Nikolai Sobolev in just two months became one of the most talked about bloggers...
In the case of the events of March 26, when a mass action against corruption took place in Moscow, a new witness appeared, a person associated with the ultra-patriotic organization SERB. Alexander Petrunko testified against Yuri Kuliy.
The man is accused of using violence against a police officer during the protest. He himself explains that he did not attack a policeman, but tried to help an elderly man on whom a policeman fell on the steps of the Pushkin monument at the height of the arrests of oppositionists. Nevertheless, he admitted guilt and agreed to a special procedure for considering the case in court.
Alexander Petrunko from SERBa was also at the rally. “He said that he saw Kuliy take a police officer by the hand, try to drag him into a crowd of aggressive citizens and shout something else, like “come on, grab him,” Alexey Liptser, the defendant’s lawyer, told Mediazona. At the same time, Alexander Petrunko himself did not identify the accused, but only described him to the investigators.
The name of Alexander Petrunko is heard in connection with the attack on Alexei Navalny on April 27. A man very similar to him doused the politician with brilliant green near the office of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. As a result, Navalny received a burn to the cornea of his eye, partially lost his vision, and was forced to travel abroad, where he was operated on.
Alexander Petrunko was identified by chance: a video of the attack was shown by the Russian TV channel REN, but the TV channel blurred out the face of the attacker. Navalny’s supporters discovered the original video on the TV channel’s server, from which it is possible to establish the attacker’s resemblance to Petrunko.
Another SERB activist, Alexey Kulakov, was filming what was happening at that time, and he is clearly visible in the REN TV video. Later, he outlined several versions of why he was at the scene of the events: at first he said that he was “asked to film,” later he talked about a “business meeting.”
Reaction to export
The SERB movement originally began in Ukraine during the Maidan. After Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia, SERB activists made themselves known in Dnepropetrovsk. Then they opposed the new Kyiv government and demanded greater autonomy for some regions of Ukraine.
The southeastern radical bloc, according to its members, was supposed to fight “lawlessness in the southeast of Ukraine in a legal manner.”
In the SERB group on VKontakte in the spring of 2014, they discussed the need to create a South-Eastern Ukrainian Republic, called for a boycott of the early presidential elections and called for volunteers to fight the Right Sector.
That same spring, SERB members took part in the storming of the Kharkov regional administration along with members of the Borotba organization and other opponents of the Maidan. Then about 70 people, including SERB activists, were detained. In total, the movement had about 300 active participants - this is their own estimate, and the same number of sympathizers in Dnepropetrovsk, Krivoy Rog, Kharkov and Zaporozhye.
The abbreviation SERB stands for South-Eastern Russian Block. Previously, the word “radical” was hidden behind the letter R. Participants in the movement claim that they changed their name after moving to Russia.
Second life of “Anti-Maidan”
SERB leader Beketov-Tarasevich is an actor from Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnepr – NI). He starred in episodic roles in the Russian TV series “Interns”, “Cop in Law”, and in the film “The Main One” about the life of Sergei Korolev. Beketov combines leadership of the SERB movement with his film career - according to the website kino-teatr.ru, two more series with his participation will be released this year.
Immediately after the move, SERB participants began going to anti-war and anti-Putin rallies - on September 21, 2014, activists, together with supporters of Eduard Limonov, tore Ukrainian flags from the hands of participants in the Peace March.
Over time, there were more Russians in the movement than Ukrainians, and SERB switched to internal Russian problems and, in their own statement, want to be “useful to Russia, Novorossiya, and Ukrainian brothers who do not want to be under the Ukrofashists.”
SERB members repeatedly destroyed the memorial at the site of Boris Nemtsov’s death on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge. In September 2016, one of the SERB activists, Alexander Petrunko, poured urine on photographs of the American Jock Sturgess at an exhibition at the Lumiere Brothers Center in Moscow. The exhibition was blocked that day by another pro-Kremlin organization, Officers of Russia. Its participants subdued Petrunko and handed him over to the police. The activist was sentenced to seven days of arrest.
SERB activists regularly pour green paint on oppositionists they dislike. In the fall of 2015, they attacked pensioner Vladimir Ionov, who was standing at a single picket. In April 2016 - for the winners of the school competition of the Memorial movement. Then they hit the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya with green paint. SERB leader Beketov-Tarasevich explained that the movement will continue to “put national traitors in their place.”
SERB denies the attack with brilliant green on Alexei Navalny. According to Tarasevich, they have no complaints against the politician - because he does not talk about returning Crimea to Ukraine.
SERB movement activist Alexander Petrunko is also known for repeatedly organizing provocations against participants in single pickets at the Zhukov monument near the Kremlin. As a result, the oppositionists were detained by the police.
Activists of the SERB movement are not the first and far from the only ones in Russia who participate in violent actions against the opposition and any dissent.
It all started with football fans. They so passionately and furiously crushed each other and the riot police in the stands that it could not go unnoticed by political forces for long. The LDPR was the first to adopt fans. Vladimir Zhirinovsky several times financed trips of Dynamo fans to various regions and rescued fans from the police.
Here is a fragment of an interview for the Sports.ru website with Alexander Shprygin, aka “Kamancha”, in those years - the head of the Dynamo Moscow fan club:
“In the 90s, we participated in party events, and the party helped us through fan support. For example, the famous special train to Volgograd. Zhirinovsky called the then Minister of Railways Aksenenko, they gave us a train... What did we do in response? Vladimir Volfovich could invite us to some event so that we could also be present there.”
At one such event, Dynamo fans threw stones and eggs at the American Embassy in Moscow the day after the bombing of Belgrade.
By an amazing coincidence, the then fan leader Alexander Shprygin now works as an assistant to a State Duma deputy from the LDPR party. And until recently, he also led the All-Russian Association of Fans. An organization that few people knew about before 2010. The sudden rise of VOB and Shprygin began with riots on Manezhnaya Square.
The clashes that football fans staged on Manezhnaya Square after the murder of Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov made an indelible impression on the Russian authorities. Vladimir Putin, then Prime Minister, personally came to the fan’s grave, and then met with fan leaders in front of cameras.
“I want to make an urgent appeal to you - not to allow someone to put you under control and begin to manipulate you,” Putin asked then.
After this, the VOB came under the wing of the Russian Football Union, i.e. the state. Yesterday's Manezhnaya pogromists were provided with free charters for major international tournaments. In 2012, Russian fans took part in riots in Poland, and in 2016 in France.
Following the massacre in Marseille, the BBC television channel made a documentary about who the instigators of the fight might actually have been.
“This was the army special forces of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s football hooligans, sent to conquer Europe,” the film said.
Vasily Stepanov, aka Vasya the Killer, jokes ironically. Leader of one of the “firms” of Moscow “Spartak”. In the 2000s, while Shprygin’s Dynamo members worked for the LDPR, he led the security of the Kremlin Nashi movement. He took part in the pogroms of the NBP bunker, when activists of Limonov’s party were beaten with baseball bats. Now Stepanov has new hobbies; he is an Orthodox activist. Participated in all clashes with opponents of the construction of chapels and churches in Moscow. For example, in Torfyanka Park.
Vasya the killer’s best friends are activists of the “Forty Sorokov” movement, which is called the “military detachment of the Russian Orthodox Church.” In 2015, at the height of the conflict in Torfyanka, State Duma deputy Valery Rashkin turned to the FSB with a request to investigate the activities of the movement and liquidate it. The appeal remained unanswered.
In 2006, the Movement of Young Political Ecologists “Local” declared itself. According to the official version, it was created by the administration of the governor of the Moscow region. “Political ecologists” picketed “Other Russia” conferences, organized roundups of migrants and besieged the US Embassy.
They were predicted to have money and fame from “Nashi”. But today almost nothing is heard about this movement. Their latest promotions, according to the official website, are a student quest in Klin and checking the quality of fuel at gas stations near Moscow.
The creators of the BORN organization also dreamed of becoming a combat unit of the Kremlin. Moreover, they themselves wanted to become power. Neo-Nazis managed to commit nine high-profile murders, including the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. The leaders of the organization received life sentences.
Paramilitary in essence and structure, the security forces associated with the Kremlin have not even tried to masquerade as “political ecologists” in recent years.
“Officers of Russia” are building a completely military cordon in front of the Sturges exhibition. Cossacks attack Alexei Navalny and members of the Pussy Riot group, and stand as a human shield at the entrance to the Sakharov Center. SERB in this sense is a symbiosis of everything that was created in Russia in the 2000s for the forceful fight against dissent. The cruelty of football fans, the passion of Orthodox activists, the financial stability of “Nashi” and “Local”, the organization of the Cossacks. And, most importantly, almost complete impunity.
On August 15, the “March of Mothers” event took place in Moscow - a procession from Pushkin Square to the building of the Supreme Court of Russia in support of children convicted in the “New Greatness” case. More than a thousand people took part in the event, which naturally prompted well-known city provocateurs from the pro-Putin SERB movement to take active action...
SERB (formerly known as “Southeast Radical Block” SERB (South East Radical Block)) is a pro-Kremlin extremist organization initially operating in Ukraine on the territory of Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Krivoy Rog, which contributed to inciting war and the annexation of Crimea. Since the end of the summer of 2014, activists of the SERB movement and their leader Igor Beketov (pseudonym Gosha Tarasevich) fled Ukraine, fearing criminal prosecution by the SBU. At the moment, the militants are wanted on the territory of Ukraine. Since the winter of 2014-2015, the movement has become active in Russia, organizing systematic attacks and provocations against the Russian opposition and representatives of civil society. The movement enjoys the support of the official authorities and law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation; according to former SERB member Oleg Chursin, the movement was supervised by an employee of the Center for Combating Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Major Alexey Okopny, who was also seen at the movement’s rallies by Solidarity activists. Chursin himself was an active police major at the time of his activity in SERB.
Provocateurs from the SERB movement came to the “March of Mothers” with the obvious intention of starting a fight and provoking the participants of the peaceful march into a conflict using brute physical force.
Igor Beketov - leader of the SERB movement at the “March of Mothers”
Education: He graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Theater School in 1998, has a diploma from VGIK, and in 2011 he trained in the workshop of Y. Nazarov and Y. Kara.
Phone number: organizations SERB +7 925- 327- 13- 13
Number Yandex Wallet: 410012593930551
Sberbank card number: 6390-0238-9079-4005 29
SERB movement— official pages:
Participants of the movement:
Alen Isaev— “chief administrator” of the SERB VKontakte page. Born on April 18, 1994 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Alen IsaevEducation: KazNU named after. al-Farabi (formerly Kirov Kazakh State University). Faculty of International Relations. Bachelor student.
Yuri EslikovskyAt the same time, he supports the pro-Kremlin separatists of the DPR and LPR, and also participates in the actions of the pro-government NOD movement.
Stanislav DavydovEducation: School No. 119 St. Petersburg , Moscow State University
Profession: Together with an RIA Novosti employee Ivan Mamontov created and runs a propaganda project Antinavalny | Against Navalny | Navalny on the social network VKontakte with a total number of more than 6,800 subscribers. The same project, but called Navalny Pravda, they lead to Facebook , Twitter , Yandex.zen, on Youtube channel and on Telegram.
Beketov and Pyotr RybakovEducation: Moldavian State University.
Profession: Unknown.
An extremist and provocateur, a regular participant in direct action actions of the SERB movement. On May 5, 2018, on Pushkin Square, he took part in attacks on ordinary citizens and representatives of the opposition.
Igor Brumel— born on July 9, 1952 in Rostov-on-Don. Currently lives in Moscow. Since 1974 he lived in Zamoskvorechye: 1974-1978. - Ozerkovskaya embankment, 48/50, since 1978 - Pyatnitskaya st., 17
Igor Brumel at the congress of the A Just Russia partyEducation: 1974 - graduated from the State Central Order of Lenin Institute of Physical Culture, Faculty of Mass Sports, specialty “coach-teacher in athletics.”
Profession and political career:
1988-1991 - Member of the People's Labor Union (NTS).
In 1992, he took part in hostilities in Transnistria as part of the Guard of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.
Participant in the defense of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR in September-October 1993, commander of the engineer-sapper company of the regiment named after. Supreme Council of the RSFSR, on October 3, 1993, he was appointed representative of I.O. President A. Rutsky in the Moskvoretsky district of Moscow.
1992-1997 - member of the Liberal-Patriotic Party "Revival" (St. Andrew's Flag Party), chairman of the Moscow organization of the Liberal-Patriotic Party "Revival", deputy chairman of the party.
1992-1996 — executive editor of the newspaper “Russian Revival”, Moscow.
Since 2000 - individual entrepreneur (printing and publishing activities).
Since 2008 - member of the A Just Russia party.
March 4, 2012 - elected as a deputy of the Zamoskvorechye Municipal Assembly in 5-mandate electoral district No. 1 (took 1st place out of 22) (since March 2013 - deputy of the Council of Deputies).
September 10, 2017 - in the elections to the Council of Deputies of Zamoskvorechye took 12th place out of 33 in Five-Mandate District No. 1
Currently an active participant in the SERB movement, a provocateur. He became notorious for his aggressive and inappropriate statements and participation in numerous attacks on representatives of civil society.
Igor Brumel - deputy of the Council of Deputies of Zamoskvorechye in 2012-2018 On their official page of the organization on VKontakte, SERBs boasted about the participation of 7 of their activists in the provocation against the “March of Mothers” - https://vk.com/wall-114297047_17242The comment of a certain Igor Gvardeytsev is particularly noteworthy - this is an armed man who allegedly took part in hostilities on the side of pro-Kremlin separatists in the East of Ukraine, possibly related to punitive forces from the E.N.O.T PMC. CORP.
Igor’s page on VKontakte: https://vk.com/id154386215Representatives of various organizations of pro-Kremlin militants and provocateurs are in close contact and coordination with each other, which poses a clear threat to the life and health of citizens of Russia and other countries.
Separately, as part of this investigation, it is important to mention the famous provocateur and extremist of the SERB movement Alexander Viktorovich Petrunko.
Alexander PetrunkoAlexandra Petrunko— born April 23, 1969. Presumably he grew up in an orphanage in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Lived at: Kharkov, Pobedy Avenue, 66, apt. 166
In January 2009, he was arrested on suspicion of committing a crime on Ludwig Svoboda Avenue in Kharkov.
Alexander Petrunko and the head of the Russian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly since 2017, Pyotr TolstoyOn May 5, on Pushkin Square in Moscow, he took an active part in attacks on participants in the all-Russian action “He is not our Tsar” together with representatives of other paramilitary pro-Kremlin formations.
Telephone:+79857949984
Mail: [email protected]
NOD and SERB are directly linked to pro-Russian movements in Eastern Ukraine. According to Novaya Gazeta, in 2017 SERB tried to obtain funding from the Union of Donbass Volunteers of Alexander Borodai and therefore sharply increased its activity. Activists remained on the balance sheet of the Anti-Maidan movement, associated with a State Duma deputy from United Russia. Dmitry Sablin, who in turn has headed the Patriotic Platform of the party since April 5, 2017. General coordination is carried out at the level of curators from the FSB and the Presidential Administration.
REN TV film crews were always at the scene of attacks most quickly, having advance information about impending acts of terror.
REN TV is part of the National Media Group, which is controlled by Yuri Kovalchuk's Rossiya Bank. The media group owns 82% of REN TV, as well as 25% of Channel One and 72.4% of Channel Five. In April 2017, it became known that NMG would unite REN TV and Channel Five, as well as the Izvestia newspaper, into a single information center.
SERB provocateurs and militants do not sit idly by; literally every working week is occupied with direct action against representatives of Russian civil society and the opposition; on August 21, they attacked the office of Open Russia. The team of attackers included an inseparable trio: Beketov, Rybakov, Brumel. Law enforcement agencies, who love to detain oppositionists for single pickets and initiate criminal cases for posts and likes on social networks, are inactive - not surprisingly, those supervised by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB are ordered not to be touched at a high level.
The inseparable trinity of SERBs
If you have any additional information, please email [email protected] or contact us through the feedback channel with the administration @bewareofthembot.
The attack on Alexei Navalny on April 27, as a result of which he was taken to the hospital with a chemical burn to his eye, was carried out by activists of the radical pro-Kremlin movement SERB, who conducted their own investigation.
The main clue for activists claiming that SERB members were involved in the attack on Navalny was a video recording of the incident, published REN TV channel. In this video, the face of the attacker and another person watching Navalny being doused with brilliant green are blurred. One Internet user carefully studied the HTML code of the page on which the video was posted and found links to three other versions of the video. In one of them (which is probably a poor editing job), the blur at one point lags behind the face of the person watching the attack. In the image that opened, many social media users immediately recognized Alexey Kulakov- SERB activist who does not miss a single opposition rally. The attacker himself (his face is blurred out in all versions of the video) was indirectly identified by his build, height and elements of clothing. The authors of the impromptu investigation believe that this person is another SERB activist, Alexander Petrunko.
The SERB movement denied any involvement in the attack. Alexey Kulakov told reporters that he did not know about him in advance, but turned up at the scene of events as a “blogger”, following a tip from an unknown informant. SERB leader Gosha Tarasevich accused Navalny of staging the attack with the help of his supporters.
The name of the movement SERB is an acronym. It stands for "South East Radical Block" - "South-Eastern Radical Bloc". It first became known in Dnepropetrovsk after the Ukrainian Maidan, when activists of the movement participated in actions demanding the granting of greater powers to the regions of south-eastern Ukraine. During the “Russian Spring”, Alexander Petrunko was spotted in Kharkov, where he was one of the participants in the storming of the regional administration building by supporters of the creation of the “Kharkov People’s Republic”.
Later, SERB activists moved to Moscow, where they began to participate in almost all opposition rallies, provoking their participants and attacking them. In the ranks of SERB there are not only immigrants from Ukraine: 43-year-old Oleg Chursin, for example, is a career employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and at the same time a supporter of the Russian National Unity movement and neo-Nazi Alexei Milchakov.
Russian media reported, citing unnamed sources, that the Kremlin denied involvement in attacks on Navalny and other opposition activists in recent weeks using brilliant green and other corrosive chemical liquids. Gazeta.ru writes that the authorities, on the contrary, recommended that law enforcement agencies more actively bring to justice the participants in such attacks. The press service of the United Russia party released a statement from deputy Yevgeny Revenko, in which he condemns the use of “hooligan and criminal actions” against political opponents. The popular anonymous telegram channel “Nezygar” claims, citing a source in law enforcement agencies, that one of the SERB activists has been taken into “operational development.”
An opposition activist told Radio Liberty about how they managed to identify the attackers of Alexei Navalny, why the police are in no hurry to deal with this case, and what is connected with the real “epidemic” of dousing those who disagree with the authorities with green paint. Oleg Kozlovsky, one of the active participants in the collective impromptu investigation, which made it possible to talk about the involvement of the SERB movement in the attack on Navalny on April 27.
– What allows us to say that it was Alexander Petrunko and Alexey Kulakov who were involved in the attack on Alexei Navalny on April 27?
– The most direct evidence is, of course, a video recording from the scene, which was discovered by Evgeny Bryzgalin, an Internet user who studied the REN TV website and saw that, in addition to one version with hidden faces, there was another version where, due to a flaw, At some point, the editor can see the face of one of the attackers, as it later turned out, Alexei Kulakov. He was identified in the video by other users. This investigation was carried out spontaneously by a large number of people, many of whom did not know, see or hear about each other and coordinated their actions exclusively using Twitter. Due to the fact that all information was based on open sources and is fully verifiable, we can be sure that what we found out is true. This man's face really looks a lot like the photos he posts on social media. Moreover, it was possible to identify the clothes he was wearing. Literally the next day after the attack on Navalny, he posted photographs of himself in the same clothes during a similar attack on activists on duty on the Nemtsov Bridge.
In general, this Alexey Kulakov is a fairly well-known character among Moscow street activists. He constantly takes part in various provocations, so it is not surprising that as soon as his face became more or less visible in the frame, he was quickly identified. From open sources, we managed to collect other information about him; he himself published a lot of information on social networks, including a few days before the attack, in the comments to one of the articles about Navalny, he wrote that he was “preparing brilliant green” and that Navalny “prepared” .
One might think that this is an empty threat, but, as we see, it came true. Literally within 24 hours before this attack, he posted various critical and offensive texts about Navalny and his colleagues three times on social networks. It was possible to see that the person was adjusted accordingly. This is, of course, indirect evidence, but it is enough. And when the media began to call Mr. Kulakov, he first denied everything, but then admitted that he was there, but immediately began to insist that he had no idea what would happen there, that he angrily condemned the attack itself, and so on. This is very hard to believe, because Kulakov participated in many similar actions, never felt any remorse for using violence against his political opponents, and here, apparently, he was simply afraid that in this case he might not get away with it , like before.
– One thing can be seen for sure in this video – that Alexey Kulakov was not the person who threw brilliant green at Alexei Navalny. The “thrower” ran towards the cameraman who was filming this scene, and his face was blurred out in all four versions of the video found. What allows us to say that this is another person involved in your investigation, Alexander Petrunko?
– According to Petrunko, we have mostly indirect evidence. The clothes he was wearing - the pants and jacket - were identified in other photographs of him. In addition, Petrunko has the same physique as the “thrower” and looks the same, with the exception of his face, which we do not see. Petrunko knows Kulakov, they are colleagues in the radical group SERB, they carried out many provocations together, that is, these are people who often go out on such things together. Therefore, suspicion quickly fell on him. Again, those people who saw Petrunko with their own eyes, encountered him at rallies, assumed that it was him, even before this video appeared on REN TV, based on individual frames that were published from the camera in the foyer of the business center. A large number of witnesses point to this person. And obviously, for law enforcement agencies this should be a signal to suspect a person, interrogate him, find out his movements on that day, and so on. Whether such an investigation will take place is, of course, not only up to us.
– Why are only the faces of these two people blurred out in the REN TV video? Why were they “singled out” in this way among the five or six people who are in the frame?
People who are not interested in solving this crime cover up the perpetrators. In this case, these are employees of the REN TV channel
– It is quite obvious that those people who covered up these faces knew very well who took part in the attack. It must be understood that Kulakov, although he did not directly throw the brilliant green, clearly knew where, when and who to shoot. He is just as complicit as the one who threw, it’s just that his role in this group was different. Therefore, those people who are not interested in solving this crime cover up the perpetrators. In this case, this was done by employees of the REN TV channel. They cannot now claim that they were allegedly sent the video in this form, because this video with unhidden faces was located on their server. This means that they imposed it on their own, or because of instructions, or for some other reason, knowing who these people were. I cannot regard this as anything other than complicity in a crime.
– Remind us of the most striking episodes with the participation of SERB activists. Were they observed to engage in actions of this kind, rough physical force, and not just verbal altercations?
– The same Mr. Petrunko, for example, last fall participated in a photo exhibition at the Lumiere Brothers Center, where he poured urine on photographs in which he imagined pedophilia. He was then detained and sentenced to seven days of administrative arrest. This is the only time that members of this group suffered at least some punishment. The same group took responsibility for , an activist who was holding a solo picket on Manezhnaya Square when they sprayed green paint in his face.
A year ago they Navalny was attacked in the same place with a cake, threw a cake at him. They regularly come to rallies held by the Moscow opposition - near metro stations, on Manezhnaya Square, on the Nemtsov Bridge. And at these rallies they not only get into altercations, but when they have the opportunity, they try to pull out posters, tear them, sometimes it even ends up in fights. In neither case did any of them bear any responsibility. Once, it seems, the police detained a group of these provocateurs, but then they were released.
– Do you have a version of who might be behind the SERB activists?
– We know that this group is quite closely connected with various pro-Kremlin organizations. For example, on the eve of the attack, their leaders visited the State Duma, as they themselves wrote, they met with the leaders of the factions, we don’t know which ones, but they were there at the invitation of the deputies. I don’t know what they discussed, but apparently they were so inspired by this conversation that the very next day they organized an attack on Navalny. Edition The Insider wrote yesterday that one of the members of this group is an active police officer and at the same time a neo-Nazi, which should be surprising, but probably isn’t surprising anymore. So there is a direct connection with law enforcement. We have seen a lot of photographs of Mr. Petrunko with a variety of political figures, with Glazyev in particular, who is an adviser to the president, with a large number of conservative State Duma deputies and with other politicians.
We can guess which one of them proposed such an idea, who is feeding them, because these people, as far as can be judged, do not have a permanent job. They don't live very well, but they don't starve and don't need work. This group probably has funding sources, and it's definitely not crowdfunding. In order to establish this precisely, a normal investigation needs to be carried out, but we all understand that no one will conduct any such investigation now.
– Why are the police in no hurry to deal with this attack?
Any investigator who receives such a case immediately understands that this is a political matter.
– Any investigator who comes across such a case immediately understands that this is a political matter, and he will ask his boss, the boss will ask his, and they will tell him that there is no need to get involved in this, there is no need to initiate any cases. Because they understand that as they unravel this tangle, they can get to themselves or to their superiors. Everyone in this system, even those who do not share these methods, who would perhaps like to bring such extremists to justice, they all understand that these crimes are in one way or another connected with the system itself. And being its participants, employees, receiving a salary from it, they are not ready to take on any responsibility for making this system better.
“Attacks using brilliant green have happened before, but recently it has acquired epidemic proportions. With what it can be connected? Is this someone's centralized policy? And can we expect that these attacks will stop after Alexei Navalny and the Yabloko activist actually suffered great physical damage as a result of such attacks? There are reports that the presidential administration is unhappy that all this is taking such a turn.
People who do this understand that nothing will happen to them for this.
– In my opinion, there is one very simple reason why these attacks have become so common now. They remain unpunished. No one, not a single person, has so far been punished for such attacks. The authorities turn a blind eye to this, the police say that they do not see any crime there, they do not even see an administrative offense, they cannot find the perpetrators, customers and organizers. And the people who do this understand, feel that they will not get anything for it, and all they will get is approval and praise from their supervisors, colleagues or friends in different echelons of power. The only way to stop this is for there to be accountability. If at least one of these people is imprisoned, their ardor will immediately diminish greatly. We see that these are not some very brave people, because they carry out all their actions only when they understand that they will not get anything for it, that they have the police nearby, that they will protect them, or they take advantage of with the effect of surprise and immediately run away, hiding their faces. These are not people who are ready to be punished for their actions. As for the administration’s order, which, again for some reason, is conveyed in the form of rumors and some kind of leaks, we remember that not so long ago it was announced that Putin personally ordered that people should not be interfered with in bringing flowers to the site of the murder of Boris Nemtsov. So, did something change after that? Nothing changed! In the same way, this memorial is cleaned out every week, “Gormost” steals flowers, photographs, and things brought by Nemtsov’s supporters in the same way. Putin simply distanced himself from this. Therefore, whether there will be any changes in state policy in this case, we will learn not from leaks, but from the actions of law enforcement agencies,” says Oleg Kozlovsky.
Phone numbers of Alexander Petrunko and Alexey Kulakov, found by activists on the Internet (SERB activists more than once
The Russian media are the worst at historical information. Well, I just asked Google who SERB are and copied and pasted a little.
March 25, 2015
...people who call themselves representatives of the “Russian Liberation Movement “SERB”” destroyed a spontaneous memorial formed at the site of the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. Post this appeared on the page of the user Gosha Tarasevich “VKontakte”.
The photographs show two men and two women, wrapped in scarves the color of St. George’s ribbons, painting over the “Nemtsov Bridge” sign installed at the murder site and pasting stickers with the inscription “Traitor of Russia’s interests” onto Nemtsov’s portraits. (Mediazone)
October 24, 2015
On Saturday, October 24, six activists of the pro-Putin SERB movement, led by Igor Beketov, better known as Gosha Tarasevich, attacked 75-year-old Vladimir Ionov standing in a single picket on the porch of the Historical Museum of Moscow. They tore out a poster from Ionov: “There is Putin - no need for intelligence,” they doused his face with green liquid and sprinkled him with flour, shouting at the same time: “This is what will happen to your ISIS! " and "He insults the President of the Russian Federation!" (New Newspaper)
April 28, 2016
Activists of the Russian Liberation Movement SERB attacked opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the door of his office in Moscow. One of the participants in the SERB movement first tried to throw a cake at the oppositionist, but he failed to do so, after which the second activist doused Navalny with an unknown blue liquid with a pungent odor. (Polit.info)
August 13, 2016
NOD and SERB activists beat up participants in an anti-war picket in the center of Moscow (Znak.com)
The leader of the SERB movement, Igor Beketov, hit a policeman in the face during an attack on a picket “against the war with Ukraine.” […] Beketov turned around and punched the police officer in the face, mistaking him for an opponent. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” [Beketov] shouted, realizing that there was a policeman in front of him. (Mediazone)
September 26, 2016
The Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow arrested Alexander Petrunko for seven days, who doused the photographs at the exhibition “Jock Sturges. Without embarrassment” with a liquid that smells like urine. The court found Petrunko guilty of petty hooliganism.
Petrunko was detained on September 25 at the Lumiere Brothers Photography Center, where an exhibition was taking place. (BBC)
Petrunko himself stated in court that he did not dispute the fact that the offense had been committed, but acted “at the behest of civic duty.” He added that he doused the photographs with “therapeutic mud from Crimea.”
Municipal deputy of Zamoskvorechye Igor Brumel, who calls Petrunko his assistant, said that both of them are “champions of family values.” (Mediazone)
October 10, 2016
SERB militant Alexander Petrunko and the deputy of the capital's Zamoskvorechye district, Igor Brumel, who patronizes this group, attacked the Boris Nemtsov memorial on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge and beat up the opposition activist Nadir Fatov, who was on duty there.
Fatov suffered a broken nose. His face is also broken. […] the police detained not the militants, but the victim. Fatov was taken to the Kitay-Gorod OP. The security forces refused to call the oppositionist an ambulance. (grani.ru)
May 1, 2017
Twitter user Mr Radmir
Pro-Kremlin activists gained fame after the destruction of the Nemtsov Bridge
The SERB movement, whose activists were suspected of attacking Alexei Navalny with green paint, has been known in Russia for similar actions for several years now. He has a record of attacks on ideological opponents with feces and urine, while activists are regularly photographed with representatives of the Russian elite and the president’s entourage, and also visit the State Duma.
The history of an extremely small movement began in Ukraine in 2014: then, in March, the “Serbs” led by Gosha Tarasevich (the pseudonym of the little-known actor Igor Beketov, who starred in Moscow in the “Cop” TV series) participated in riots in Kharkov in an attempt to create the KhPR – Kharkov People's Republic. Alexander Petrunko, who is now suspected of a direct attack on Navalny, also took part in the same events.
After the failure of the idea with the KhPR, the “Serbs” (SERB stands for South East Radical Block, South-Eastern Radical Block) were forced to move to Moscow (a criminal case was opened against Beketov in Ukraine after the storming of the Kharkov regional administration), where soon, according to Tarasevich , “made themselves comfortable”, taking a place among similar pro-Kremlin activists like the National Liberation Movement of State Duma deputy Yevgeny Fedorov, as well as collaborating with supporters of Eduard Lmionov, who by that time had taken pro-government positions.
So, in particular, on April 17, 2014, Tarasevich, at a NOD rally in support of Novorossiya, said that he had arrived from Dnepropetrovsk only a week ago.
Soon, however, the activities of the “Serbs” lost touch with Ukrainian politics and completely switched to the Russian agenda. Thus, their first high-profile action was the destruction of the Boris Nemtsov memorial, “Nemtsov Bridge”. Tarasevich himself said that initially his supporters simply tied St. George’s ribbons there, and after they were removed, they plundered the memorial, after which they took photographs at the scene of the events. It was then that the movement gained its first fame.
These are the degenerates who destroyed the Nemtsov memorial. The photo is literally at the very spot where our comrade was shot. pic.twitter.com/aefiJ9vfir
Ilya Yashin (@IlyaYashin) March 24, 2015
Subsequent actions of the “Serbs” began to be distinguished by a characteristic style with dousing opponents with various liquids: from brilliant green to urine. Thus, during pickets against the war in Ukraine, members of Solidarity, activists Ildar Dadin and Vladimir Ionov (the latter was doused with brilliant green), a journalist, the same Petrunko threw a cake at Navalny a year ago, etc., were attacked with specially collected feces during pickets against the war in Ukraine.
One of the most high-profile actions of this kind was the act of Petrunko: last fall, he poured urine on photographs at the exhibition in Moscow “Jock Sturges. Without embarrassment,” saying that he saw a “spiritual crime” in the nude models. At the same time, representatives of the “Officers of Russia” also took up arms against the exhibition.
As a result, representatives of SERB have gained fame: recently they have been photographed with State Duma deputy Pyotr Tolstoy, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation Sergei Glazyev, and members of A Just Russia. Shortly before the attack on Navalny, Tarasevich spoke on LiveJournal about his visit to the State Duma and meetings there with faction leaders, although he did not name the purpose of these contacts.
Let us note that SERB includes the Moscow municipal deputy of the Zamoskvorechye district Igor Brumel.
It is characteristic that a member of the movement is also an active police officer: Oleg Chursin, an employee of the Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who is responsible for the professional training of internal affairs officers. He, like a number of other “Serbs,” shares nationalist views and fights against “Chabadniks” (i.e. Jews), which he regularly reports on his social networks.
In total, SERB, apparently, includes no more than a dozen people, and law enforcement agencies have not initiated administrative or criminal cases regarding any of their actions.
