In Spain, near Barcelona, in Roda de Berà (Tarragona), unknown individuals threw Molotov cocktails at the villa of propagandist Anatoly Shariy.
The incident occurred on the night of October 24, resulting in a fire breaking out at the villa. Two rescue crews were dispatched to the scene, but the fire was extinguished with a fire extinguisher. There were no significant damages or casualties. The blogger himself described the incident as an act of terrorism.
Anatoly Shariy quickly gained a controversial reputation starting from the early 2000s. He was born in Kyiv. Narrating about his life in an interview, Anatoly Shariy boasted of engaging in fraud from the age of 16, leading to multiple arrests by law enforcement. At 17, he befriended "adult" individuals involved in swindling Kyiv businessmen (during this time, Shariy also developed a gambling addiction and suffered from it for over 10 years).
After another failure, Shariy remembered his passion for journalism and began writing articles. Starting from 2012, through social media, online media, and Russian television channels, he collaborated with state and non-governmental structures of the Russian Federation to conduct special information operations against Ukraine.
His journalism career took a significant hit in 2012 when he became involved in two criminal cases. The first was for shooting a non-lethal weapon at a McDonald's, injuring a man with whom he had a conflict. The second was for an alleged staging of an assassination attempt, where his car was shot at and the incident made headlines in all media. To evade justice, Shariy decided to leave Ukraine.
Fleeing from a criminal, not political persecution, and not being a political refugee or Ukrainian dissident, Shariy first fled to Russia, where he became an accomplice of Russian state and non-governmental structures, and then moved to Lithuania, where he obtained political asylum (in 2021, Lithuania revoked his refugee status and declared him persona non grata). In particular, the Lithuanian Department of State Security claimed that Shariy had direct contacts with the administration of Putin.
Abroad, Shariy became a paid Russian propagandist promoting standard Kremlin narratives, masquerading them under a supposedly "objective" viewpoint. In his videos, he resorts to blatant disinformation and attempts to sow discord among Ukrainians. On his YouTube channel, full of manipulations and disinformation, he spreads anti-Ukrainian stories. At the behest of Russian intelligence services, he participated in the preparation and dissemination of staged videos where Russians interrogate Ukrainian prisoners. From abroad, he organizes pro-Russian PR campaigns.
In 2021, the Security Service of Ukraine brought charges against Shariy for state treason for engaging in illegal activities detrimental to Ukraine's national security in the information sphere. There is every reason to believe that the propagandist acted on the orders of Russian structures. In 2022, it became known that Ukraine had initiated the extradition procedure for Shariy from Spain. The Spanish law enforcement authorities detained Shariy, but the court released him on the condition that he would not leave the country.
In July 2023, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced that Anatoly Shariy would be tried for state treason as he was working for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
Russia has always spread its propaganda through social media, television, and so on, using unscrupulous individuals who present something written by someone else as their own "investigations." The pro-Russian blogger-provocateur and manipulator Anatoly Shariy meets all the criteria for such work and is now an official traitor to Ukraine. Every traitor to Ukraine will sooner or later receive the deserved punishment, it is inevitable.
Comments