A white supremacist who fled to Australia when war broke out in Ukraine has been deported back home while facing charges related to a clash at the Indigenous Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne.
Yan Zakharin, 20, was deported on August 12, less than a year after allegedly being involved in the neo-Nazi incursion at the encampment following the controversial March for Australia rally.
Zakharin and several other individuals, including former National Socialist Network (NSN) leader Thomas Sewell, were charged with affray, assault and unlawful assault.
Zakharin and Sewell had both plead not guilty to the charges.
In the Victorian County Court this week, Judge Gerard Mullaly revealed that Zakharin had been deported and the charges had been withdrawn.
News.com.au understands the decision to cancel Zakharin’s visa was made on character grounds, but a spokesperson for the Minister for Citizenship Julian Hill said his office does not comment on individual cases.
Zakharin has since shared images and videos from his home country. He spoke in a video posted online earlier this month about the decision to deport him.
“Hello patriots, this in Yan Zakharin and I have received a wonderful letter from (Australian Border Force) removals team stating that I’m getting deported to Ukraine from Australia.”
In several other videos Zakharin shared, he complains about being kept in what he described as “an Australian gulag” where he had undertaken a hunger strike.
Zakharin had been placed in immigration detention at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation in Broadmeadows, on the outskirts of Melbourne.
There, he claimed he was facing “torture” and shared numerous confrontations with staff at the facility.
“Update from a Gulag,” he wrote on one video.
“They put me on the hard time list to buckle me down and deprive me of sleep completely before my pre-trial.
“I’m in good spirits and I have doubled down on my views, and I will be going staunch on my trial over Camp Sovereignty incident.”
In another video he said he was “collapsing due to not drinking and eating anything for over three days and as a result I was taken back to the compound”.
He said he had been placed in “the stinkiest compound possible” and that “they jam-pack four to 16 people in the rooms depending on the capacity”.
In one video posted to social media from inside the facility, Zakharin smeared butter all over his door handle as an act of “revenge”.
In another video he was seen throwing a bowl of food into a tray slot in what he called “Operation Slime: Sloppy Revenge”.
“They kept slamming the doors literally every hour 24/7 to prevent us from having proper sleep. Welfare checks at 2am, 3am, 4am… just to ‘make sure we were alive’ while we were trying to sleep,” he wrote.
Last week, he posted videos from the major port city Odessa in southwestern Ukraine.
The Camp Sovereignty clash made headlines around the country last August. Videos from the scene showed several members of a group allegedly led by Mr Sewell kicking and punching a woman.
Central to the ongoing matter is a 23-minute video of raw footage obtained by warrant from the ABC, a one-minute video that the ABC broadcast and a video from Instagram.
A police informant, speaking in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court when seven men accused of being involved in the attack pleaded not guilty, said that objects were being thrown at the NSN members and people were shouting ‘F**k off Nazis”, but in his view, those opposed to the NSN were acting in self-defence.
He said that although there was no evidence the attack had been planned in advance, he believed the neo-Nazis arrived specifically to attack Camp Sovereignty since they approached the area “with a purpose”, marched together, and were allegedly led and encouraged by Mr Sewell in making a “deliberate beeline” for the camp.
The officer described “quite heinous” behaviour, such as three or four men standing around a woman on the ground as they kicked and punched her.
News.com.au earlier this week reported that another member of the NSN, also charged over the Camp Sovereignty incident, had died.
Timothy Lutze, who previously owned a boxing gym in Sunshine where members of the NSN gathered and were pictured performing the Nazi salute, was farewelled at a funeral this week.
The County Court amended bail conditions for those still facing charges so they could attend the funeral on the grounds they do not associate and socialise afterwards.
An obituary posted online drew comments from several individuals, including a man who said Mr Lutze “was a good bloke”.
“Before all this, he was a boxing trainer. He’s a good bloke. Different political opinions should never warrant any harm,” he said.
Mr Lutze was in the news on a number of occasions in recent years, including after his Werribee house and car were firebombed by what he called “left-wing terrorists” on Christmas Eve in 2023.
“Last night, left-wing terrorists firebombed my pregnant wife’s car while I was sleeping in the middle of the night, threw molotov cocktails … my children who were sleeping inside at the time were woken up by it,” he said.
“These people have no honour attacking a home while children and a pregnant woman is sleeping.”
Mr Lutze was regarded as a senior member of the NSN in Victoria, but claims that he was the Victorian leader appear to overstate his role.
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