The leader of the Russian Group Voina Oleg Vorotnikov aka Vor of Voina (Thief of War) is hiding in the Styrian forests. Archival photo, September 2018

10 May, 2019 03:02

The scandalous political artist Oleg Vorotnikov, founder of the Russian art group Voina, known for its brazen provocations and brushes with the law, has been charged by the Austrian police with creating and running a militant anti-fascist group and arms trafficking.
In a statement on its website, Voina said that Austria has issued an international warrant for Vorotnikov’s arrest, who the police believe might be hiding from prosecution in one of the EU member states.

Citing a final version of the indictment, the group said that Vorotnikov has been charged with involvement in the creation and leadership of a militant group called “Der Krieg” (“The War” or “Voina” in Russian).

The group’s activity, according to the reported indictment, is aimed at inciting murder and violence, causing serious material damage to governmental property, military infrastructure, culture monuments and sites of religious worship as well as inflicting serious bodily harm on officials on duty and perpetrating a range of other offences.

Vorotnikov is also charged with arms trafficking on the territory of Austria. In a previous indictment filed in January, Vorotnikov was charged with weapons smuggling. However, that charge was dropped after all melee weapons and firearms seized from Vorotnikov at the time were found to be of Austrian origin.

In addition to that, Vorotnikov has been accused of dodging investigative procedures and resisting legal proceedings in his case. He faces five years in prison if found guilty of all charges.

It is far from the first time the Russian-born art provocateur has run into legal troubles. Since 2011 he has been wanted in Russia on charges of violence against and insult of law enforcement officials. After Vorotnikov together with his wife Natalia Sokol and their children fled Russia to Europe in 2012, he lived in several European countries. Since March last year he is reported to have been residing in Austria.

In September last year, Vorotnikov was briefly detained by the Czech authorities on the Russia-issued Interpol warrant.

His wife and fellow member of ‘Voina,’ Sokol, and their three children are currently in a jail in the Austrian city of Graz. Sokol was taken into custody in September as Vorotnikov’s alleged co-conspirator in establishing Der Krieg and illegal arms trafficking.

The group came to prominence in Russia in 2010 following the “Dick captured by the FSB” stunt, when the activists painted a giant phallus on the drawbridge near the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Source — https://www.rt.com/russia/458952-voina-vorotnikov-arrest-warrant/

Vor of Voina is hiding in the forests of Styria

The new accusations against the leader of the Voina art group Oleg Vorotnikov who has been charged with illegal weapons possession and trafficking in Austria were added: the establishing  and leadership of the underground anti-fascist movement Woina (Der Krieg), a combat group created to prevent the revival of fascism in the Republic of Austria.

«The organization, in addition to artists, may include members of one of the Caucasian organized crime gangs operating in Austria, as well as persons who stay in the country illegally», —

Vorotnikov’s lawyers in Vienna confirmed the information at the meeting that took place on Sunday evening, September 23, in the presence of a spokesman for the Catholic Church in the Austrian federal state of Styria (Steiermark), concerned with the situation around the art collective.

Vor and his Voina Family in the Styrian mountains (NTV footage)

The Austrian Police issued an arrest warrant for the Voina leader Oleg Vorotnikov (Vor of Voina) accusing him in a criminal possession of a weapon and arms trafficking.

Lech Szporer from Tactical Aesthetics (NY) asks the German Human Rights organizations to find Oleg Vorotnikov (Vor of Voina) who disappeared after the police attack on Voina in Berlin January 27

The last joint Voina Family photo. Berlin, January 2018

Missing Friend and Father - Possibly Being Detained and Deported

I am a human rights filmmaker seeking information on a friend of mine who was arrested in Berlin on January 27th near Eberswalde Straße.

His name is Oleg Vorotnikov.

He does not have documents. He is a well known artist from the art group Voina who fled Russia with his family to avoid persecution and has been seeking asylum in Europe.

He, his wife, and 3 kids were staying at an apartment in Berlin that got raided by police last month. The wife and kids fled but he was arrested.

His wife and I have not been able to find information about him since the arrest and she is too scared to go to the police because she also does not have documents and is afraid for her children.

I was in Berlin a couple months ago with the family because we are producing a film about them for Vice. But after the arrest, we have not been able locate Oleg and are concerned for his safety. If he were deported to Russia he will be treated harshly.

If someone could help me locate Oleg Vorotnikov I would greatly appreciate it.

I am currently in the US and not familiar with the German legal system. We will be publishing an article later next week and possibly sending aid as soon as we get a little more information on his situation.

Is there a way that someone can make a call and find out if he is being held in jail, on what charges, or if he will be deported or extradited to Russia? Or if someone can inform me of another organization or legal service that can help?

Sincerely,
Lech Szporer


Lech Szporer’s letter to the Initiative Against Deportation Detention and the Center for Refugees and Migrants in Berlin

Lech Szporer from Tactical Aesthetics (NY) on the current situation with Voina in Berlin

Natalya Sokol (Koza of Voina) and her three kids  — 8-yo Kasper, 6 yo Mama and 2-yo Troitsa — stay on boats at the Rummelsburg Bay in Berlin, February 2018

Not sure if you heard from Koza but Oleg Vorotnikov (Vor of Voina) got arrested and Koza doesn’t know where he is, what he’s being charged with, or if there’s a trial.

It had something to do with the fact that they brought a Christmas tree into an apartment but the neighbor called the police and fire department so they were forced to leave. Not sure why Oleg was arrested?

Now Koza is alone and pregnant with the three kids sleeping on the boats again, which is crazy during these winter months because the walls are uninsulated and mainly made of canvas flaps.

This is just too much for one of the most important female artists of our generation to handle alone at this point.

But I am also super concerned about what happened to Oleg because were he to be extradited to Russia he will disappear and will not be treated well at all.

Where is he being held? On what charges?

Lech Szporer

The leaders of the Voina art group Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalya Sokol tell about the organizers of the kidnapping of the Voina children in Basel and explain where the Voina art archives robbed by the ‘Wasserstrasse’ extremists are now. The interview to the ‘Die Wochenzeitung’ magazine in Zurich

Merièm Strupler:
— I read and heard in different interviews that you wanted to seek for asylum in Switzerland. In other Interviews i heard that you never wanted to seek for asylum in Switzerland. What is true now?

VOINA:
— We never planned to ask for the political asylum in Switzerland since it would limit our political activity in future. Natalya Sokol said it clearly in the interview for WATSON at the press-conference at ‘Cabaret Voltaire’ April 28, 2015: ‘Weil der Asylstatus mich in meinen politischen Aktivitäten einschränken würde, möchte ich in erster Linie in der Schweiz eine Aufenthaltsbewilligung beantragensaid’.

The disinformation that we came to Switzerland to ask for asylum was made and spread by self-proclaimed human right activist Sonia Bischoff. On behalf of ‘Cabaret Voltaire’ Bischoff fraudly presented herself as a swiss art curator of the Voina group and even as a personal curator of Natalya Sokol in media and social nets. Bischoff also started the fake 'Project of Voina in Switzerland’.

After we discovered this fraud we contacted Adrian Notz, the director of ‘Cabaret Voltaire’, and asked him to stop the fraudster: 'There’s no 'PROJECT Voina’ and therefore there’s no curators / 'co-curators’ of it’.

The goal of Bischoff was to get the copyright to the Voina works and to get rid of us after the asylum request since we would be sent for a couple of years to the underground refugee camp which is a private prison in Aesch in Basel-Land.

She started to be aggressive after we refused to introduce her to Pussy Riot member at the lecture in Zurich.

In the interview to the Russian TV-channel REN Bischoff talked about her involvement into the organizing of the attack on our Family. She asked the journalists to hide her face 'in fears of revenge from Russian actionists’.

So in the end, after the attack and kidnapping of kids, we were transported to this underground camp in Aesch and Bischoff got the Voina archives on our macbooks and hard drives robbed by the attackers for her.

— Before you came to Western Europe, you did in Russia spectacular actions against the Putin regime. But in an interview you published on youtube (04.12.2016) you say that you are pro Putin now. Why did you change your political ideas so much?

— Our actions are anti-authoritarian but not anti-Putin. Notice that we did the most actions in between 2008—2012 when Putin was not in power. It is very sad that people in Europe don’t understand this and are not able to accept this fact. When we are in Russia we fight against Russian circumstances but when we are in Europe we are still free to strugle against European authoritarian tendences too. It is clear for us that Europe turns its ass back to fascism, again. It may lead to the new catastrophe in next 10 years. And our swiss case is a bright exapmle of it. People, called themselves left-wing human right fighters for refugees and against repression, made pogroms and attack the families at their houses. The attack on us was not their first attack on family with kids. They did completely the same with another family of Roma people a year before.

The attackers started to hunt us months before the crime. They threw out our baby buggies, they came up to the attick and stole toys, food, clothers. When we realized this we started to lock the door. All the time we carried laptops and hard dirves with us so they couldn’t steal them before.

This is true that the kidnappers used 'Putin’ as a reason to attack us. Later they tried to present the crime as some 'domestic incident’ in media. But in court they mentioned Puin as a reason again.

Now it is clear that 'domestic conflict’ was fake reason. From the fist days at Wasserstrasse we were very surprised to find ourselves in the community of shoplifters and drug addicted psychopaths. See the poster on the door to the appartment of one of the organizers of the attack Almut Rembges 'Shoplifters of the world unite!’

The kidnappers are also accused of stealing, destroing the state property, attack on the authorities and the police. You can find this in the Indictment.

— Why did you install the camera in the attic of Wasserstrasse 21? For how long time did you install the camera in the attic?

— We always film our kids for 2-3 hours a day. And we always carry cameras with us. We do it first for the artistic reasons and second for the security reasons. Since Oleg Vorotnikov spent 6 years in Interpol Red list and Russian secret services still look for him we acquired this habbit as a kind of a protection for us and kids. The attackers knew about this so they were trying to search cameras after they kidnapped kids but they were too stupid to find the video recorder on the wall. That’s how it is described in the Indictment — Der Familie sollte gemäss dem gemeinsamen Tatplan alle Computer, Laptops und allfällige Kameras weggenommen werden, um allfällige Aufzeichnungen des Angriffs aus der Welt zu schaffen und um sich mit den Geräten unrechtmässig zu bereichern.

— In a video, which shows how you take back the UBS-Stick (with the video of 20th March 2016 on) from your own lawyer, Oleg Vorotnikov says «We take our art back!». Would you consider the video of Wasserstrasse, 20th March 2016, as art?

— Oleg didn’t say this. He said: “Суки швейцарские! Хотели отнять у меня искусство мое современное! Не выйдет!..”

After the police arrived to the crime scene and confiscated the video of the attack from Natalya Sokol by force, the Procesecutor Office kept the video secret. We wasted a year and half trying to return the video recorder with the files on it back. But Camilo Cabrera, the Basel city prosecutor, refused to give our stuff back in an unacceptable form. He issued several prohibitive decisions which just despise the Right as It is. We published them all.

We tried our best to explain him that we have not only the record of the attack but much more files on the recorder and they belong to us and they are art pieces but he didn’t even want to listen. After we realized that the Procsecutor Office will never give us our files back not in any form, we created a scenario as we normally do when prepare a new Voina action and performed it at Markthalle in Basel October 30, 2017.

— Did you send the video of Wasserstrasse, 20th March 2016, to different Swiss medias? And why?

— We wanted to attract the media and public attention to the violent and sadistic crime made by an armed group of extremists against three small kids and thier parents and also to our statement to the Basel court that was refused to be pronounced. We were shocked to see that no one cares, no one answered us and the swiis media still support the kidnappers.

We are literally in the streets in Berlin now, without any help, we sleep on a boat with no electricity, heating, water, WC and are slowly getting frozen. This situation around us was built by the Wasserstrasse kidnappers. Within all this time past from the crime — more then a year and a half — the  perpetrators were free, not detained and were able to spread defamation about Voina. Just after the crime they started to spread their 'warning’ about the Voina Family among the lawyers, art curators, politicians, leftists, activists and people from housing projects all over Europe. In this 'warning’ they ask everybody not to help or support us, not to host and not to provide us any legal aid. The 'warning’ was also published on the German Indimedia site before the authorities closed it on charges of extremism in August this year. It is still avaliable in Internet.

In the end they managed to destroy our reputation in Switzerland and all over Europe with this 'warning’ or the publications like in Basel Tageswoche.

First, the Tageswoche article was written by their close friend Matthias Oppliger, a guy who just lives next door to them at Wasserstrasse, 19. Second, this publication is very much propagandistic as you can see — the journalist gives our names but he does not give any name of the attackers, he gives only the arguments of the anonimous figures. In the end he adds this:

“Die Version von Woina klingt haarsträubend und unglaublich. Worotnikow, Sokol und ihre drei Kinder seien von den Bewohnern der Wasserstrasse mit Gewalt vertrieben worden, weil diese sie loswerden wollten. Insbesondere an den Kindern hätte man sich dort gestört. Weshalb ausgerechnet die linksalternativen Bewohner der Wasserstrasse, die sich unter anderem für Flüchtlinge und Sans-Papiers einsetzen, gegenüber einer Familie mit drei kleinen Kindern gewalttätig werden sollen, kann Sokol nicht erklären. Von den Attacken würden jedoch Bilder existieren und Videos, insistieren Sokol und ihr Begleiter Grey.”

But now we have the video of the attack and kidnapping!

Third and the most important one is that the prosecutor Cabrera built his Indictment based on this Tageswoche publication only! Because the perpetrators refuced to answer questions at the official questionings, refuced to collaborate with the detectives from the Criminal police and didn’t say a word. So the prosecutor coudn’t take the info about our 'bad behavior’ from the perpetrators but only from the Tageswoche publication.

Which is of course not that good for the Prosecutor Office. It is not professional.

— Former supporters of your family say, there was a similar incidence as in Basel happening before in Italy and Oleg Vorotnikov would have attacked some squatters with an axe. Former supporters say the situation escalated, because you refused to move out after several deadlines, similar to the happenings in Wasserstrasse. Why didn’t you move out before?

— We don’t know who you mean by ‘former supporters’ since we never have supporters in Europe. The Italian case is very clear: our two kids — 5 yo boy Kasper and 2 yo girl Mama were kidnapped by the local gang and locked in the palazzo at Santa Marta in Venice July 27, 2014. We, the parents, were attacked by 20 armed bandits when we tried to release kids. We were very lucky to survive after the attack. Oleg was transported to the Ospedale the Venetian hospital, for the operation on his head. He was arrested by the Interpol officers in the hospital. You can find Natalya Sokol’s story about that crime in The Russian Pravda.

Oleg Vorotnikov in the Venetian Ospedale after the attack of armed gang. July 27, 2014, Venice

While Bischoff was preparing the attack in Basel she got in contact with the Italian gang. She admited this in her letter to Natalya Sokol March 22, 2016, two days after the Basel attack.

After the consultation with the Italian kidnappers Bischoff decided to choose the same scheme of the crime: to kidnap children.

— On a facebook post, a day before the process started, Miss Sokol writes that Miss Sonia Bischoff and the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland was involved in the eviction in Wasserstrasse. Where do you have this information from? And why would the co-ruling Social Democratic Party of Switzerland do something like this?

— We talked to some experts from Switzerland and abroad and they confirmed our suspitions. The attackers and the 'Wasserstrasse’ project got a political lobby. The same experts say that the Basel city prosecutor Cabrera supports the kidnappers, it is clear from the Indictment and his decisions. It is also very worrisome that the court believed in our ‘bad behavior’ with no proofs of it. In Russia we call this corruption.

— In the post from 4.8.2017 on your twitter-account you public some documents of the Swiss prosecutor. He writes in these documents that there will be a court case against people from Wasserstrasse. But you write above the documents, that Switzerland opens a court case against you. Why did you publish on Twitter this wrong informations?

— It was not wrong. After the Indictment was published on the Photo.Yandex Voina account the swiss journalist Andreas Maurer wrote a short article based on the info from the Indictment.

The next day the lawyers who did not answer our letters for months started to flood us with letters asking to delete all the info about the kidnappers from the Internet. They informed us that in case we wouldn’t do it the prosecutor will satisfy a criminal charge against us. Then they sent us the letter with confirmation of it.

In a phone conversation they confirmed the criminal case against us. Voina published this info on Twitter and shared the Indictment against the kidnappers because the publication of this document was the reason for the criminal charge against us.

Merièm Strupler

Russian art group Voina published the video documentation of the violent crime against the leaders of Voina, Oleg Vorotnikov (Vor) and Natalya Sokol (Koza), and their kids in Basel, Switzerland

The video shows an armed attack on the family of Vorotnikov and Sokol and the kidnapping of their three small kids — 6 year old boy Kasper, 4 year old girl Mama, and 10 month old girl Troitsa — by an armed group of the ‘Wasserstrasse’ organization, self-proclaimed Swiss human right activists —

Natalya Sokol and her children Kasper, Mama and Troitsa were violently kidnapped by a group of 10-15 so-called Swiss human right activists at Wasserstrasse, 21 in Basel, Switzerland on March 20, 2016. The kidnappers in motorcycle helmets, armed with wooden sticks and shields, broke down the door to the Voina Family apartment and attacked the parents and their kids with tear gas. After several minutes of Oleg Vorotnikov, father of the kids, pleading with the mob to not use violence, some five people overcome him, beat him up, and tie him up with duct tape, leaving him incapacitated, after which another group abduct Natalya and the three kids. At that time kids were taking bath so perpetrators kidnapped them naked.

The attackers also robbed the Voina Family, taking their laptops, children’s ipads, and the harddrives with Voina’s artistic archives and the scientific research archive of Natalya Sokol, who has a PhD in Mathematics and Physics, and is a specialist in Molecular Physics.

None of the attackers were arrested by the police, and to this day, none of them have been held accountable.

Oleg Vorotnikov says:

‘My wife and kids were kidnapped by the Swiss human right activists. They attacked us at our apartment at Wasserstrasse, 21 in Basel. They wanted to detain and escort us as illegals to the refugee camp, which is a private underground prison in the Aesch village of the Basel-Land canton. People living there live in conditions worse than in Russian prison; people live in underground storage rooms without windows and they are forced to stay there for two years and longer. The attack and kidnapping was organized by Sonia Bischoff, a human right activist from Zurich who works for the Swiss art institution ‘Cabaret Voltaire’. After we were officially invited to ‘Cabaret Voltaire’ by its director, Adrian Notz, to take part in celebration of the 100th years anniversary of Dada, Bischoff started to spread among Swiss journalists disinformation that Voina came to Switzerland to ask for a political asylum. She also became famous at the local stage by fraudulently presenting herself as a Voina art curator in the Swiss media against our will. But after we declared that we didn’t plan to ask for asylum at the press conference at the ‘Cabaret Voltaire’ on April 28, 2015, Bischoff insisted, as an ultimatum, that we provide her with the copyright to all the Voina works. In case we’d say ‘no’, Bischoff threatened us, saying she would inform the police to arrest me because at the time I was on the Interpol Red Notice list, due to Voina’s art actions in Russia years ago, and she knew this. But we said ’no’ to Bischoff and stopped partnership with ‘Cabaret Voltaire’. After this, Bischoff began a campaign to damage Voina’s reputation in the Swiss press. She also organized the censorship of Voina’s videos by coordinating a flood of complaints to Voina’s YouTube channel and to various videos of Voina actions at different hostings, achieving in the deletion of videos by YouTube. Later she tracked us down in Basel and organized an armed attack together with Basel human right activists from the ‘Wasserstrasse’ organization, a project of the Social Democrat Party of Switzerland. Assisted by the ‘Wasserstrasse’ organization, she created and prepared the plan for the attack on our Family and the kidnapping of Our Kids. All this time, Bischoff continued to blackmail us by email’.

The video of the crime was confiscated by the police when they arrived to the crime scene, and kept secret, according to the several Basel city prosecutor Camillo Cabrera’s decisions, which are made available here.

CONFLICT ESCALATES

by Andreas Maurer —Schweiz am Wochenende
9.7.2017 at 5:00 a.m.

Natalya Sokol shows her injuries

A conflict at a squat house has escalated: Basler autonomists forced out a refugee family, in the process pepper spraying young children

The houses on Wasserstrasse in Basel make up a hub of the left-wing extremist scene in Switzerland. What began as squatting is now considered temporary use. However peace has not been achieved.

The Basler public prosecutor’s office has brought charges against ten occupants. They are between the ages of 28 and 61. One 30-year-old is accused of having participated in riots in Basel and Zurich. Like two others, she holds a criminal record.

The prosecution’s primary accusation: The ten defendants are said to have committed an abduction. The indictment obtained by “Schweiz am Wochenende” indicates that anarchy overwhelmed the occupants, culminating in violence.

Escalation occurred because the inhabitants at Wasserstrasse began hosting a Russian refugee family. It wasn’t just any family. Back in Russia the parents became enemies of the state: Natalya Sokol (37) and Oleg Vorotnikov (38). They belonged to an artistic movement which, after feuding, split into two groups. The punk band Pussy Riot originated from one of the groups. The couple, who were later stranded with their children in Basel, were not quite so famous in their art activities, but still managed to get their names on the Interpol wanted list. Their artistic name became Agenda: “Voina”- War.

A Penis for the Security Agency

The group staged a sex performance in Moscow in protest against the Russian president. They painted a 65 by 27 meter long penis on a bridge in front of the security agency’s headquarters. Before going underground, they burned a police vehicle. The family escaped to Switzerland via Italy. At a performance in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, they appealed to Switzerland for support. The Russian anarchists’ plea was heeded by the Basler Autonomists. They offered the family shelter in the belief that after a few days they would move on to an asylum centre. Yet the family showed no interest in the asylum process and stayed on in the flat on Wasserstrasse.

Conflict arose because the artist couple practiced a form of anarchy which, for the Baslers, crossed the line. From their side, the Russians considered the Baslers to be conformists. An email to the family from a head of the Wasserstrasse squat society spotlights the conflict: “You destroy the community of our house. I brought you here in the expectation of hosting intelligent people who could follow the most minimal rules of decency. But obviously you do not even know not to shit where you eat.”

The Russian couple drove the Wasserstrasse squat to absurdity simply through their occupation of it. A squat within a squat. The inhabitants, who formerly defended themselves against police eviction, themselves threatened the family several times with eviction from the flat. As it would go against the Autonomists’ principles to involve police in their internal dispute, after a year they themselves took action. The prosecution has evidence of this: video recordings taken with a hidden camera the couple had installed.

There could have been fatalities

According to the prosecutor’s office, images taken show the following: The people of Wasserstrasse stormed the flat in a coordinated action. They were armed with pepper spray and wooden planks, shields, motorcycle helmets and duct tape. They pepper sprayed the apartment and beat up the father. One fat resident sat on him and tied him up. This could have caused the victim to suffocate, states the prosecutor. The mother was dragged out of the flat by her hair. She documented her injuries on her blog (photo). The three children ages ten months, four and six years were screaming in panic. They were naked because at the time of the attack they were sitting in the bathtub. Each of them was also dragged out of the flat. The emergency physician noted a number of abrasions. According to the prosecution, it was lucky that nothing worse occurred. The lungs of small children are particularly sensitive to pepper spray. Upon being banished from the Basler anarchist scene, the family fled to Germany. Their current whereabouts is unknown.

Original: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/panorama/vermischtes/hausbesetzer-wegen-kidnapping-angeklagt-es-haette-tote-geben-koennen-131505726

A talk between the leader of Voina Oleg Vorotnikov and the Czech Minister of Justice Robert Pelican on the sidelines of the ‘Dignity for Lety’ Commemoration

— You did this Dick in front of FSB
— It was one of the actions.
— Aha! And why should I send you back? No!
— Anyway it’ll be your choice, as a minister.
— Yes, it will be my choice. And I’m quite sure about this.  Don’t worry. As I said I’m sure I will do and it was clear that I will not let you go to Russia. You had interviews saying that ‘Well, this is horrable here, and Mr. Putin is great’…
— So you read all these interviews.
— Yeah…
— You have time to do this. To read interviews. You are pretty young. Actually you’re younger then me.
— It’s possible… And what about your artistic… Are you doing something?
— We plan. The problem is that we do collective art. It’s not that easy to find people… People are very individual here, every person is in their own cage. It’s like in prison.

A PRESS RELEASE BY JAN ČULIK, A CHIEF EDITOR OF ‘BRITSKÉ LISTY’

Mama of Vona in the hospital after a road crash, May 21, 2017, Prague

The Czech Republic reluctantly accepted the couple of Russian performers/provocateurs Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol from the Voina group last year. These are the ones who drew a huge penis on one of the bridges in St Petersburg that open in the night for ships to allow to pass.

Vorotnikov and Sokol have been charged in Russia for “insulting Russian police” and as a result, they are sought by Interpol.

In the Czech Republic, the Czech performer and provocateur Milan Kohout persuaded Karel Schwarzenberg to put them up at his Orlík castle. He did this for a time before he turfed them out.

As Kohout says, these two people are anarchists and international nomads who do not recognise any authority. They have three small children.

The Czech police has issued an arrest warrant for Vorotnikov because he has now failed to fulfil his promise that he will regularly report to the police for interviews. Nevertheless, the Czech Justice Minister has said that it is highly unlikely that the Voina couple would be deported to Russia.

NOW THE POINT:

Vorotnikov’s five year old daughter was knocked down by a car in the centre of Prague, May 21, 2017. She was thrown through the air for two metres and doctors told the parents that her kidneys have been damaged and that she needs a medical investigation of the state of her kidneys. However the children do not have any medical insurance. Natalia Sokol has explained on YouTube that she has been trying to persuade the Czech authorities since last September to give her children a legal status, so that they could get medical insurance. While, she says, they as parents have a semi-legal status in the Czech Republic the children have none.

So the Motol hospital just gave the injured girl some basic treatment and refused to carry out the investigation of her kidneys. The doctors demanded 2000 euros for this. The girl has been turfed out from the hospital and is at home.

The driver of the car (the parents have a picture of the number place of his car) has not been charged. But apparently, the Czech police has now charged the mother of the five year old children for “causing the accident” and, Vorotnikov says, want to arrest her since 2nd June.

While the Voina group caused a lot of media attention when they originally came to the Czech Republic as anti-Putin activists, the case of the girl being refused treatment in a Prague hospital has not been reported at all. Only on Britské listy.

It is perhaps interesting that the parents were actually forced to leave the hospital while the child was lying there although it says on its own website that parents are entitled to accompany a patient who is a minor at all times. A doctor from the hospital communicated with me on Facebook saying that “in no country of the world are parents allowed to accompany their children in hospital, it is not a hotel”. She also said that according to clinical judgment no investigation of the kidneys is necessary and that the “parents have been uncooperative”. However, the parents say that doctors told them that the girl needs an investigation of her kidneys.

NOW: I have not been able to get almost any information from the other side. Maybe the parents have somehow behaved antisocially, who knows, although this does not follow from the published videos (link 1, link 2). I wrote to the press officer of the Motol hospital requesting an explanation, no reaction.

Vorotnikov is now saying that they are “in danger” in the Czech Republic and they need to evacuate. They have no one to help.

Britské listy articles about this:

https://blisty.cz/art/86961.html

On 30 May 2017 at 09:21