The Ukrainian journalist and politician Anatoli Sharii, arrested in Spain for “high treason”, is released

Anatoli Sharii, a Ukrainian journalist, video blogger and politician who has lived for years in the coastal town of Roda de Berà (Tarragona, Spain) was arrested Wednesday at his home. Agents of the National Police Corps (CNP) executed the arrest warrant issued by the kyiv authorities, who maintain an investigation against him for “high treason” and “incitement to hatred”. Ukraine accuses Sharii ―founder of a recently vetoed political party― of being at the service of Russia since 2014, according to the documentation accessed by EL PAÍS. This Thursday, the National Court has agreed to release him until Ukraine requests his extradition to be tried in that country.

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The head of the court of instruction number 4 of the National High Court, José Luis Calama, has prohibited Sharii from leaving Spain, has withdrawn his passport and has forced him to appear, in the court closest to your home, twice a month. Those measures will cease to be in force within a month if kyiv “does not formally submit the extradition request.” The Prosecutor’s Office had also requested his provisional release.

Service Security of Ukraine (SBU) had explained that the arrest of Sharii is the result of a “special operation” and was carried out in coordination with the office of the attorney general of that country and “international partners”. The SBU accuses Sharii of being in the pay of Russia for his activism in connection with Russia’s invasion of Donbas in 2014. The accusation also points to him for “incitement to interethnic hatred” through the videos that he posts on YouTube and that have hundreds of thousands of followers.

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Sharii left Ukraine a decade ago. He felt persecuted for having denounced, as a journalist, cases of political corruption. He settled with his wife in Roda de Berà and created a political party, the Sharii party, very critical of the policies of President Volodymyr Zelensky. He remained very active on YouTube, where he accumulates more than 2.9 million followers.. According to his testimony – collected by this newspaper – since then he has been the victim, in Spain, of threats by people he links to Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups. The activist filed a criminal complaint against those responsible for the National Group, a far-right party that emerged from the Azov Battalion, which fought separatists in Donbas. A Tarragona judge keeps this investigation open with the support of the Mossos d’Esquadra.

Sharii’s position in Spain has always been precarious because, in parallel, Ukraine maintained an open judicial offensive against him that could lead to his extradition. The SBU indictment predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine and dates back to the 2014 war conflict in Donbas. Sharii aided Russia’s “subversive” activities by publishing false information. His lawyers criticize that it is a case of “political persecution”.

Ukraine bases its conclusions on interviews granted by Sharii and on videos posted on the Internet. On a Russian channel, for example, the activist criticized the actions of the Ukrainian army (“they should not take patriots”), which for the State can “undermine the morale of the population and the army”. In another speech, he recalled an episode of World War II that, in the eyes of the prosecution, intends to “provoke an interethnic Ukrainian-Polish conflict.”

Sharii, according to the indictment, “encourages separatist tendencies” and “helps” Russia’s strategy in the country. In conversation with this newspaper, the activist denied the accusations of being pro-Russian. “I’m not. I have no contacts with Russia,” he stated.

Source: Elcomercio

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