Vandalism
In the village of Dzhurin, Shargorodsky district, Vinnytsia region, vandals defeated the Jewish cemetery, desecrating 66 graves. April 2013.
53 cases of xenophobic vandalism have been noted in 2014 (46 in 2013). 23 of them were anti-Semitic; 46 – anti-Christian; 14 – other. The following were the targets of anti-Semitic attacks: monument to victims of Nazism (Poltava, January 20), memorials to Holocaust victims (Kirovograd, February 2, Novomoskovsk, March 17 and May 5, Odessa, April 8, Nikolaev, 24 June and 3 July, s.Pyatydni, July 14, Chernihiv, 20 August Kiev (monument to the victims of Babi Yar), September 21 and November 17), a monument to the victims of the pogrom of the Civil War (Khmelnitsky, March 28), a synagogue (Zaporozhye, February 24, Simferopol, February 28, Nikolaev, April 19, Kyiv, September 24, Hust, 29 November), Jewish schools (Kharkov, November 12).
On May 23, 2014, residence of Kiev’s chief rabbi Yakov Dov Blaih in outskirts of Kiev was attacked. On June 26, a mikvah was desecrated in Uman.
On March 8, a Jewish memorial sign in Chigirin was desecrated.
On July 14, 2014, vandals destroyed the grave of Rabbi Nahman. On the same day, desecrations of Jewish graves in Volyn region were reported. Bishop of the Zhytomyr diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) reported that the Temple of Ioan-Bogoslovsky was vandalised in Solnechnoye village on the night of March 7-8.
On June 6, unidentified male attempted arson of an Orthodox temple in Kiev.
On August 15, Molotov Cocktails were thrown at two UOC MP temples. On August 23, activists of Kiev Veche attacked the construction site of an Orthodox temple in Kiev, painting “Death to the enemies”, “Death to Moscow Church” on the fence.
On October 21, an arson attack was carried out on a temple in Nosovka village, Chernigovskaya region. On October 24, an explosive device was detonated at the entrance to the Sunday school in Sumy.
On December 3, an arson attack was made on UOC MP temple in Babi Yar. On December 7, an Orthodox temple in Mirnoe (Rivne region) has been desecrated and robbed.
There have been instances where fire was opened at Christian Ortodox temples. On July 16, a Temple of Serafim Sarovsky in Slavyansk was attacked by a mortar strike.
On August 7, 2014, a temple in Gorlovka was destroyed in the shelling. On the same day, on August 7, a “Tenderness” temple was damaged in mortar strikes in centre of Lugansk. On August 25, a shell hit the church of Ioan Kronstadtsky in Kirovskoe. Three people were killed.
On June 26, Right Sector and Ukrainian Patriot militants tried to raid a Tourist Hotel in Kiev, where a founding congress of Ukrainian Education and Science Trade Union was taking place.
Kiev gay bar, “Pomada”, was attacked on January 23 and July 5 and 6. Some sources report that seven such attacks have been made between January and July 2014.
On October 29, 2014, a smoke bomb was thrown in a Kiev cinema that screened an LGBT film. On October 31, a group of aggressive young people wearing Right Sector symbols threatened to storm the cinema screening the film “Max and Others”.
On November 2, nationalists tried to break into Domino night club that was holding an transgender event Drag Queen Fest Odessa 2014.
On January 16, 2014, memorial to 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations was desecrated in Generalskoye village.
On March 11, 2014, Svalyansky department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received a phone call from a representative of the Hungarian Cultural Society of Transcarpathia. Unknown perpetrators doused the monument dedicated to the migration of Hungarian tribes through Carpathians in an unknown liquid. The monument is located on the Veretsky Pass, on the border of Transcarpathia and Lviv Regions. Vandals also set fire to the wreaths that were set at the monument.
On May 4, 2014, Right Sector activists seized the House of Ruthenians in Mukachevo, Transcarpathia. According to witness reports, police joined the extreme right activists and helped them storm the building.
504 monuments to Lenin have been demolished in 2014.
51 acts of xenophobic vandalism have been recorded in 2015. 40 of them were anti-Semitic in nature, ten actions were directed against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).
On January 26 and April 22, 2015, arson attempts were made against a temple in Babi Yar (Kiev). On January 27, Temple of St. Martyr Tryphon was set on fire (Kiev).
On February 12, 2015, a temple in the village of Velikaya Sevastyanovka (Cherkassy region) was seized by Right Sector activists, who assaulted local priest, trying to force him to convert to OUC KP.
On February 12, 2015, Sunday Cathedral in Kovel was attacked. On February 22, Right Sector activists attacked the Transfiguration Cathedral in Sumy. They blocked the entrance and threatened priests and patrons.
On May 24, 2015, St. Panteleimon Temple in Kovel (Volyn region) was set on fire.
On June 6, two UOC MP temples in Vasilkov, Kiev region, were vandalised. On June 27, one of these temples was vandalised again.
In the first half of 2015, we recorded several acts of anti-Semitic vandalism in the Historical Memorial Complex “Babi Yar”. Memorial stones have been doused in paint on the Holocaust Memorial Day in January. Another such act was made in April, marking Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Monument to the Jewish victims was doused in unknown liquid on June 29, 2015.
Holocaust memorials have also been vandalised in other cities – Nikolayev (March 22 ), Odessa (April 26 ), Novomoskovsk (May 12 ), Nikopol (June 16 ).
On June 12, 2015, it was reported that the construction of a road in Ostrog, Rivne region, damaged several graves in an old Jewish cemetery.
On February 14, 2015, unknown vandals desecrated the tomb of Sara and Haya, daughters of the founder of Breslov (Hasidic group), buried in Kremenchug.
On June 29, 2015, an ambulance vehicle belonging to the Jewish rescue organisation “Hatsala Ukraine” was set on fire. In the period from July 28 to August 1 in Uzhgorod in the Jewish cemetery on the street. Kotlyarevsky unknown hackers damaged 19 tombstones.
On August 27, 2015, in the village of Konstantinovka near Melitopol, unknown people set fire to the bus in the place of the monument to the victims of the Holocaust.
On September 5, 2015, a group of provocateurs in Uman attempted to dismantle a tent camp, which was set up as part of the preparation of pilgrims on the eve of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), traditionally a mass come to this festival on the grave of the Chassidic tsaddik (righteous) p. Nachman from Bratslov.
A group of about 30 people, using the passive behaviour of the police, began to destroy the fence around the camp. Power lines and CCTV cameras were also damaged. The attack was led by Vladimir Goncharuk, Sergei Alexenko and Oleg Voloshin. During the action, its participants allowed anti-Semitic statements and threats.
On September 19 and November 4, 2015 at the Memorial Jewish cemetery in Kolomyia (Ivano-Frankivsk region), unknown people set fire to the ohel (prayer chapel-chapel) set on the grave of the righteous, tzaddik Hillel Boruch Liechtenstein, who was Chief Rabbi of Kolomyia in the 19th century.
On 4 October in Lutsk unknown vandals desecrated a memorial plaque in memory of the Jewish uprising in the ghetto in December 1942. The anti-Semites desecfated the slab with blue paint and left the inscription “Die - Jews”.
In early November 2015, monuments to Nazi victims were subjected to anti-Semitic vandalism in Poltava. The monument “The Sorrowful Mother”, located in Pushkarevsky Park, was desecrated. The memorial was installed on the site, where during the years of occupation, about 15 thousand Jews were shot, as well as thousands of other peaceful citizens, members of the underground and Soviet prisoners of war. Vandal dirty his face on the monument with blue paint and painted gallows with a caricature man signed by “Valtsman.” Similarly, a separate “Jewish” monument to the victims of the Holocaust was also desecrated (blue and yellow paint with such a picture and signature). Applications to the police were not filed. In the centre of Poltava the same inscriptions and drawings as well as calls “Death to the Jews” have been reported.
In 2018-21, the level of hate crimes related to vandalism remained about the same. Here are some examples. On January 25, 2018, nationalists from S14, Tradition and Order, and Sokol attempted to set fire to the Tithe Temple in Kiev. The investigation department of the Shevchenko Department of the National Police opened criminal proceedings under Article 15 part 2 article 194 (intentional destruction or damage of property).
On February 3, 2018, the memorial to Holocaust victims, erected on the outskirts of Ternopil, in the village of Petrykov, was desecrated. Nazi symbols - swastikas and the "SS" sign - were painted on the stele. On March 7 of the same year, anti-Semitic inscriptions were placed in front of the entrance to a synagogue in Chernihiv.
On March 12, 2018, a UOC church in the Obolonsky district of Kyiv was set on fire, and a day later in Lviv, intruders detonated an RGD-5 fragmentation grenade at the Polish memorial "Cemetery of Eagles." located in the Lychakiv cemetery.
On April 2, 2018, armed members of the Azov and Aidar nationalist battalions seized a UOC church in the Rivne region.
On April 20, 2018, on Hitler's birthday in the city of Poltava, "Heil Hitler!" and "Death to the kikes!" were inscribed on the memorial to victims of Nazism and the monument to the Grieving Mother. On November 5 of the same year in Kolomyia (Ivano-Frankivsk region), unknown persons fell and smashed several dozen concrete crosses placed a week earlier in the cemetery where Polish prisoners of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918 were buried.
On September 15, 2019, unknown assailants wrote offensive inscriptions on a Holocaust memorial in the Nikolaev region. In October 2019, a memorial to Holocaust victims was damaged and a memorial in Yavoriv, Lviv region was desecrated. In November, a monument to Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem in Kiev was sprayed with swastikas.
On January 20, 2020, in the hometown of President V. Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a monument to Holocaust victims was desecrated. The police opened criminal proceedings for defacing or destroying the property, but not for hate vandalism. On March 9, 2020, vandals desecrated a monument to Holocaust victims in the city of Rivne. On August 22, 2020, vandals in Kiev destroyed a sculpture dedicated to Holodomor victims.
