Member of Ukraine’s Azov volunteer battalion detained in Crimea — prosecutor

A member of the nationalist Azov battalion, a paramilitary group making part of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s National Guard that took part in the armed conflict in Ukraine’s southeast, has been detained in Crimea, Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya said Friday.

Poklonskaya said the young man is suspected of involvement in arson of a mosque in the city of Simferopol and attempt to carry out a terrorist act near the republic’s prosecutor’s office.
“The suspect has been detained and the measure of restraint in the form of taking into custody has been imposed on him,” she said.

Poklonskaya added that solution of a number of high-profile crimes of terrorist and extremist nature earlier committed on the peninsula was the result of a focused effort of the prosecutor’s office, operative units of the Russian Interior Ministry’s anti-extremism center and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Department in Crimea.