Two years of war

● On the evening of September 14, four unknown attackers beat Nick Carter and an anonymous friend of his. Nick Carter had often publicly defended the rights of the LGBT community. The attack happened near the address: 10 Obolonsky prospekt. According to the victim, four persons attacked them at approximately 10 PM when they were returning home from the local store. The attackers were shouting homophobic slurs. N. Carter took severe damage to the face, and his companion got a concussion.

The victims were given medical aid, and they filed a statement for the police about the incident³²⁶.
● On December 13-16, during the Festival of Equality in Kyiv, whose program included LGBT themes, unknown vandals wrote insulting graffiti on the fences and walkways near one of the buildings hosting the events. The territory belonged to the “Isolation” Platform for Cultural Initiatives, which moved to Kyiv from Donetsk after the beginning of Russian occupation. The graffiti included signs like: “Go here for perverts” and “Homosexuality is unnatural.”³²⁷
● On the morning of December 18 unknown vandals painted a homophobic graffiti in red paint over the mural “Testing makes you stronger,” located on the outer wall of a building housing the office of the LGBT organization “Tochka Opory” (“Fulcrum”). The homophobes painted a Celtic cross and wrote “death to perverts.”³²⁸.

7. Actions taken by the government and law enforcement bodies.
On January 14, the Prosecutor’s Office of Nikolayev Region opened criminal proceedings according to Article 161 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code ( Violation of citizens' equality based on their race, nationality or religious preferences”) due to the administration and staff of the Nikolayev bar “Sotka” discriminating against visitors who were in their opinion neither Russian nor Ukrainian and refusing them service³²⁹. Several cases were recorded in late 2014 and early 2015 when bar staff refused to provide service to an ethnic Armenian, an ethnic Azerbaijani, and ethnic representatives of other groups, citing an order given by higher-ups³³⁰.

Cases of discrimination by race continued even after criminal proceedings were opened, and the owner of the bar, former MP Victor Gorbachev, said that the investigator allegedly told him immediately that his actions do not constitute components of a crime under Article 161 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.³³¹.

As the leader of “Exodus,” Novikov also gained his notoriety through his anti-Semitic statements.

On January 22, the PR Department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a post for a Special Representative for Preventing and Counteracting Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism will be created at the MFA³³⁴.
On February 4, adopted a resolution to hold parliamentary hearings titled “Role, importance and influence of civil society for the formation of an ethno-national policy of unity in Ukraine.”³³⁵.
On March 11, the aforementioned parliamentary hearings were held with no change to their title.³³⁶.

The parliament heard a number of speakers, including Cabinet of Ministers Representative for Ethno-National Policy Gennadiy Druzenko, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of Ukraine Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, Chairperson of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, Ethnic Minorities and Inter-Ethnic Relations Hryhorii Nemyrya, Executive Vice President of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine (CNCU), Co-President of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine (VAAD Ukraine), Euro-Asian Jewish Congress General Council Chairman Josef Zissels³³⁷, CNCU Executive Director Anna Lenchovskaya³³⁸ and others.

According to the case materials, on October 22, 2012, participants of the group arranged a meeting near the “411 Battery” memorial with a man through the Internet under false pretenses (introducing themselves as an underage young woman). Approximately 10 hooligans surrounded the man and, threatening him with violence, made him admit that he is a “pedophile” and made him commit various humiliating acts. The coordinator of the group, who had later been convicted, pushed the bullying, and it turned into a beating. The victim was hospitalized to the Odesa City Clinical Hospital #1, where he died of his injuries four days later.³⁴¹.

According to the Ombudsman’s Office of the Ukrainian Parliament, after an interjection of the regional coordinator for the Ombudsman’s office, the Uzhgorod police began an official investigation into an incident that has possible roots in racial discrimination. The investigation began on August 3.³⁴⁷.

On September 29, after the official ceremony of laying of wreaths in the Babiy Yar, commemorating the 74th anniversary of the beginning of the Babiy Yar shootings, the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk held a meeting with representatives of various Ukrainian government bodies, MPs that are part of the Ukraine-Israel Interparliamentary Commission, and leaders of Ukrainian Jewish organizations. Yatsenyuk reacted to the increasingly more common desecrations of the Holocaust memorial in Babiy Yar, which garnered a wide resonance both in Ukraine itself and beyond its borders, by giving a number of orders to representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The head of state announced that security measures will be improved, video surveillance systems installed, and additional patrols will be working on the scene. “This holy place is protected and will continue to be protected by the government. And anyone attempting vandalize its memory will be punished,” Yatsenyuk stressed .³⁴⁸.

Earlier, the Ukrainian Prime Minister assured World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer of the seriousness of the Ukrainian government’s intent to fight manifestations of anti-Semitism in a letter³⁴⁹.

Prejudicial inquiry has confirmed that the aforementioned persons attempted to sabotage a film showing by throwing smoke grenades inside the movie theater. The smoke grenades, however, caused a fire. The investigation believes that the crime’s motive had been hooliganism and that the students had not intended to set fire to the building. During the hearings, the defendants stated that they wanted to take action “against the propaganda of non-traditional [sexual] orientation,” i.e. their motive was hatred for LGBT people. The youths were found guilty according to Article 296, Part 2 (“hooliganism”) and Article 263, Part 1 (“Carrying, storing, purchasing, producing, repairing, transferring or selling firearms (other than smoothbore hunting guns), ammunition, explosive substances or explosive devices without a permit required by law”)³⁵⁰.

The Director of the Romani organization “Chirikli” Zola Kondur addressed Mikhail Chaplyga, who is the local representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Ombudsman. After the Ombudsman’s office interfered, the arrests stopped.³⁵¹.

Measures to counteract xenophobia were also discussed at the NCSEJ meetings with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Parliament Speaker Vladimir Groysman, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavel Klimkin and Head of the Presidential Administration Boris Lozhkin³⁵².

On the next day, December 15, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko officially commented on the incident, in which he stressed that “abusive language and insults are inadmissible in the National Council of all places. Particularly those with a xenophobic subtext, which insult a person’s national dignity, question their Ukrainian patriotism, and tell someone to “get out of Ukraine.” ³⁵⁴.

● In general, the xenophobia situation in Ukraine has slightly improved. The monitoring recorded fewer violent incidents motivated by hatred. However, the level of xenophobic vandalism, and anti-Semitic vandalism in particular, remains relatively high.

● In comparison to 2014, the situation has become slightly less strenuous even in the puppet regimes created by the Russian aggressors in occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The reasons for this are twofold: first of all, the fighting has decreased in intensity and, second, groups that were disloyal or potentially disloyal to the occupants have been either destroyed or forced to leave the occupied territories. Neo-Protestant charismatic churches (which used to be plentiful), foreign students, Roma, Mekshetian Turks, and a large part of the Jewish community have all largely vacated the territories. Leaders of the puppet regimes of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics regularly make anti-Semitic statements, but we have not recorded any anti-Semitic crime in LNR and DNR.

● In the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, on the contrary, the situation continues to grow worse. As in the first year of the occupation, the Crimean Tatars continue to be systematically discriminated against by the occupational government. Persecution of the independent Crimean Tatar movement has grown stronger, organizations and media outlets are being dissolved. Xenophobic violence has become more frequent.