Teenage PMC "Redan" put Petersburg into a tizzy

Alexander Dybin

A wave of incidents related to the youth phenomenon "PMC "Redan" swept through the country.

The police detain both adherents of this trend and their opponents, who gather in groups to beat the Redans.

So, on February 26, there were reports of a mass brawl of teenagers in the Gallery shopping mall, located in the center of St. Petersburg. The complex stopped work, visitors were taken out, the building was cordoned off by riot police. After that, it became known about the detention of 220 teenagers, who were taken to different police departments to testify. Soon the investigative committee announced the initiation of a criminal case under the article "Hooliganism".

"Acting as a group of persons, grossly violating public order, committed hooligan actions in the Gallery shopping center, as a result of which several people were injured', - the UK says.

A little later it was clarified that only one teenager was injured, who was taken to the hospital.

 A video from surveillance cameras appeared in the media, which shows how a group of teenagers surrounded one guy, after a short conversation, a fight began.

The official result of the police raid in the Gallery shopping mall was the bringing to administrative responsibility of five teenagers. Another one is a person involved in a criminal case.

"Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg has brought to administrative responsibility Konstantin Ignatiev, Sergey Fokin, Nikita Lovygin, Maxim Zherebtsov and Rustam Alekseev for committing an offense under Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation ("Petty hooliganism"), - told the joint press service of the courts of St. Petersburg, - all persons on February 26 about 15 for 15 hours, while in the Gallery shopping center, they expressed rude obscenities, shouted, behaved aggressively, waved their arms, provoking a fight, did not react to comments, thereby expressed disrespect for society and violated public order".

The court noted that the teenagers did not agree with the protocols and stated that they behaved normally.

"Someone reported that he just came to the shopping center to eat", - the court noted.As a result, four were arrested for 5 days, and one was fined 500 rubles.

The sixth detainee has a much more serious situation. A criminal case has been opened against him under part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Hooliganism". The court took the 17-year-old into custody.

"The Smolninsky district Court considered the petition of the investigation for the election of a preventive measure in the form of detention against Islam Abdulayev," the court reported, "an unidentified group of persons, including Abdulayev, while in the Gallery shopping center, publicly violating public norms and rules of conduct, inflicted numerous blows on Sh., which grossly violated the public order".

Abdulayev will be in jail at least until April 25.

Journalists managed to find out the reaction of his parents to what was happening, who came to the court to support their son.

"Yes, he beat the fascists. It turned out wrong, but the court also did it wrong", - the teenager's father told Mash.

What is "PMCs "Redan"?

St. Petersburg was not the only city where the phrase "PMCs "Redan" thundered. The same mass brawl and roundup of teenagers occurred in the Moscow shopping center "Aviapark". Police raids in search of aggressive teenagers took place in Kazan, Novosibirsk and Rostov-on-Don, arrests were reported in Kaluga and Chelyabinsk. By a strange coincidence, public actions of "Redan" were also held in major cities of Ukraine, after which the Ukrainian press started talking about the "hand of Moscow" in inciting social conflicts in a neighboring state.

Adherents of this trend, which suddenly appeared in the information space, are marked with black T-shirts or hoodies with a white spider and the number 4, which in Chinese is indicated by the same hieroglyph as the word "death". The roots of this aesthetic come from anime. But it is difficult to catch any clear ideology or purpose behind all this. According to one of the first versions, "PMCs Redan" is a phenomenon from the category of "death groups", when muddy personalities provoke teenagers to bad things. The Ukrainian special services were even accused of creating this movement. Interestingly, teenagers unite not only on the basis of "Redan", but also on the desire to oppose him. Actually, the fights are the result of "raids" that opponents conduct in search of young people with spider symbols.

Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of the Safe Internet League, became an active commentator on the topic of "Redan", who found the roots of the phenomenon in anime and the gaming community:

"At the beginning of 2022 on Spotify (when it was still available in Russia) The rapper Shadowraze "got infected". Until 2021, Shadowraze compositions were rather an example of amateur creativity for Dota 2 fans. And as the teenagers themselves say, it was he who first began to develop the topic about "Redan", based on the anime Hunter x Hunter. It was a relatively small community of "spiders" without any calls for violence," she said in her telegram channel, "and then a situation occurred, because of which it became a trend. On February 19, a company of athletes (officials) clung to the company in clothes with "spiders" for their appearance and started a fight. The guys in the clothes of "spiders" fought back. The video of the fight spread, teenagers began to support the company of "spiders", because the video shows that the "offniks" were the first to start a brawl. At the same time, the very moment that animeshniki were able to stand up for themselves and even, according to a number of commentators, drive away opponents, caused surprise and heated discussion of commentators in social networks, which may have served as the addition of such a well-known abbreviation in society "PMCs" to the name of the anime community and marked the beginning of the development of an initially ironic publication into a challenge for other youth subcultures".In addition, Rosmolodezha also got from Mizulina, which, according to the social activist, should distract teenagers from bad thoughts and activities:

"There are failures in youth policy. Children simply have nothing to do, they direct their energy into trends that arise in social networks. They spend their leisure time as they determine. And it determines, first of all, the Internet. There are not enough free sections. We see steps, the creation of movements, but we do not see concrete work on the part of this organization. Rosmolodezh is responsible for monitoring destructive content on the basis of the law. Why is the Safe Internet League doing this?" Mizulina told the Daily Storm.

Dmitry Svishchev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Physical Culture and Sports, proposed banning Redan altogether:

"That is why we constantly say that it is necessary to develop Russian sports," Svishchev said. - Moreover, it is necessary to start with the children's and youth. If boys play football, hockey, and ski in parks in every yard, then, firstly, they will not stick to the screens of phones and tablets. And secondly, of course, there will be fewer chances to join some dubious subcultures, and even more so to arrange mass fights with spray cans and knives. Such a thing will not occur to an athlete, because sport brings up organization and purposefulness. Therefore, the more opportunities we give children to play sports, the fewer such cases will be. Thanks to the law enforcement officers for responding in time and detaining the teenagers. It's good that there were no casualties. All explanatory conversations must necessarily be conducted with parents. And all these young men should be under control so that nothing is arranged again. And this subculture can be banned altogether. She brings nothing but violence to young people."

Still, "Redan" looks more like an out-of-control joke that has begun to live its own life and has acquired its own meanings. But we still have to understand this phenomenon in more detail.