Combating 'Russophobia': Director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature arrested in Moscow

The director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature has been detained in Miscow.

The woman is accused of inciting ethnic hatred, because ‘newspapers of Russophobian character’ were found at the library, Russian media report on Thursday.

According to lenta.ru, several issues of the Ukrainian newspaper containing calls for fighting against the ‘Russian World’ were in the director’s room:[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”26352″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

“At the moment, she is detained for 48 hours. The court is to decide whether she will be kept under arrest,” news agency TASS reports with reference to law enforcement agencies.

A case under Article 282 of Russia’s Criminal Code incitement to ethnic hatred and hostility, and humiliation of human dignity) was opened against the 58-year-old director Natallya Sharina.

Furthermore, the police searched the apartment of Valery Semenenko, a co-chairman of the Association of Ukrainians in Russia. The policemen were looking for ‘extremist materials’, his daughter Mariyka Semenenko told the BBC.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has already expressed protest over searching the library in Moscow.

Since 2014 an anti-Ukrainian campaign has been in its full swing in Russia. Media and Internet sites called Ukrainians ‘Nazis’ and ‘Banderovites’ and consider Ukraine as a failed state. They also keep blaming Ukraine for ‘violating the rights of Russians’. At that, there is not a single school with the Ukrainian language in Russia: Ukrainian TМ channels are not available in Russian cable networks either. The ‘disfavored’ library in Moscow was almost the only large center of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Federation.