On 28 October, FSB officers paid a visit to the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow. Their mission? To find books banned from publication in Russia.
Shortly afterwards, a press release appeared on the website of Russia’s Investigative Committee: evidently, investigators were particularly interested in copies of books written by Dmytro Korchinsky, the Ukrainian nationalist activist who shot to the fore at the start of the Kyiv Maidan in 2013. In Russia, these books have been classified as extremist. The day before, the apartment of Vasily Semenenko, a Ukrainian diaspora leader in Moscow, was also searched.
The FSB arrested the library’s director Natalya Sharina, 58, and later requested a court to remand her in custody. The judge, however, went for the more lenient option of house arrest.
