, it is possible that these regions simply do a better job of informing the public about such crimes.

Attacks against Ethnic “Others”

People, perceived by their attackers as “ethnic outsiders,” still constituted the largest group of victims. In 2017, we recorded 28 attacks motivated by ethnic considerations. In comparison with the preceding year, the percentage of such attacks decreased – we reported 44 such victims (7 of them dead) in 2016.

Migrants from Central Asia were the most numerous group in this category of victims – 11 injured (vs. 3 killed and 25 injured in 2016), followed by individuals of unidentified “non-Slavic appearance” (5 injured); most likely, the overwhelming majority of these people were also from Central Asia, since their appearance was described as “Asian” (vs. 2 killed and 8 injured in 2016). Migrants from the Caucasus take the next place with 3 injured (vs. 3 killed and 1 injured in 2016).

Attacks against other “ethnic outsiders” with the use of xenophobic slogans were also reported. In August 2017, three students from Iraq were beaten up in Oryol. Mahjub Tijani Hassan, a 24-year-old student of the Kazan Federal University from the Republic of Chad, was brutally murdered in early February 2017 in Kazan.[6] This murder caused a great media resonance in early 2017. Two Russian victims of violence motivated by ethnic hatred were reported in Novosibirsk.

In addition to attacks on the streets, we know of at least two cases of group attacks in subway and commuter trains cars against migrants from Central Asia or the Caucasus (the so-called “white cars”). For example, in December 2017, a group of young people armed with nunchucks and a knife entered the train at the Technological Institute station in St. Petersburg and proceeded to beat up two passengers of “non-Slavic appearance,” pushing one of them out onto the platform with a shout “the car for Russians!”[7]

Despite all the anti-Ukrainian rhetoric of the recent years, attacks against Ukrainians are quite rare, apparently because ethnic Ukrainians are hard to identify in the crowd. However, we encountered one attack against a Ukrainian citizen in the period under review. Five young skinheads beat up an 18-year-old Ukrainian citizen – a trainee of FC Dynamo (Kyiv) – while yelling xenophobic anti-Ukrainian slogans; the incident took place outside the Garage Underground nightclub in Chelyabinsk in July 2017.[8]

Neo-Nazi group Citadel conducted a number of raids in Moscow early in the year. However, in contrast to the previous years, anti-migrant raids have almost disappeared by the end of 2017, especially after most of their initiators faced criminal prosecution.[9]

We have to emphasize once again that the quantitative data provided here is incomplete and the majority of racist attacks remain unreported, or we can confirm only the fact of an attack by unknown radicals with no details on where and when it took place. Alas, such attacks do happen. The neo-Nazi videos with scenes of racist violence by the famous Sparrows Crew group as well as the new Vigilance Committee (Komitet Bditelnosti),[10] shared online in early 2017, provide indirect evidence. Unfortunately, recognizing the circumstances of the incidents from these videos is impossible.

Moreover, while law enforcers managed to bring down the level of systematic racist violence by organized Nazi groups, ordinary xenophobic violence seems to remain at the same level. We record three to five such incidents each year, while keeping in mind that this category of the attacks is the least likely to be picked up by our monitoring.

Attacks against Ideological Opponents

The number of ultra-right attacks against their political, ideological or “stylistic” opponents increased noticeably in 2017 bringing the count of victims up to 21, including three deaths (vs. 9 injured in 2016).[11]

The victims of the attacks included representatives of youth subcultures, both politicized (anti-fascists, anarchists) and apolitical (attacks against anime fans, or shaving the head of a teenager as an objection against his dreadlocks).

The number of people beaten up because they were perceived as the “fifth column” and “traitors to the homeland” increased as well – the victims included independent journalists,[12] volunteer guards at the Boris Nemtsov memorial, and participants in opposition pickets or rallies against corruption (primarily supporters of Alexei Navalny). There were 6 such attacks in 2017 vs. 3 in 2016.

Attacks of this nature were carried out by representatives of nationalist pro-Kremlin groups, of which the SERB (South East Radical Bloc) movement was the most prominent. The most famous incident took place in Moscow in April, when Alexei Navalny had antiseptic green dye (supposedly mixed with another substance) thrown into his face. As a result, he suffered from a chemical burn to his eye and had to receive medical treatment in Spain. Internet users identified the person who committed the attack as Alexander Petrunko, an activist of the SERB movement.[13]

The same category also includes the attacks by the ultra-right against state employees. An armed attack on the FSB reception room, which occurred in Khabarovsk on April 21, 2017, became one of the resonant events of the year. The attack ended with the death of two people and of the perpetrator, 17-year-old Anton Konev; one man was wounded.[14] It soon became clear that Konev was a member of Schtolz Khabarovsk, a small neo-Nazi group (which collaborated with the local cell of the Occupy Pedophilia project led by Maxim Martsinkevich).[15] His social network page was found to contain the posts regarding his intention to go to Valhalla (the German and Scandinavian mythology is traditionally very popular among the neo-Nazis). Later, the FSB officers detained Konev’s alleged accomplice, an “experienced neo-Nazi”.[16]

Journalists and academic experts, who worked on the cases related to incitement to hatred, also faced threats from the ultra-right. In early 2017, Dmitry (Schulz) Bobrov published the name, the photo and the place of employment of a staff member of the St. Petersburg State University; in another case, a statement containing threats against a female journalist from the Novaya Gazeta was posted online.

Other Attacks

The number of attacks against LGBT exceeded the corresponding number from the preceding year; we recorded 11 injured in 2017 vs. 1 killed, 4 injured in 2016. Most of the victims were attending LGBT actions, such as the Yaroslavl commemoration of the victims of the hate-motivated murders of transgender individuals[17] or the LGBT Pride event in St. Petersburg.[18] Fortunately, the participants of the actions and the journalists covering these actions only received minor injuries.

Attacks against the homeless increased slightly in 2017 in comparison to the preceding year – 2 killed, 1 injured (vs. 1 killed and 1 injured in 2016). We believe that such attacks are much more frequent in reality, since the homeless, who failed to adapt and were pushed to the brink of survival, are probably the most vulnerable population segment. However, we count only the cases, in which the hate motive has been officially recognized by the investigation, as it happened, for example, in the murder case of two homeless people (a man and a woman) at the Bratskoe Cemetery of Rostov-on-Don. A resident of the Tyumen Region, detained on suspicion of the murder, confessed to the act and declared himself a “cleaner” of the city from “worthless people.”[19]

The number of victims of religious xenophobia is almost impossible to estimate. Traditionally, the majority of the known victims were Jehovah's Witnesses; a repressive state campaign has been conducted against them for many years. In 2017, the data on cases related to the attacked Jehovah's Witnesses were closed, probably due to liquidation of the Jehovah's Witnesses’ organizations as extremist on April 20, 2017.[20] Nevertheless, we have information about two attacks against representatives of this group (vs. about 18 in 2016).

Muslims as a religious group are a constant target of ultra-right hate speech on the Internet, but hostility to migrants in Russia is mostly based on ethnicity, and Muslims are rarely attacked offline as members of a religious group. However, such incidents do occur – for example, in February 2017, four young people verbally attacked a Tatar woman in a head scarf on board of a minibus in Saransk, uttering insults and threats.[21]

Some individuals, who tried to intervene and defend others from being beaten up, also ended up among the victims –7 such people were reported in 2017. Examples include a minibus passenger in Saransk, who stood up for the above-mentioned Tatar woman in a Muslim headdress, or two subway passengers in St. Petersburg, who tried to stop the violence against the non-Slavs in the subway car.[22]

Racism among Soccer Fans

In connection with the upcoming FIFA World Cup in the summer of 2018, the Russian soccer leadership has been paying greater attention to the racist antics of soccer fans. The post of Inspector for fighting racism was restored in February 2017 and filled by well-known former football player Alexei Smertin. In July, the Russian Football Union (RFU) presented a monitoring system for matches, and this system, indeed, identifies incidents of racism at the stadiums.

However, despite all the measures taken by the authorities, racist prejudices, expressed as insults and incitement to ethnic hatred, are still evident in Russian soccer and its affiliated groups. Hooting, as well as racist, aggressively nationalistic (including anti-Semitic), and homophobic chants were heard from the fan sectors of various teams throughout the year.[23] The characteristic insulting gestures, addressed to dark-skinned players of opposing teams were also observed on several occasions.

In addition, we have encountered openly discriminatory statements coming not only from individual fans, but from the entire fan groups. Thus, in Krasnoyarsk, the requirements for entering the fan stand at the Yenisey-Arsenal soccer match were posted in the “Fan-Sector – Krasnoyarsk” VKontakte group in May 2017. The message stated that “only fans dressed in red” and people “only of Slavic appearance” could gain entrance into the sector. A representative of the movement told journalists that this unspoken rule “has been working for a long time” in Krasnoyarsk; he added that he would not want “non-Slavs to be seen” among the Yenisei fans in the photos from the match. [24]

In 2017, we know of at least two attacks involving soccer fans that seemed ideologically motivated. These are the previously mentioned cases of attacks against students from Iraq in Oryol and against the Ukrainian trainee of FC Dynamo in Chelyabinsk.

Unfortunately, we can’t overlook the possibility that the true number of such violent actions involving soccer fans is much higher, given the presence of neo-Nazis, directly or indirectly influencing the fan environment. For example, the suspects in the murder of a student from the Republic of Chad met each other at the stadium, and their group included “those coming from the environment of soccer hooligans, fan sectors; that's where they picked [people].”[25]

Crimes against Property

Such crimes include damage to cemeteries, monuments, various cultural sites and various property in general. The Criminal Code qualifies these attacks under different articles of the Criminal Code, but the enforcement is not always consistent in this respect. Such actions are usually called vandalism, and we used to group them under the same term, but then we decided to abandon this practice, since the notion of “vandalism” (not only in the Criminal Code, but also in the language in general) obviously fails to describe all possible actions against property.

In 2017, the number of such crimes motivated by religious, ethnic or ideological hatred was slightly higher than a year earlier; there were at least 48 incidents in 25 regions of the country compared to at least 46 in 26 regions, recorded in 2016. Our statistics does not include single isolated cases of neo-Nazi graffiti and drawings found on houses and fences.

As in the preceding years, the majority of the 2017 attacks were directed against ideological targets rather than religious or any other sites – we recorded 18 instances (vs. 14 in 2016) of graffiti and damage affecting the Lenin and Yeltsin monuments, the monument to TU-214 aircraft, the war monuments, and so on.

Sites, associated with other ideological enemies of the far right (specifically, with the liberal opposition) – the Sakharov Center, the editorial office of the online newspaper Lenta.ru and the director's office of the movie Matilda – should also be viewed as part of this group.

The second place went to Jehovah's Witnesses buildings – 14 incidents, of which 3 arson (vs. 9 incidents in 2016). Orthodox sites were in the third place with 11 incidents, 2 of them arson (vs. 10 in the preceding year). Protestants took the fourth place with 2 incidents, including one explosion (vs. none in the preceding year). Jewish, neo-Pagan and Buddhist sites split the fifth place with one incident for each group (in 2016, there were five incidents related to Jewish sites, 2 related to Buddhist sites and no incidents related to neo-pagans). Notably, we have no information on any Muslim sites targeted in 2017 (there were 4 of those in 2016).

In general, the number of attacks against religious sites has remained stable – 30 per year in 2017 and 2016 (and 29 in 2015). But the percentage of the most dangerous acts – arson and explosions exceeded those in the preceding year and comprised 29% (that is, 14 out of 48), compared to 13% (6 of 44) a year earlier.

The regional breakdown for the attacks has changed significantly. In 2017, such crimes were reported in 18 new regions (in the Moscow, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Jewish Autonomous, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Moscow, Murmansk, Penza, Rostov, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Chelyabinsk, and Krasnoyarsk regions, in Komi Republic and in Tatarstan), but, on the other hand, 16 previously cited regions did not make our statistics in 2017 (the Ivanovo, Kirov, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Pskov, Saratov, Chelyabinsk, Altai, Transbaikal, Perm, Primorye, and Stavropol regions, the Republics of Kalmykia, Karelia and Chuvashia, and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Territory –Yugra).

The geographic spread was wider for xenophobic vandalism (25 regions) than that for acts of violence (18 regions). 7 regions reported both violence and vandalism – Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Moscow Region, the Rostov Region, the Sverdlovsk Region, the Chelyabinsk Region, and the Republic of Tatarstan – compared to 6 regions in the preceding year.

Criminal Prosecution for Violence

The number of sentences for violent crimes motivated by hatred significantly decreased compared to the preceding year. In 2017, at least 10 guilty verdicts, in which courts recognized the motive of hatred, were issued in 9 regions of Russia (there were 15 guilty verdicts in 19 regions in 2016). In these proceedings 24 people were found guilty (vs. 43 people in 2016).

Racist violence was qualified under the following articles that contain the hate motive as an aggravating circumstance: murder, intentional infliction of minor injuries, hooliganism and beating. This set of articles has remained constant over the past five years. Article 282 of the Criminal Code (“incitement of hatred”) in relation to violent crimes appeared in 4 convictions (vs. 7 in 2016). In all cases, it was used for crime-related episodes of ultra-right propaganda (creating videos and uploading them online) and not actually for violence.

In two instances this article was applied in well-known and resonant cases. The first was the verdict of the Babushkinsky District Court of Moscow against founder of the ultra-right movement “Restruct!” Maxim “Tesak” (“Hatchet”) Martsinkevich and his accomplices in the Occupy Narcophilia[26], movement, who, in addition to beating up and mocking people they regarded as drug dealers, also posted reports about their actions on the Internet.

The second resonant sentence was issued in Khabarovsk in the case of the infamous “Khabarovsk slaughterers” – two young women and their male accomplice.[27] In addition to abusing animals and birds, one of the girls was posting on a social network page the videos “with scenes of humiliation of the dignity of a young man ... on the basis of belonging to a social group.” However, we could not identify the specific group the court had in mind in this case – the “slaughterers” posted the videos that contained scenes of attacks against both LGBT and homeless people.

The motive of hatred toward the social group “homeless” was also taken into account in the verdict issued by the Bryansk Regional Court[28] against two supporters of the Straight Edge movement for killing Alexander Chizhikov, the vocalist of the rock band Otvet Chemberlenu (“Response to Chamberlain”); due to his drunkenness and untidy appearance, the attackers mistook him for a homeless person.

On the other hand, the hate motive was not taken into account in the verdict handed down in May in St. Petersburg for the murder of journalist Dmitry Tsilikin.[29] His murderer Sergey Kosyrev, called himself a “cleaner,” his own life – “a crusade against a certain social group” (referring to the LGBT), and characterized the feeling that made him kill Tsilikin as “not dislike, as the protocol says, but hatred.” Civic activist Natalya Tsymbalova launched a petition, calling for the case to be re-qualified as a hate crime, but Kosyrev was, nevertheless, convicted only of murder (Article 105 Part 1 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.[30]

Although SOVA Center finds using the notion “social group” in the context of anti-extremist legislation deeply problematic in principle,[31] there is no doubt that the homeless and the LGBT are, indeed, the kinds of “social groups” that need state protection, and the legal norms on hate crimes must protect them in one way or another.

Penalties for violent acts were distributed as follows:

• 2 people received a custodial sentence of up to 20 years;
• 1 person – up to 15 years;
• 4 people – up to 10 years;
• 6 people – up to 5 years;
• 6 people – up to 3 years;
• 3 people sentenced to community service;
• 1 person received a suspended sentence;
• 1 person was referred for mandatory treatment.

We only know of six convicted offenders (including the already mentioned “Khabarovsk slaughterers”) who received additional punishment in the form of having to pay a compensation for material and moral harm to the victims. We view this penalty as appropriate. Of course, not everything can be measured with money, but these attacks, in fact, created the need for material or moral assistance.

We see that the number of suspended sentences for violent crimes decreased in 2017, which is generally a positive trend. Only one convicted offender – a native of Voronezh, who beat up a native of Tajikistan and posted a video about it on the Internet – received a suspended sentence. Probably, the leniency was related to the fact that the victim’s injuries were minor. However, we are skeptical about suspended sentences for crimes related to ideologically motivated violence. Our observations over many years has shown that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, suspended sentences for violent attacks tend to engender the sense of impunity and do not stop ideologically motivated offenders from committing such acts in the future. However, as can be seen from the above data, the majority of violent offenders were sentenced to various terms of incarceration – and this is certainly a positive trend.

Criminal Prosecution for Crimes against Property

Somewhat fewer sentences were issued for crimes against property in 2017 than in the preceding year. We know of 3 sentences issued in 3 regions against 5 people (vs. 5 sentences against 6 people in 5 regions in 2016).

In all three cases, the offenders were charged under Article 214 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (vandalism committed on the basis of national or religious hatred). In one of the verdicts – for the Nazi symbols on the monument to the soldiers, who died in the Great Patriotic War – it was the only article applied. In one more case, it was used in aggregation with Article 282 of the Criminal Code, since, in addition to painting slogans on houses and fences, the young man had also posted images on the Internet. The third verdict was issued in Lipetsk under Article 115, Article 105 Part 2 Paragraph 1 and Article 214 Part 2 of the Criminal Code in the notorious case of attacks, murder motivated by ethnic hatred and arson of the baptismal font in the Lipetsk Diocesan Holy Dormition Monastery.

Three people were sentenced to restrictions of liberty, including the first two sentences listed in the previous paragraph; we view such punishments as adequate. The fact that the third verdict - issued under aggregation of several articles, including Article 105 of the Criminal Code (murder) – sentenced two out of the three offenders to long terms of imprisonment also does not raise any questions.

Notably, a number of similar crimes (damage to buildings, houses or fences) are qualified not under Article 214, but under Article 282 of the Criminal Code, that is, as propaganda, and not as vandalism. However, the line dividing these two charges – in particular, according to the features of an attacked object and by the method used to “vandalize” it – remains undefined.