YEKATERINBURG, December 4 (Itar-Tass) – Hearings of a case of two skinheads affiliated with the Volkssturm grouping begin in the Sverdlovsk region court Tuesday.
According to the information released by the press service of the court, the two young men, Alexander Solovyov and Alexander Minin, have committed three murders, eight assassination attempts and no less than 26 attacks on non-Slavic-looking people.
Depending on the role each of them played in each specific situation, they are charged with murders committed out of the motives of racial and ethnic hatred, with assassination attempts and with fanning hatred on the grounds of racial or ethnic identity. The offenses have been committed by an organized group, publicly and with the use violence.
The criminal grouping was reportedly set up in September 2006 by underage residents of Yekaterinburg Mikhail Rusakov, Vladimir Klimanov and Alexei Varovin, who were joined by another six adolescents later. They were armed with cold steel and a non-lethal gun.
The youngsters attacked their victims with glass bottles, knives, sticks, metallic chains, knuckledusters, and tear gas spray containers.
All in all, the group totaled twelve members at the peak of its activity. Nine of them were sentenced to long jail terms in June 2011. One more person involved has been placed on a wanted list.
The skinheads filmed their attacks on camera and uploaded video clips in the Internet.
The community ceased to exist after the arrest of one of its ideologists in February 2008.
Investigators claim that Tuesday’s defendants joined the criminal grouping some time after its foundation but assumed the responsibilities of gang leaders.
In February 2010, Moscow City court sentenced Alexander Solovyov to 8.5 years in a general penal colony for a similar crime.
Investigation said then he was immediately involved in 21 attacks in Yekaterinburg, nine of which were linked to murders and/or attempted murders.