For only the fourth time since the break up of the Soviet Union, a Ukrainian court handed down a conviction on hate crimes charges. This latest sentence is the third in two months (the first took place four years ago), perhaps showing that the criminal justice system is finally taking the problem of neo-Nazi violence in Ukraine seriously.

Details of the case were reported by the local newspaper Fakty i Kommentarii in its May 16, 2008 issue. Four young men in Kiev got 13 year sentences after being convicted of the April 23, 2007 murder of a 31 year old Korean man, Kang Jong Von (name as transliterated). The victim reportedly came to Ukraine out of love for the local culture and a desire to perfect his command of the Ukrainian language. He survived for three weeks after the attack in a Kiev hospital, but eventually succumbed to his injuries.

The defendants, all aged between 17-20, come for the most part from broken homes. One of the defendants sports a swastika tattoo, which he got after serving in the army, an experience that his mother said changed an already troubled youth for the worse. Multiple witnesses testified that the defendants screamed racist abuse while attacking their victim and that the defendant with the swastika tattoo jumped on his head with heavy boots as he lay prone on the ground. A police official was quoted in the article saying that the "surprising level of cruelty" the victim suffered, along with the language the defendants used during the attack ("slant eyes," "this is Slavic land and we are the masters here," etc.) pointed strongly to ethnic hatred as the motive for the killing.

The defendants reportedly showed no regret during the trial and laughed during at a witness from the Korean embassy. Only one of their parents reportedly bothered to apologize to the victim's family, though she did so privately, saying that she couldn't come to the trial out of shame for what her son had done. Another mother, however, was spotted wearing the typical boots that neo-Nazis favor, and some parents and other supporters of the defendants reportedly attacked journalists trying to cover the trial. A group of young people stood up in the courtroom and made the fascist salute after the sentence was read.

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