The Kiev-based website, myrotvorets.center, has functioned since its founding in the aftermath of the U.S./UK-backed 2014 Maidan coup against Ukraine, as a Goebbels-style registry of “enemies of the state” to be purged. Myrotvorets translates as “Peacemaker.” Names and personal information for targeted individuals and groups are placed and maintained on the site, in a format to support not only intimidation, but elimination.
There may be as many as 200,000 on the list at present, ranging from those in Ukraine, to thousands of listings for Russia, and individuals in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. People in the enemy database are referred to as being in “Purgatory,” and a search function is provided to check for a name.
The site includes a process for volunteers to provide names they recommend for the Purgatory deathlist, as “collaborators.” Since 2019, the site provides a “classifier” function, for the submitter to use to characterize the crimes of the person they are fingering. The classification options include “anti-Ukrainian propagandist,” “war propaganda,” and “the spread of Kremlin propaganda in the form of the so-called ‘Russian world’.”
The site includes, since 2017, a facial recognition function, using the IDentigraF system. The database is described as boasting more than 2 million images of “persons who have committed crimes against Ukraine and its citizens.”
The “beastman” nature of the “Peacemaker” group is dramatically seen on the home page which features photographs of decomposing and dismembered faces and bodies. When a name on the list is dead, for whatever may be the reason—natural causes, a “disappearance,” an assassination, an “accident,” usually suspicious—the person’s name and photo are featured with “liquidated” written across it.
The Myrotvorets hitlist idea was set in motion in March 2014, and picked up by a group widely reported to include Anton Herashchenko, the notorious neo-Nazi promoter of the Azov Brigade, who was an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The early orientation of the “Peacemaker” site and list focused on “enemy collaborators” in the Donbas. During this period, the Myrotvorets site listed as partners, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the SBU—the Security Service of Ukraine—according to Ukrainian civil rights sources. These public links then disappeared from the website in May 2016.
In April 2015, Myrotvorets published the home addresses of Ukrainian writer Oles Buzina and former Verkhovna Rada parliamentarian Oleg Kalashnikov, just days before they were assassinated.
On May 10, 2016, the site published a raft of over 4,000 names and personal data of journalists and others, centered mostly in Donetsk, including many with major media, e.g., AFP, Reuters, CNN, BBC, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, etc. This prompted intense criticism, including a criminal lawsuit, and the Myrotvorets site temporarily went down.
However, the site resumed within a period of months, and has expanded its operations to the present, unscathed. The site continues to feature wording and insignia to suggest connections to NATO, the U.S., and other national agencies, whether real or feigned. For example, on the home page, “Langley, VA USA” is noted, well known as the address for the CIA.
There have been several international calls for investigation. On June 2, 2016, G7 ambassadors to Ukraine released a joint statement expressing deep concern about disclosures of journalists’ personal data on the Myrotvorets website and called on the Myrotvorets team to withdraw personal data from public access.
In 2017, the United Nations called for an investigation, as did the German Foreign Ministry in 2018, again to no effect. And in 2018, the documentation and research division of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless (OFPRA) exposed the killer nature of the Ukrainian “Myrotvorets Center” in an 11-page report titled “The Myrotvorets Center, an online collaborative platform listing ‘The Enemies of Ukraine’.”
In May 2022, on demand of Greek Member of the European Parliament Kostas Papadakis and other MEPs, Josep Borrell, EU Foreign and Security Policy Secretary, was forced to respond on the Myrotvorets scandal. Borrell demurred,
The EU has raised the issue of this website with the Ukrainian counterparts and will continue to engage with them on the topic.
