An obscure group of anarchists has claimed responsibility for torching a police office, a luxury-car showroom, an upscale cottage and a bulldozer in Moscow and the surrounding region in the past two weeks.
The Earth Liberation Front carried out the attacks between June 19 and 23, the group said on its blog. The earliest entries in the blog, which includes videos and photos of attacks, indicates that the group has carried out similar attacks since at least May 2010.
Police spokeswoman Yelena Alexeyeva said by telephone that investigators have been reviewing the web site’s claims and found some to be true but others false.
The check of the reports is ongoing and the criminals will be punished, Alexeyeva said, refusing to elaborate further.
The top entry on the blog features a video of a bulldozer on fire. The blog says the vehicle was set on fire in the centuries-old Khimki forest on June 19 to support local residents and environmentalists in their protest against deforestation for the construction of the $8 billion Moscow-St. Petersburg highway.
Next, the blog says, the group bombed a Lexus/Toyota dealership on Rublyovskoye Shosse on June 21, destroying four cars, including three Lexus SUVs. The blog did not give a reason for the attack.
Also on June 21, late at night, the group said it burned a sample cottage at the site of a planned elite community, Edelweiss-Ilyinskoye, in the Dmitrov district north of Moscow in support of local residents who oppose the project.
On June 23, the blog said, activists attacked a police station on Kantemirovskaya Ulitsa in southern Moscow, breaking its windows and throwing several bottles with a flammable substance inside. The attack was carried out as a “sign of solidarity” with Nizhny Novgorod anti-fascists suspected of extremism in criminal cases that the group calls “fabricated.”