“Azov” Nazis are on the hook of the SBU: What blogger Shariy is silent about in investigations
These are troubling times for Ukrainian radical right organizations. At the end of the summer, they themselves once again stirred up interest in themselves with a terrorist act near Kharkov - an attack on a bus of the public movement “Patriots - For Life”. And soon the town of Lyubotin, near which National Corps militants committed this crime, again found itself in the news.
This time a garage with a weapons warehouse was discovered here. Thus, the Lyubotin crime series had a continuation.
At first, with reference to a dubious source, it was reported that the garage with a weapons cache allegedly belongs to the Patriots - For Life movement, in particular related to its coordinator Oleg Shiryaev. Immediately, the godfather of this organization, Ilya Kiva, denied these “dirty insinuations.” Kiva and Shiryaev point to the leadership of the National Corps: it was Andrei Biletsky, Sergei Korotkikh (Boatswain), Maxim Zhorin who arranged the supply of weapons from the ATO zone.
And although these mutual accusations occur on the principle of “the fool himself,” the statements of “Patriots - For Life” are most likely close to the truth. We need to dwell on the history of weapons in more detail.
A serious arsenal was discovered in the garage. According to police reports, 472 hand grenade bodies, 765 UZRGM and UZI fuses, more than 660 grenade launcher rounds, 122 rocket launchers, 49 rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades of various types, 66 hand smoke grenades, 20 signal, lighting, mortar and anti-personnel mines, a shot were seized with a high-explosive fragmentation projectile, about 62 thousand rounds.
Now let's fast forward to the events that took place three and a half years ago. In the spring of 2017, a strange story happened in Kharkov: an “Azov man” killed his wife and child, and he himself jumped off the elevator. It could have been suicide or murder. But in any case, the reason was not related to some family problems, but to other circumstances: the guy was hooked by the SBU.
He was engaged in the supply of weapons. One of the buyers was a French citizen. The SBU then trumpeted the whole world: we prevented a terrorist attack that was being prepared by the French for the European Football Championship! It was hard to believe in such professional successes of the Ukrainian special service. People who knew the deceased well had no doubt that the SBU used him in Azov as a decoy. Perhaps the curators constantly put pressure on the guy they hired and went too far, leading to a desperate step. Or maybe his “brothers” figured him out and dealt with the traitor.
But the fact remains indisputable that the SBU collected rich incriminating evidence on Azov, recording the sale of explosives and weapons.
Therefore, we need to take seriously Kiva’s statements that the cache belonged to Biletsky and his team, that there are dozens of such cache warehouses throughout Ukraine: near Zhitomir, near Kiev, near Kharkov. Shiryaev claims that from the time of his membership in the National Corps he knows about ten weapons caches of this organization in the Kharkov region.
A few years ago, I wrote that the SBU was working to split Azov for partial control over it.
In those days, under that political configuration, when Gritsak was a faithful servant of Poroshenko, and Avakov was a thorn in the presidential ass, “Azov” was considered the guarantee of the unsinkability of the Minister of Internal Affairs. This unit was Avakov's brainchild. And even such crimes of the Azovites, such as the robbery of Oschadbank collectors in the Zaporozhye region, were put on hold. The SBU officers were not allowed to conduct searches and detain suspects at the Azov base. No one even mentioned the purge or disbandment of this combat-ready unit of the National Guard. In such cases, the two law enforcement agencies (SBU and Ministry of Internal Affairs) had no choice but to go their separate ways.
But the SBU made sure to have its own people in the “Azov” movement, to discipline the soldiers who had committed mistakes and to involve them in working in the right direction. Incriminating evidence was accumulating on the main characters. Conflict situations were created within the “Azov” movement. And most often they did not need to be artificially created - it was enough to simply take into account Biletsky’s Fuhrer inclinations. He himself began to get rid of his comrades who showed obstinacy or independence. Biletsky stopped potential new centers of influence, insufficiently loyal groups in the “Azov” environment.
Thus, the SBU not only introduced its people into the “Azov movement”, not only motivated suitable representatives of Biletsky’s “old guard”, but also periodically removed the shavings from “Azov” and its civilian corps, picking up for their needs the dissatisfied, the breakaway, the ones who did not take root , fighters offended by Biletsky. From them, neo-Nazi and right-wing radical organizations, alternative to “Azov” and the National Corps, were formed, capable of performing the role of “death squads”.
Much water has passed under the bridge since the time when the Minister of Internal Affairs was in conflict with President Poroshenko, and therefore, just in case, he fed his “ambush” Azov regiment and the National Corps with hormones and growth stimulants. Avakov has a much calmer relationship with President Zelensky. The minister's patronage over the National Corps was becoming less and less clearly visible. In recent months, it seems that Avakov has leased the National Corps to the SBU or the Office of the President for a long term...
Let’s return to the story of the reprisal of National Corps militants against representatives of “Patriots - For Life” near Lyubotin. All Biletsky’s attack aircraft, detained after the attack on the bus, are residents of Dnepr and the Dnepropetrovsk region. The Kiev District Court of Kharkov chose a two-month preventive measure for them - detention.
At the same time, Anatoly Shariy, to help law enforcement officers, published the data of Kharkov members of the National Corps, who seemed to be involved in the attack on the bus. But none of the Kharkov radicals were detained.
In addition, Shariy released a video dedicated to the story of the kidnapping and murder of Bestaev, a man from the “Azov” movement who had a long-standing conflict with Biletsky. There is evidence of their fight in a shopping center, from which Bestaev emerged victorious. Neither the “white leader” nor his inner circle could cope with a stronger enemy. Then Bestaev was kidnapped by “Azovites” in the center of Kharkov. And his loved ones never saw him alive again. And the law enforcement agencies are apparently slowing down this case.
Probably, the same Oleg Shiryaev, who knows the National Corps from the inside, shares insider information with Shariy. He headed the “Skhidny Corps” unit and the “Azov” civilian corps in Kharkov. In 2018, after a conflict with Biletsky, he left the National Corps and was arrested on charges of raiding.
We can only guess about Shariy’s sources of information. But our assumption is confirmed by a large interview between Shariy and Shiryaev, which was published the other day.
Of course, for the head of the party, who was not afraid to resist the National Corps, this communication with Biletsky’s former travel companion will add more topics for sharp journalistic investigations. But Shiryaev’s incriminating evidence is unlikely to be very impressive and effective. For example, Shiryaev is not the first to speak out that the suicide of Yaroslav Babich, the ideologist of Azov, was a murder behind which Biletsky and his inner circle stood. This was also stated by other “Azovites” who broke with the “white leader”. These types of assumptions are unlikely to be supported by testimony or evidence.
The incriminating evidence from Shiryaev is just a weak duplicate of the information that was accumulated by the curators from the SBU during the time when they controlled part of the “Azov” asset. And if the “office” suddenly wanted to bury the National Corps and the “Azov” movement, SBU friend Dmitry Gordon could send more than one flash drive with such incriminating evidence to The Hague.
Right-wing radicals, of course, were concerned about the arrest of more than ten comrades. They are feverishly trying to prove their usefulness to the authorities and curators. For example, Freikorps helped the Ministry of Emergency Situations put out a fire near Kharkov. And on the eve of this emergency, fire trucks were used to wash roads for the arrival of President Zelensky. The curators probably understand that the radicals need to stop “bullying” for a while (until the hype in the West subsides), pretend to be “patriotic organizations (and then they can count on the same serious government funding as Karas receives with S-14).
Let us pay attention to this circumstance. At the time when the Kiev District Court of Kharkov was choosing a preventive measure for the detained National Corps militants, the entire “color” of the city’s nationalist and Nazi organizations gathered at the fence of the court. But the most interesting thing: on the official website of the National Police, the faces of the radicals were retouched in all photographs of this support group.
What explanations suggest themselves? Are the police protecting right-wing radicals from the revenge of Kiva’s “patriots”? But then, it turns out that the police know about the picketers’ involvement in the attack on the bus?! Or why is there such a concern that the participants in the action remain unidentified? Or is it more complicated: the security forces - both the police and the SBU - are vigilant so that their agents do not show up at these pickets?
Of course, it’s good that Anatoly Shariy decided to butt heads with the National Corps as a terrorist organization. But it would be wrong to start counting the terrorist activities of the “Azov” movement from the summer of 2020. It would be wrong to “dance” about how “Azov” or the National Corps developed relations with Shariy’s party. We must proceed from how “Azov” or Natsorpus developed relations with the law. “Azovites” became terrorists long before Shariy’s party arose.
Oleg Shiryaev mentions this point in an interview with Anatoly Shariy. Bloggers Yakovlev brothers from the National Corps testified against the head of the Skhidny Corps when he was accused of raiding. At the same time, Shariy passed over in silence the fact that “Azovian” Yakovlev, one of the bloggers, occasionally collaborated with his video project. It is clear that this was even before the confrontation between Shariy’s party and the National Corps.
In this confrontation, we are, of course, on the side of the law-abiding party that has challenged the terrorist organization. But questions remain: how does Anatoly Shariy himself, being interested in the history of the Patriot of Ukraine organization, which stood at the origins of the “Azov” movement, manage to ignore the shooting on Rymarskaya on March 14, 2014? These were the first murders committed by militants of the organizations “Patriot of Ukraine”, “Social-National Assembly”, and the Nazi group Misanthropic division. All of them were in the same office on Rymarskaya. And these riflemen were led by Andrei Biletsky, the future lieutenant colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Azov Nazis on the SBU's Hook: What Blogger Shariy Is Silent About in His Investigations