“They brought books with them which were included on the list of extremist literature”, Muntyan told Reuters.
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Armed, masked police raided a Moscow library specializing in Ukrainian literature, arresting its director before dawn on Thursday and carting off books that the authorities called illegal anti-Russian propaganda.
But Russian Federation, which is involved in confrontation with Ukraine over annexation of its Crimean peninsula and support for separatist rebels in the east, says the $3 billion it is owed is country-to-country official debt outside the scope of Kiev’s deal with private creditors.
The official historic narratives of Russian Federation and Ukraine clash on a number of issues including the participation of Ukrainian nationalist partisans in World War II when a few of them joined the occupying Nazi forces in western Ukraine in order to fight Soviet troops in their declared fight for independence.
“This is another insolent act from the Kremlin aimed at intimidating the ethnic Ukrainian minority in Russian Federation and launching a new round of repression against people linked to the Ukrainian language and culture”, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry said in a statement.
It is not the first time the library has been subject to searches and accusations of distributing extremist literature.
The case against Sharina is obviously politically motivated, otherwise she would have faced administrative charges applied in cases of minor misdemeanors, said Alexei Petropolsky, director of the Urvista law firm in Moscow. “But in any case it is understandable that the litigation will drag on”, the expert said.
Valery Semenenko, a prominent Ukrainian activist, said he had also been detained on Wednesday by armed police in connection with the library raid and questioned before being let go.
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Mikhail Fedotov, who heads Russia’s presidential human rights council, said he was monitoring the situation.
