Assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov was not terrorism, but retribution for Vladimir Putin’s war crimes

www.nydailynews.com/news/world/don-cry-russia-slain-envoy-putin-lackey-article-1.2917281

December 20, 2016

The image of an assassin standing over the dying body of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov is a shocking one — but not a surprising one.

As Vladimir Putin’s man in Turkey, Karlov was the public face of that murderous dictator’s war crimes around the globe and of oppression at home. Andrei Karlov is the human embodiment of policies that deployed bunker busters to kill babies, sent fighter planes on scorched earth bombing runs that destroyed a whole city, aided Syrian madman Bashar al-Assad in his campaign that has killed hundreds of thousands, and even ordered attacks on UN aid workers.

So I, for one, am shedding no tears for Andrei Karlov. Frankly, I’m surprised his murder didn’t come months ago. After all, this was the lead sentences of a Washington Post story from Oct. 9: "There seems to be no way for the international community to stop the ongoing war crimes being committed by the Syrian regime and its Russian allies, especially in Aleppo," the newspaper reported. "But by brazenly flouting international law, leaders and rank-and-file officials in both countries are opening themselves up to future justice in multiple ways."

Justice has been served.

After watching the death of Karlov, I could not help but remember the case of Ernst vom Rath, a Nazi diplomat in France, who was gunned down inside his consulate by a Jewish student in 1938.

Like Karlov, Rath was the public face of atrocity — in this case, Adolf Hitler's genocide, anti-Semitism and coming global aggression.

That era’s politicians fiddled while Hitler burned down Europe, so it took a nobody named Herschel Grynszpan to stand up for freedom and make a powerful statement that evil must be fought whether in a conference room or on a battlefield.

Was Rath an innocent victim? Certainly not. He had not only defended Hitler's oppression of the Jews as "necessary" for Germany to flourish, but he stood idly by as Hitler devoured Europe and murdered its innocents. Rath could have stood up to the Nazi leadership when it would have mattered most, but he did not.

Which brings us back to Andrei Karlov.

Karlov's job in Turkey was to ease tensions over Russia's atrocities in Syria and its incursions inside Turkey itself — meaning his job was to enable and normalize Vladimir Putin. Given that role, he wasn’t a diplomat, but a soldier, and his death is the same whether it came on a battlefield outside Aleppo or in an art gallery in Ankara. His killer was also a soldier — not a terrorist, mind you, but a soldier. Terrorists kill innocent people with trucks in Christmas markets or with planes in skyscrapers. Soldiers kill their fellow soldiers.

Will history vindicate Mevlut Mert Altintas, Karlov’s assassin? That's for history to judge. But it has vindicated Grynszpan — and, indeed, vindicated others who have fought against aggression and fought for freedom.

Gersh Kuntzman

Russian charged with ’extremism’ for reposting video condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1482278672

December 21, 2016

"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"

Russia’s Investigative Committee has brought criminal charges against Roman Grishin for merely reposting a video clip back in 2014.  The Russian investigators claim that the clip, a biting attack on Russia’s excuses for its aggression against Ukraine, contains utterances that fall under Russia’s anti-extremism law.  It contains plenty that would not please Russian President Vladimir Putin, but none that justify ‘extremism’ charges. The Investigative Committee is also ignoring recent instructions from Russia’s Supreme Court aimed against criminal prosecutions for a mere reposting of material. 

33-year-old Grishin, who works as a copy-editor in Kaluga, is not an activist in any way. He assumes that the FSB’s unhealthy interest in his person arose from his trips to Ukraine where he has a friend with whom he has travelled around the country and the fact that he did not conceal his opposition to the Russian authorities’ behaviour with respect to Ukraine. 

FSB officers in balaclavas turned up at his work on Nov 17 and took him to the Investigative Committee offices where he was shown the video clip that he had reposted, and asked why he had posted it, why he travels to Ukraine so often and “why he calls for Jews to be killed”. 

He was then show screenshot images from his VKontakte social network page and the opinion of an ‘expert’ who claimed that he calls for the killing of Jews.

No charges were laid and he was released. He told Open Russia that he had not sought a lawyer or spoken with the press since he hoped that the interrogation was the end of the matter.

Then on Dec 16, he was informed of criminal charges and presented with a new, “fatter” linguistic assessment. 

“It contained the same conclusion – that by posting his video, I was spreading enmity, inciting hatred, and so forth.”  There was no interrogation as such, unless one counts the investigator’s question as to whether he was willing to go to prison.  There was a state-appointed lawyer who simply burbled something about how he shouldn’t argue with the state, that no good would come of it. 

It was then, he says, that he understood the need for a proper lawyer. He has been forced to give an undertaking not to leave Kaluga and appear in 10 days’ time.

His home has not been searched, however at the time of the first visitation, the friend whose home he was at when he reposted the video has faced a search and had his router taken away. 

The lawyer Grishin has found is not yet formally included in the case, and so identified himself only as Alexander.  He believes that the FSB visit was aimed at intimidating Grishin, and is appalled, among other things, by the fact that Grishin has not been presented with any documents.  He has only the summons on Dec 16 and his signed undertaking. From Grishin’s account, however, he notes that the author of the ‘linguistic assessment’ was clearly aware of the Supreme Court instructions and specifically points out that Grishin did not make any comment about the video, just reposted it. 

Without the actual document, it must remain a mystery where the so-called linguistic expert found a call to kill Jews in Boris Sevastyanov’s “New hit from Kharkiv: This, baby, is Rushism”. The term merges ‘Russian’ and ‘fascism’ and refers to Russian ideas about their ‘special mission’, the ‘Russian world’ which they claim includes Ukraine, and the use of the Russian Orthodox Church to claim moral authority for acts of aggression.  The refrain, in fact, says: “That, baby, is rashism, Orthodox fascism.  We’ll seize and appropriate, and hold a referendum”

The lyrics note, for example, that “fascists shout about fascists louder than anybody else” and says that Putin’s favourite occupation is looking for enemies, that they hate Americans, Ukrainians and Jews (offensive terms are used for all three of the latter, but in context that is clearly criticism of the search for ‘enemies’ only).    

Both the images and the lyrics are a devastating attack on Russia’s claims that Ukraine is a ‘brother nation’ (If we’re brothers, then you are Cain, we are Abel), and on Russian propaganda.  “Journalists don’t know how to lie more monstrously, and are willing to kiss Putin’s arse for honours”.

The Sova Centre, which monitors Russia’s use and abuse of extremism legislation notes the sharp criticism in the song, while stressing that there are no calls to aggression.  There are certainly Nazi symbols, as well as that of the banned Movement against Illegal Migration, but these are not, the Sova Centre writes, aimed at promoting Nazi ideology. 

Russia has already used the Nazi symbols as a pretext for administrative proceedings.  Political prisoner Darya Polyudova was jailed for 4 days in September 2015 for posting the clip, and in April 2016 Nina Solovyova, another Krasnodar activist received a 10-day sentence.

It has now stepped up the repressive measures, with criminal charges laid for the first time.  If convicted – and courts in Russia virtually never hand down acquittals in so-called ‘extremism’ cases, Grishin could face a 5-year prison term for reposting a video clip aimed solely at condemning Russia’s military aggression against its supposed ‘brothers’ in Ukraine. 

The video clip should be watched first in Russian, however there is also an English translation. 

Putins hybrider Großangriff zur Bundestagswahl 2017: Propaganda-Feldzug sogar mit Sexmobs

www.bild.de/politik/inland/wladimir-putin/propaganda-putin2sexmobs-49205588.bild.html

9. Dezember 2016

„Wir werden im deutschen Wahlkampf eine Einflußnahme erleben, wie wir sie noch nie erlebt haben.“

Die Worte eines hochrangigen Vertreters deutscher Sicherheitsbehörden lassen erahnen, in welchem Ausmaß Moskau den Ausgang der Bundestagswahl 2017 versuchen wird zu sabotieren.

In Sicherheitskreisen wird bereits diskutiert, wie Rußland versuchen könnte, mit Störaktionen ein radikales Umdenken in der Bevölkerung zu erzwingen – womöglich sogar mit tödlicher Gewalt.

Welche Mittel der Kreml genau einsetzen wird, ist noch offen. Die Einflußnahme auf den US-Wahlkampf durch die Veröffentlichung interner Dokumente (Wikileaks-Enthüllungen über das Innenleben der Demokraten-Partei) und vergangene Aktionen in Deutschland wie das gezielte Streuen von Gerüchten („Vergewaltigungsfall“ Lisa) lassen nur erahnen, welche Kampagnen auf die deutsche Öffentlichkeit zukommen könnten. 

Doch jenseits von Desinformation könnte es noch schlimmer kommen! 

Eine bislang unbekannte Komponente ergebe sich aus der engen Zusammenarbeit von russischen, syrischen und anderen Geheimdiensten sowie russischer Mafia, sagt Rußland-Experte Gustav Gressel (European Council on Foreign Relations).

„Ein Teil der Flüchtlinge aus dem Irak und Syrien, wenn auch nur ein sehr kleiner Teil, hatte Verbindungen zu Assads oder Saddam Husseins Geheimdiensten.“

Diese Menschen könnten gezielt von Geheimdienstagenten oder aus Mafiakreisen angesprochen und für Störaktionen instrumentalisiert werden, warnt Gressel.

„Was würde zum Beispiel passieren, wenn sich auf einem Sommerfestival vor der Wahl etwas ähnliches wiederholt wie in Köln zur Silvesternacht? Wie würde Merkel dann da stehen? Was wäre die Konsequenz für die Bundestagswahl? Natürlich ist das ein extremes Beispiel, aber es ist im Bereich des Möglichen“, sagt Gressel weiter.

Alarmstimmung in der Bundesregierung

Wie BILD erfuhr, setzt man sich im Auswärtigen Amt und im Innenministerium bereits intensiv mit der drohenden Gefahr auseinander.

Mit Propaganda-Angriffen wird fest gerechnet. In engsten Zirkeln im Regierungsviertel werden derzeit Gegenstrategien entwickelt. Ziel ist es, sich bestmöglich vorzubereiten, um im Fall der Einflußnahme schnell reagieren, die Propaganda entlarven und den Schaden begrenzen zu können.

Gressel bestätigt: „Jeder in und um die Bundesregierung geht davon aus, daß es zu den Bundestagswahlen zu Versuchen der Einflußnahme durch Rußland kommen wird. Die Frage ist nur wie und wo.“ In vielen Ämtern in Berlin herrsche deshalb „Alarmstimmung“.

Russlands informasjonskrig er en dyster suksess

www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentar/Russlands-informasjonskrig-er-en-dyster-suksess--Frank-Rossavik-610660b.html

7. desember 2016

En gammel orden har mistet tillit. En ny og spinnvill orden kan være i ferd med å ta over.

Lyspunktet er at det kanskje finnes en grense, tross alt. Tirsdag sparket Donald Trump Michael G. Flynn, sønn av sin utpekte sikkerhetsrådgiver Michael T. Flynn.

Alt tyder på at Flynn Jr. fikk sparken fordi han har brukt Twitter til å spre falske «nyheter», blant annet en som kobler Hillary Clinton til en barnesex-ring.

BBC melder at det ble sendt nesten en million Twitter-meldinger om «saken» bare i november.

Hillary Clinton og barnesex? Nei, ikke sant, men det finnes altså folk som er villige til å tro på slikt.

Forresten er også løgner om Trump blitt spredt, om enn i mindre omfang. Mest kjent er et falskt sitat fra 1998 om at hvis han skulle stille som presidentkandidat, måtte det bli for republikanerne, for deres velgere er villige til å tro hva som helst.

«Om det ikke er sant, er det godt jugi», som det het i et NRK-program.

Liksom-nyheter

Konspirasjonsteorier er en lang tradisjon i amerikansk politikk, men de har antagelig ikke avgjort valg inntil nå. Denne gangen kan de mange falske historiene som svirret om Clinton ha bidratt avgjørende til Trumps knappe seier.

Grunnen er like enkel som nedslående: Det kommer stadig flere nettsteder som ser solide ut og tilsynelatende formidler nyheter, men som i realiteten sprer løgn.

De er ikke så lette å avsløre. Spesielt vanskelig blir det hvis leseren heller ikke er kritisk i utgangspunktet. Intet er som kjent mer attraktivt enn å få bekreftet egne fordommer.

I e-postboksen min har jeg fortsatt en korrespondanse med en bekjent av meg i Bergen fra februar 2015. Han er en SV-er av den mer naive typen, men et godt menneske og ikke dum.

Tragikomisk

Han var oppbrakt fordi jeg i mine kommentarer i Bergens Tidende tok Ukrainas parti i krigen mot de russiskstøttede opprørerne øst i landet. Nå hadde han oppdaget en nyhetssak om at det ikke fantes russiske soldater i landet.

Det tok meg et minutt å finne ut at det canadiske nettstedet han siterte er kjent for å spre løgn. Antagelig er det også finansiert fra Russland.

Min bekjente og jeg utvekslet noen hissige e-poster, men han innså at han var blitt lurt og vi tok til slutt en kaffe for å skvære opp.

Det tragikomiske er at hovedforklaringen på at falske nyheter nå svirrer rundt overalt også ligner en konspirasjonsteori: Vladimir Putin står bak.

Russland på alle kanter

Amerikansk etterretning mener å ha beviser for at Russland sto bak hackingen av det demokratiske partiets e-postserver. Russerne skal så ha levert sine funn videre til Wikileaks, som slapp dem i porsjoner gjennom valgkampen. Hensikten var å øke sjansene for at Trump vant.

Russiske propagandister skal i tillegg ha bidratt til spredningen av falske nyheter.

Rusland står dessuten bak en avansert informasjonskrig mot Vesten, både ved å finansiere «nyhetsnettsteder», ved å betale såkalte troll for å kverulere russlandvennlig i sosiale medier og med andre metoder.

Det er ikke lett å tro på at verden er blitt så sprø, men jeg heller etter hvert mot at den er det.

Hva er svaret?

Tysk etterretning advarte nylig mot at Russland kan komme til å prøve å påvirke forbundsdagsvalget neste høst på samme måte som det amerikanske presidentvalget. Informasjonskrigen fra Moskva har allerede bidratt til at det russiske synet på for eksempel ukrainakonflikten er utbredt i Tyskland, ikke bare på ytre høyre og ytre venstre fløy.

Russlands forbindelser til europeisk ytre høyre er ellers godt dokumenterte. Franske Front National, hvis leder Marine Le Pen kan bli president til våren, har mottatt penger fra Russland og legger ingen skjul på sine bånd til Moskva.

Hva er svaret? Skal man opprette en mengde nettsteder som ser russiske ut for å spre vestlige nyheter og vestlig virkelighetsoppfatning i øst, fortrinnsvis det som er sant?

Akutt krise

Situasjonen er i alle fall en stor utfordring for etablerte politikere, institusjoner og medier, for noe av grunnen til at en ny og spinnvill orden kan være i ferd med å ta kontroll, er selvsagt at den gamle har mistet troverdighet.

Troverdigheten må gjenopprettes med bedre inkludering av marginaliserte grupper og annen politikk, men det vil ta tid og krisen er akutt.

Russlands president har forstått at tillit til politikere, institusjoner og medier er et demokratis viktigste kapital. Ved å undergrave tilliten, kan han svekke sine fiender. I en verden der alt er relativt og ingenting er sant, vil folk som Putin kunne herske.

Frank Rossavik

Russia biggest source of cyberattacks on Sweden: Intelligence head

www.thelocal.se/20161212/russia-biggest-source-of-cyberattacks-on-sweden-intelligence-head

December 12, 2016

Russia is the biggest source of cyberattacks and influence operations against Sweden, according to the head of the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (Must).

Must is the branch of the Swedish Armed Forces that is the main foreign intelligence agency in the country. Its head, Major General Gunnar Karlson, spoke openly about Russian attempts to influence Sweden during an interview with SVT’s Agenda show on Sunday evening.

“It is pretty easy for me to say – many of the activities we are subject to have a clear sender, they can be traced more or less directly. It can be about spreading false information, bending the truth, and emphasizing some arguments more than others to make it difficult to get a clearer picture of what is happening,” Karlson said.

Cyberattacks which among other things attempt to gain access to intelligence are ongoing and have long taken place, he claimed.

“It is a serious threat because in different ways they can push themselves in to the very foundations of a democracy and and influence democratic decision-making,” Karlson noted.

The Must head explained that his agency often sees influence operations (operations focusing on affecting the behaviours of groups or populations) targeted against Sweden, citing the example of a falsified letter purporting to have been written by Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist.

“That was easy to expose but clearly targeted against Sweden. It’s often not the individual influence operations that do the worst damage, but it risks leading to a general mistrust of information.”

Last year a report by Sweden’s Security Service Säpo labelled Russian espionage against the country as “extensive”.

The everyday violence in Russia’s prison system has to stop

https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/bulat-mukhamedzhanov/everyday-violence-in-russia-s-prison-system-has-to-stop

November 4, 2016

Shocking revelations of the conditions faced by a political prisoner should remind us of the dominant principle inside Russia’s prison system — violence in all possible forms. Русский

About the author

Bulat Mukhamedzhanov is coordinator for Zona prava, which provides legal and informational support to prisoners and criminal defendants in Russia. 

This week, a letter from civic activist Ildar Dadin, who is currently serving a three-year sentence for violating legislation on public demonstrations, has forced Russian society to look again at the practices that dominate Russia’s penitentiary system. The letter describes the humiliation and torture Dadin has faced as a new arrival at Penal Colony 7 in Segezha, Karelia, including group beatings, being hung up by the handcuffs and having his head thrust down the prison toilet. 

There’s nothing particularly new in Dadin’s letter. What, we didn’t know that people are tortured in Russia’s prison system? That people are illegally placed in punishment cells, and have to face unbearable living conditions every day? Since the era of the Gulag, the use of physical force against a prisoner has been a means of making him or her obedient and dependent on the prison administration.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate and a former prisoner himself, remembers in The Gulag Archipelago how Soviet prison guards had 52 forms of torture in their arsenal. “Their branch of service does not require them to be educated people of broad culture and broad views — and they are not. Their branch of service does not require them to think logically — and they do not. Their branch of service requires only that they carry out orders exactly and be impervious to suffering — and that is what they do and who they are.” 

Today, the range of tortures in Russia has expanded. We all remember Vladimir Putin’s famous use of criminal jargon (“We’ll waste them in the outhouse”), which Russia’s future president used to describe the swift vengeance of the Russian state in 1999. It soon became Putin’s main slogan, and helped him win the presidential election a year later.

In Russia’s prisons, the successor to the Gulag, prisoners aren’t afraid of beatings, but the humiliation that accompanies them

Indeed, after that now-infamous press conference, this idiom acquired the meaning: “To catch someone off guard and then deal with them mercilessly, wherever it might be.” Vladimir Bukovsky, another Soviet dissident, noted that this phrase has its roots in the violent Gulag uprisings of the late 1940s, and referred to “killing an informer and throwing his body into the latrines”. 

This form of “settling accounts” has come to feature all too prominently in Russia’s prison system also. In recent years, there have been several scandalous cases where prisoners have revealed that they haven’t only been beaten, but prison officers have put their head down prison toilets as punishment.

In 2011, in Chelyabinsk region, prisoners in Colony No 1 in Kopeisk were forced to crawl naked on their hands and knees upstairs to the toilet block, where prison employees thrust their heads into the latrines. They were then brutally beaten. Four prisoners died as a result, and the coroner’s office found up to 140 bruises from prison officers’ batons on their bodies. Eighteen prison officers, including the head of the regional penitentiary service, were put on trial, and eight received prison sentences of between nine and 12 years. 

In 2015, in Sverdlovsk region, according to the journalists at 66.ru, prisoners who refused to pay a monthly sum to the prison administration of Ekaterinburg Colony No 2 were tortured by having their heads put down all the latrines. After this, prisoners were forced to write a petition to the prison administration claiming that they would never discuss illegal practices at the colony. If this information was revealed, the prisoner could be raped and forced into a prison “harem”.

As we can see, the power vertical in Russia’s penitentiary system works better than on the outside. If a prison administration gives the order, then it is carried out without question — even zealously. The most important consideration is not to leave any bodies, as they can’t be covered up. 

This kind of humiliation is fixed on CCTV — if a prisoner doesn’t wish to “negotiate”, then the video can be distributed on the internet, shown to other prisoners or sent to his family

In May 2016, in the southern region of Krasnodar, 10 employees at the Belorechensk Prison Colony stood trial in connection with humiliation faced by young prisoners. According to the investigation, prison officers brutally beat new arrivals at the colony on the orders of the prison administration while wearing balaclavas (to ensure both anonymity and the desired effect). The officers then stripped the new prisoners naked, forced them to urinate on one another and then put their heads down the prison latrines.

All this was done while shouting abuse at the prisoners, who were forced to do physical exercises constantly during the episode. Vitaly Pop, a 17-year-old Ukrainian prisoner, did not withstand the torture. He died from the 17 punches and kicks against his vital organs. 

Anastasiya Kopteeva, head of the Zabaikalsky Human Rights Center, notes that former prisoners often turn to her for help. In their letters, they describe how this toilet block humiliation is used to force them to cooperate with the prison administration. “We expected that after the episode of mass beating of prisoners in Colony No 10 [in October 2016, eight prison officers from Krasnokamensk were convicted in relation to this case], the situation would change, but everything has stayed the same.” 

Ildar Dadin’s letter is testimony to the continuing use of this practice: “After the third beating, they lowered my head into a toilet right there in the holding cell.” 

As a rule, this kind of humiliation is fixed on CCTV — if a prisoner doesn’t wish to “negotiate”, then the video can be distributed on the internet, shown to other prisoners or sent to his family.

There are places where the Gulag has remained practically unchanged, where violence remains the defining principle of “order”

Thus, this technology of “flushing” places a prisoner at the very bottom of Russia’s prison hierarchy. He becomes “lowered down” (opushchennyi, a specific term in criminal slang) and has to do dirty and unpleasant work, including cleaning out the latrines. The path back “up” the hierarchy, towards the middle-ranking and top prisoners is closed forever — you can only move further down. Thus, in Russia’s prisons, the successor to the Gulag, prisoners aren’t afraid of beatings, but the humiliation that accompanies them. It’s a cross you have to bear for the rest of your life in prison. 

For the first time ever, the European Court of Human Rights is now examining a complaint by nine former prisoners from Kostroma who wound up among “lowered” prisoners for different reasons. One of the prisoners, for instance, accidentally fell into a wooden toilet. These prisoners are now requesting that the informal hierarchy that dominates Russia’s prison system be recognised as inhumane and degrading to human dignity.

Vladimir Rubashny, former director of Tatarstan’s penitentiary psychological service, believes that, in certain situations, a prisoner’s “fall” down the hierarchy can be beneficial for a prison administration. “In my experience, these kind of situations [where it was beneficial] came about,” said Rubashny in a recent interview for MediaZona. “Prisoners (both young and adult) admitted that it was the prison administration that provoked such situations, including with the help of ‘activists’ [prisoners who cooperate with the prison administration]. This practice is alive and well today.” 

Of course, there are regions in Russia where beatings and psychological pressure are a thing of the past. But at the same time, there are places — in my opinion, Karelia, Mordovia, Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions — where the Gulag has remained practically unchanged, where violence remains the defining principle of “order”.

An episode of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, where an officer in Stalin’s secret police addresses someone under investigation, comes to mind: “‘You think we get any satisfaction from using persuasion? We have to do what the Party demands of us.’”

American Disaster

Demand jail time for Russian girls that ripped dog’s heart out while laughing!

https://www.dailypetition.com/Demand-jail-time-for-girls-that-ripped-dogs-heart-out-while-laughing-3-t-435

PETITIONING VYACHESLAV SHPORT – GOVERNOR OF KHABAROVSK KRAI

by Rebecca Beaty October 25, 2016

The two perpetrators are Alina Orlova (aged 21) and her best friend Alyona Savchenko (19-years-old). The two live in the town of Khabarovsk, in the eastern part of Russia and seem to have developed a tremendous hate for animals, as they look to harm them every time they get the chance to.

The two are looking to adopt as many cats and dogs as they can lay their hands on. They get custody of the animals from local shelters after promising to look after the animals, but it turns out they do anything but that. What they actually do is take the animals to remote locations – abandoned houses situated at the outskirts of the city – and terminate them in the most vicious ways.

Exclusive: Punish evil girls that sliced pregnant cat in half and posted photos on social media!

For instance, the puppy  in the photos above was bashed with a hammer and later had its internal organs ripped into pieces. As if the abuse itself was not enough, the girls documented the ordeal by recording it and later posted the video and gruesome pictures on social media, bragging about how much fun they had.

In another series of shocking videos, a defenseless puppy is hung and shot and a pregnant cat is sliced in half with a knife. All of this so these girls can be amused. The attackers don’t pass on the opportunity to pose for photos and upload them on VKontakte – a popular social media network in Russia. The message they are sending is crystal clear: these teenagers have no shame whatsoever and want to let everyone know what they are up to.

The precise of number of innocent animals that perished in terrible pain in their hands is yet to be determined, but based on the photos posted online and revealed by a Russian blog, the girls have terminated at least a dozen.

Both attackers study at the Pacific National University in Khabarovsk. It has also been revealed that Alyona’s mother was deprived of parental rights due to alcoholism and Alyona has been booked before; her best friend, Alina Orlova, pictured on the top left, is the daughter of a Colonel in the Russian Air Forces, Nikolai Orlov Vladimirovich. The Russian media have been doing their best to hide the identity of the girl amid pressure from her father. But the truth eventually came to light and the story went viral on social media and was picked up by numerous international news outlets. Reports have emerged that Orlova was detained by police at the Vladivostok airport, as she was preparing to board a flight to St. Petersburg.

Please support my petition and demand jail time for these heartless girls. There is absolutely no excuse for what they did – they knew perfectly what they were doing. The authorities must send a strong message to the entire country: cruelty to animals will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Take action now and do not let this case be swept under the rug! We, the undersigned, demand justice for all the animals that perished in the hands of Alina Orlova and Alyona Savchenko.

News Sources: The Mirror and Imgur 

Alyona Savchenko

Alina Orlova

The girls filmed themselves ripping the dog apart.

In another gruesome photo posted online, a dog was hung and shot.

Dozens of animals are believed to have perished in the hands of these deranged girls.