Ukrainian Security Service Charges Pro-Russian Activist Viktor Sklyarov for Threatening Territorial Integrity

In Kharkiv, the Security Service of Ukraine announced suspicion against Viktor Sklyarov, who calls himself one of the ideologists of the “Russian World” in the Kharkiv region. The man is suspected of encroaching on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability. The SBU’s press service reported this on September 30.

According to investigators, Sklyarov is a former resident of Kharkiv who serves as co-chair of the pro-Russian organization “Kharkiv Resistance Movement,” created on territory not under Ukrainian control.

Until 2014, he headed Kharkiv regional cells of pro-Russian structures the “Party of Slavic Unity” and the “Rus’ Community.” After an unsuccessful attempt by pro-Russian forces to seize power in Kharkiv in 2014, he joined the militants of the so-called “DPR”

Timeline of the Suspicion and Role in Donbas

Investigators believe that Sklyarov, as part of Russian occupation forces, took part in fighting against Ukrainian defenders in the Izium District.

As early as 2018, the offender gave interviews to Kremlin propagandists, in which he urged changing the borders of the territory and the state border of Ukraine. He urged joining the militant formations of the Russian terrorists “DPR” and “LPR” to jointly occupy the entire territory of Ukraine. At the same time, he cynically called such occupation “liberation”.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine, launched in 2014, the defendant tried to present as an internal civil conflict, shifting responsibility for it from the Russian Federation to Western countries

The suspicion was filed in absentia, since investigators have not yet determined Sklyarov’s whereabouts.

The investigation continues, and law enforcement officers are gathering evidence to establish all the circumstances of the case and the suspect’s whereabouts.