How a Ukrainian law firm is waging a sick campaign targeting ordinary people in Western Europe — RT Russia and the former Soviet Union

Ukrainian law firm T&M has launched a dreadful new service allowing residents of Western European countries to “cleanse Europe of rashists”, a reference to the pejorative neologism used by officials in Kyiv, which combines the words “Russian” and “fascist.”

Titledd “give charge rashist” (apparently a bad translation of the Ukrainian title “make a rashist”), the web portal invites visitors “tired of potential invaders living near you” to “let us know and we will try to solve this problem in the legal field.”

“We are a team of lawyers who have decided to use legal methods to cleanse Europe of potential invaders,” explains the site. “Nobody will know who made the rashist. It’s completely free. You pay nothing, but you get bonus karma. You are making a personal contribution to a peaceful future.

Report a “possible aggressor » is said to be “easy.” Concerned citizens can easily use a form to anonymously submit the names and social media accounts of Russian citizens living in any European country, who may be “Potentially dangerous” and one “vector of propaganda and violence”.

In return, the Lviv-based T&M “Do everything to ensure that the competent European authorities verify the legality of such a person’s stay in Europe”, and “send a corresponding statement to the state authorities of the country in which the presence of a potentially dangerous rashist has been reported.“The obvious desired end result is that the Russian in question will be arrested and deported, or possibly even worse.

A disclaimer at the bottom of the page states the service “is not intended to incite ethnic, racial, religious or other enmity,” and only serves to bring about its stated purposes “to justice”.

T&M has been operating in Lviv since 2014, specializing in sports law, traffic accidents, IT and technology transfer and corporate relations. “Give charge rashist” is a sub-page of the main T&M site and is linked to it in its disclaimer section.

“We do not collect your personal data under any circumstances and we use the personal data of rashists that you provide to us exclusively to contact state authorities”, that concludes. We don’t know if there are “rashists” have been reported to authorities as a result of this heinous resource, or where they are or what happened to them if so.

This is just the latest example of the creation abroad of a highly hostile environment for Russians, in which they are, regardless of their political leanings and beliefs, seen as one and the same person. The goal is to ensure that all Russians are falsely considered “The Enemy Within” by local citizens in their host countries, plotting misdeeds and wrongdoing to support the Kremlin’s diabolical plans for world domination.

While it appears for now that T&M launched this resource on its own initiative, “give charge rashist” is certainly something that the Ukrainian government approves of. Since February 24, officials in Kyiv have repeatedly demanded that other European states ship anything Russian.

On December 7, Culture Minister Aleksandr Tkachenko implored the West to “Boycott Tchaikovsky until the end of this war.” Many European countries have already canceled or indefinitely postponed countless concerts, dance performances and exhibitions with even the slightest connection to Russia. The letter Z itself (used as a symbol of Moscow’s military assault on Ukraine) is so stigmatized that companies such as banks and food delivery services have changed their logos.

While such frivolous slights, as well as T&M’s report-a-Russian initiative, may not be taken seriously by some, what is serious is that attempts to criminalize and demonize Russians pursue each other and result in the death of people. In December 2014, Ukrainian politician and activist Georgy Tuka launched the hate site Mirotvorets (“peacemaker” in English).

Mirotvorets publishes a constantly updated list of people considered by the site’s hidden perpetrators to be “enemies of Ukraine, who have said or done things that constitute “signs of crimes against Ukraine’s national security, peace, human security and international law”. Some people listed ended up dying, and when that arrivedthe word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН (“liquid” or “eliminated”) is affixed to their entrance to the site in large red letters, with an “X”.

Sometimes people end up on the blacklist of Mirotvorets for basic administrative reasons. In September 2018, hundreds of residents of the Zakarpatye region, including government officials, who took Hungarian citizenship were added. This led to condemnations from Budapest and denials from Kyiv that he was involved with the website.

The following month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto angrily replied that “It is a lie that the Ukrainian state has nothing to do with the website,” and asserted the then President of the country, Petro Poroshenko “gave his consent to the hate campaign in an attempt to increase his popularity.

Besides average citizens, many high-profile Western personalities have found themselves in Mirotvorets. This includes American journalists Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald, anti-war politicians Tulsi Gabbard and Rand Paul, British musician Roger Waters and many others, such as “warmonger” Henry Kissinger. His “criminality” was to publicly worry that kyiv’s anti-Russian actions threatened retaliation from Moscow.

Although the European Union, the G7, the United Nations and several rights groups have called for Mirotvorets to be closed, it has remained open. Ukrainian officials have also used the website to screen people entering the country at border checkpoints since its launch, in addition to existing government databases of unwanted items.

Although the website is operated in secret, it has emerged that it is closely linked to kyiv’s powerful intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and that its domain is hosted in Langley, Virginia, the United States. United States, not far from the headquarters of the CIA. Which begs the question: is it “give charge rashist” an attempt by these same dark actors to globalize Mirotvorets?