Staunton, October 8 – The skinhead
phenomenon in Russia had been in decline in recent years because of the actions
of law enforcement agencies, but now, in large part thanks to the return of
many young Russian nationalists from fighting in the Donbas, a resurgence of
skinhead activity in Russia is “inevitable,” according to a SOVA expert.
Natalya Yudina, an expert at that
center which tracks extremist groups, says that up to a few years ago, such
extremist groups were active in many Russian cities and felt themselves “secure,”
but that had begun to change as law enforcement agencies arrested some of the more
prominent leaders (fapnews.ru/35914-ekspert-rost-aktivnosti-skinhedov-neizbezhen/).
But
now these groups are re-emerging, in part because no one in the schools or
elsewhere is paying attention to questions of promoting tolerance and because so
many young Russian radicals have gone to fight in Ukraine on the side of the
pro-Moscow forces in the Donbas and are now returning home.
That
makes “the future growth in the activity of Russian skinheads inevitable,” she
says, and may mean that they will be both more widespread and more violent than
they were in the past given their numbers and their experiences with the use of
military equipment in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Yudina’s
comments came in response to the opening of a trial in Yekaterinburg of members
of the Volksturm group, a collection of twelve young people who have terrorized
the non-Slavic population of the Sverdlovsk Oblast for the last eight years.
No comments:
Post a Comment