Vita Zaverukha

"Influencer"  Vita Zaverukha
Born	1996
Nationality	Ukrainian
Interests	• ATO • Aidar Battalion
War actor, criminal, neo-Nazi

Victoria Ihorivna Zaverukha (Wiktorija Sawerucha) also sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Jeanne d'Arc, is a Ukrainian political activist and influencer, criminal, and neo-Nazi. She has taken part in propaganda footage together with "James Vasquez" and "the Belarusian moustache man". Zaverukha had her own YouTube channel that has been deleted or made unlisted some time in late 2022.

Biography

Zaverukha joined Euromaidan and took part in the storming of the Vinnytsia regional state administration in January 2014. She did not belong to any organisation but was active in the area of the far-right and the Right Sector. After the outbreak of the War in Donbas in April 2014, she joined the volunteer batallion Aidar, which was active in the Luhansk region.

Zaverukha first became known in Russia for calling for the suppression of the Russians in Ukraine and for posting neo-Nazi content on social media. In France, and elsewhere she became known following the publication in the French magazine Elle, on 14 November 2014, of a report on women in the armed conflict in Donbas, in which Zaverukha was interviewed and photographed. At the end of December 2014, the Ukrainian-American pianist Valentina Lisitsa discovered that Zaverukha had posted images of herself making the Nazi salute and wearing a swastika, and joined a social media campaign to protest the Elle article.

Murder charges

In April 2015 Zaverukha was arrested on charges of participating in an armed robbery at a gas station that had taken place on 4 May 2015 in Kyiv. Reportedly, the police had chased the car carrying a group of robbers from a petrol station. A shootout ensued, two policemen were killed and three wounded, one robber died, and two escaped but were arrested some time later. One of the alleged robbers confessed on camera that Zaverukha had participated in the robbery. According to investigators, the group was preparing a terrorist attack in Kyiv. Following the arrest, Zaverukha and the other suspects in custody claimed that they were subjected to torture. Since the victims belonged to a police special force Berkut that had been responsible for violence against Automaidan in January 2014, and the alleged perpetrators were far-right activists and former volunteers of Aidar, their supporters regarded them not as criminals, but as avengers of the people, and believed that the robbery at the gas station was a police set-up. In September 2015, the website of the far-right group Tryzub reported that Zaverukha had been awarded the medal "For sacrifice and love for Ukraine" by the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate Filaret. The information was confirmed by Zaverukha's lawyer but not by the Kyiv Patriarchate.

Court hearings in her case were repeatedly postponed, picketed and disrupted, and in November 2016 a people's deputy from People's Front, handcuffed himself to Zaverukha during a courtroom hearing and warned that any attempt to remove the wrist bracelets would have been regarded as an attack on the deputy's immunity. In January 2017 Zaverukha was released on bail (1.6 million Ukrainian hryvnia paid by Oleksiy Tamrazov bail of 1.6 million hryvnias was paid for Zaverukha. In February she and her partner Oles Chernyak said they were beaten by members of S14| & C14, which had supported the campaign for their release. a suspect in the murder of law enforcement officers, stated that she was beaten by "C14".

Zaverukha paying a visit to locals in 2014. The text below the video reads (autom. translation): "The masked "Aidarovtsy" led by activist Vita Zaverukha stormed the office of a Russian firm in Vinnitsa, but were firmly repulsed by the employees."

Later activities

In July 2017 Zaverukha and her partner were involved in an attack on transgender activists in Kyiv.

In 2020, a human rights report by the US State Department stated that Vita Zaverukha and other activists of the Unknown Patriot group were among the suspects in an attack on participants of the 8 March women's rights rally.

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