Russian’s Supreme Court declares Azov battalion a terrorist organization

Russian publication TASS shared the news. 

It is noted that today Russia’s Supreme Court recognized the separate special purpose unit "Azov" as a terrorist organization and banned its activities in the Russian Federation.

"The decision to recognize Azov as a terrorist organization and ban it in Russia shall be implemented immediately, without waiting for it to come into force," said the Russian court.

As TASS writes, the members of the organization, which is recognized by the court as terrorist, are criminally responsible, unlike prisoners of war.

In addition, Russian media note that the founders of the specified organization and its leaders are punishable by imprisonment for a term of 15 to 20 years and a fine of up to 1 million rubles. At the same time, ordinary participants are imprisoned for a term of 5 to 10 years with a fine of up to 500,000 rubles. Military personnel who voluntarily stopped participating in the organization's activities before the start of the investigation are promised to be released from criminal liability.

Thus, it can significantly complicate the process of exchange negotiations, since from now on Ukrainian defenders will automatically have the article "participation in terrorist organizations" added to their application in Russian courts.

In response, the Azov regiment published an appeal calling on the world to recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. 

"After the public execution of prisoners of war of the Azov regiment in Olenivka, Russia is looking for new pretexts and explanations for its war crimes. The sub-empire, which daily threatens to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, whose president blew up houses with its own citizens, who suffocated their own and Syrian women and children with poisonous gas, should be punished once and for all. We call on the US State Department and authorized bodies of other states that consider themselves civilized to recognize the Russian Federation as a terrorist state", it is noted. 

The representatives of the regiment also noted that condoning Russian war crimes or keeping them silent is direct complicity. 

Reference: a separate special purpose unit "Azov" or simply "Azov regiment" was created in 2014 as a volunteer battalion.

As of today, this is the formation of the National Guard of Ukraine as part of the Eastern Operational Territorial Association.It was based in the city of Mariupol, but temporarily stayed in Berdyansk (Zaporizhia region).

At the beginning of its activity, the "Azov" regiment consisted of only 300 people, most of whom were previously members of the "Patriot of Ukraine" organization. The founder is the colonel of the National Guard of Ukraine Andrii Biletskyi. The current leader of the detachment is Lieutenant Colonel of the National Guard of Ukraine Denys "Redis" Prokopenko.