Moscow prosecutors refuse to charge Ukrainian Literature Library director

The Moscow prosecutor’s office has declined to press official charges against the Ukrainian Literature Library’s director, Natalya Sharina, who was detained in October 2015 on allegations of extremism and embezzlement.

According to Ms Sharina’s lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, the prosecutor’s office has returned the case to investigators, but omitted to give a reason for this decision.

The library director was originally charged with extremism on the basis that the libary allegedly housed books by Ukrainian ultranationalist author Dmytro Korchynskiy, whose works are banned within Russia. She was then placed under house arrest.

In April this year, investigators accused Ms Sharina of additional offences, charging her with misusing library funds, because she had supposedly spent library funds to pay for her legal defence in another extremism case brought against her in 2013.

Mr Pavlov claims that these new charges were added after investigators recognised that their initial case against his client was too weak. Ms Sharina has rejected all allegations against her, citing political motivations as their cause.

Source: Radio Liberty