That’s Dnepropetrovsk mayor Boris Filatov, close Kolomoisky acolyte and Maidan hardliner:

First you go to meetings for the Russian world. Then you flee Dnepropetrovsk to Kramatorsk. Then you return, and free form the police. Then you flee to Crimea, and your “Russian brothers deport you to Ukraine (!!!). … Remember the famous separatist [Marina] Menshikova? The one that hit an ATO fighter with a hammer in the theater. Today she hanged herself in a Dnepropetrovsk detention facility. “Russia will betray you, son. Always.”

Well, he’s not wrong. This pretty much summarizes the whole affair, with these two comments [1, 2] filling in the rest of the details.

There are serious questions over whether she actually did commit suicide, or was “helped” with it – she apparently shared her cell with two other women. Incidentally, Filatov is perhaps most famous for his 2014 suggestions on how to deal with the Crimean separatists: “We need to give the bastards all sorts of promises, guarantees, and concessions… And then hang them.”

A further piquant detail is that the judge who ordered her deportation, Sergey Krasikov, is apparently related to the prosecutor in charge of her case in Dnepropetrovsk. Crimean channels and discussion forums have noted that the same judges who pronounced sentences for “anti-Ukrainian activities” before 2014 continue to serve under the Russian Federation – a sort of Ukrainian “deep state in miniature.”

Thing is, these problems didn’t appear today. Every month if not week, there are stories of some Donbass veteran or anti-Maidan activist getting put into deportation proceedings to an assured prison sentence, if not death, in the Ukraine. My impression is that most of these cases get dismissed, thanks to pressure from patriotic and nationalist civic groups (liberal HR organizations obviously don’t concern themselves with such unhandshakeworthy cases), but inevitably, this slapdash defense system fails now and then, and another sacrificial victim is sent on his or her merry way to Kiev by the soulless Russian bureaucratic machine.

What needs to be done – what would have been done long ago in any normal, national state – is obvious. There should have been a ban on deportations to the Ukraine – if not a blanket one, then at least for trivial immigration violations. There should have been a drastically simplified and accelerated citizenship process for Ukrainian and Belorussian citizens. There should have been a serious lustration of Ukraine loyalists, and judges and bureaucrats who abused the free speech and human rights of Russians under the old regime.

It is equally obvious that none of this was done nor will be done, because the Russian Federation is not for Russians.

Who is it for? Well, as one Sergey Belous caustically noted, here’s a headline from exactly a year ago: “Russia to allow re-entry to 200,000 Tajiks previously barred for immigration violations.”

In the meantime, there has been no official Russian reaction. The judge who deported Menshikova remains in his position. The usual pro-Kremlin blowhards claim that it was an operation to “discredit Russia and its President” (as if they don’t do that splendidly on their own). As one of my Twitter followers noted, “and after this, we wonder why no-one in the Ukraine wants to rise up against the Maidan regime… Look at how America cares more for the denizens of some Eastern Ghouta.” Considering the “rewards” the Russian Federation regularly deals out to its own supporters – and the excuses for this behavior generated by Putin’s pseudo-patriotic plankton – the apathy is quite understandable.

Perhaps the one consolation is that the UkSSR doesn’t seem to treat its Russian vyshyvanka larpers any better.

A couple of years ago, the journal Sputnik & Pogrom had a comprehensive article on the unenviable fate of Russian traitors in the Ukraine. Representative quote from the Russian Neo-Nazi Alexander Valov, who fought in Azov:

“We are no longer needed. The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. And [to them] we are not even Moors, but moskals, katsaps, and Russian scum… Now they are doing everything they can to avoid legalizing us in the Ukraine.

Pro-Ukrainian Russian activists were viewed as potential fifth columnists. Volunteers had trouble getting residency, not to mention citizenship. Some were deported to a cosy Russian jail.

Two years on, and nothing has changed.

Although its easy to laugh at vatniks/svidomy getting their just desserts [cross out as per your ideological affiliation], the reality is that neither pro-Russians nor pro-Ukrainians have any particular cause to engage in Schadenfreude. Not when both live under neo-feudal regimes that care naught for, and indeed have a mutual interest in suppressing, any genuine expression of civic initiative and political idealism.