Ukrainian neo-Nazis arrested following robbery, murder

Still from a TV report (see below) about the May 4 attack on a Kiev gas station.

Kiev prosecutors have reported the arrest of 19-year-old Aidar Battalion volunteer Vita Zaverukha [pictured below], who is suspected of serving as an accomplice in the killing of two Ukrainian police officers and the injury of three more following a botched gas station robbery in Kiev which occurred on May 4, Ukrainian media have reported.

“As part of the investigation of criminal proceedings over an attack on a gas station and the killings of law enforcement officers on the night of May 4 in Kiev, another suspect has been arrested: a 19-year-old resident of Vinnitsa,” a statement on the website of the Kiev prosecutor’s office reads.

The statement added that Zaverukha has been detained under the criminal code article for an “attempt on the life of an officer of the law.”

Zaverukha, a volunteer in the radical nationalist Aidar Battalion with openly neo-Nazi views, was briefly lionized as a media darling last year as a “heroine fighting against separatists.”

Pure Unadulterated Banditry

On May 4, several suspects participated in the robbery of a Kiev gas station, shooting and injuring the attendant. Arriving at the scene and finding out the details about the suspects’ car, police gave chase. Coming up on the car, the police officers’ car was hit with a barrage of close range automatic weapon fire, which pierced through officers’ bullet proof vests, killing officers Yuri Romanenko and Yuri Hristenok and injuring a third officer. More officers arrived, chasing the suspects’ vehicle into a dead end, where two more officers were wounded; one bandit was killed and three others captured.

Citing ex-Kiev-2 Battalion volunteer Evgeniy Karas, Vesti has reported that Zaverukha’s four male accomplices were all members of volunteer battalions fighting in country’s eastern ‘anti-terrorist operation’ zone. Among them was Vadim Pinus, 23, a decorated Azov Battalion fighter who was killed in the shootout with police.

The others include 20-year-old Evgeniy Koshelyuk, a volunteer who has served in the Azov, Aidar and Tornado battalions, 17-year-old sniper Andrei Romanyuk [pictured below in the Maidan events], and 17-year-old Nikolai Monishenko, an activist and organizer for ultra-right organizations who had been renting the apartment where the suspects hid after the attack on police officers.

The Kiev prosecutor’s statement notes that Zaverukha, who joined the volunteer nationalist Aidar Battalion last year, is also suspected of participating in a shooting attack on a traffic police post in Bykovnya which took place on May 2.

The Aidar Battalion is one of several dozen volunteer militia groups which were formed following the Maidan coup last year; since then it has been placed under the command of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Amnesty International and the OSCE have accused the battalion of human rights abuses and war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. […]

Read in full Homicide Blonde: 19-Year-Old Neo-Nazi Arrested Following Robbery, Murder at Sputnik International

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