Director of Ukrainian Library in Moscow to face fresh charges

The lawyer for Natalya Sharina said on March 31 that his client will be formally charged by Russian investigators on April 5 with two counts of misallocating library funds. The lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said the authorities had "trumped up" new charges after realizing their initial case against Sharina was too weak. Sharina, 58, was detained in October and charged with inciting extremism and ethnic hatred by carrying books by the Ukrainian ultranationalist author Dmytro Korchynskiy, whose works are banned in Russia. Sharina, now under house arrest, rejects the charges, saying the books were planted in the Library of Ukrainian Literature by police.