Anatoly Shariy

Anatoly Sharij (also spelled Anatoly Shariy and Anatoliy Sharij, etc., Ukrainian: Анатолій Шарій , Russian: Анато́лий Шари́й ,) is a Ukrainian investigative journalist, videoblogger and politician. In June 2019 the party he founded, "Party of Shariy" (Ukrainian: Партiя Шарiя ) was registered in Ukraine and participated in that year's parliamentary election.

On March 18, 2019, the company Brand Analytics published its ratings of Russophone YouTube-bloggers for February 2019. In terms of viewer engagement rate (defined by the company as the sum of likes and comments), where Sharij's vlog holds the 1st place, who collected about 3 million likes and 430,000 comments. In terms of audience, with 1.8 million subscribers he was on the 38th place. The company notices that political topics usually attracts a small fraction of YouTube viewers. In summer 2019 Sharij was downgraded to the 2nd place in the engagement rate category, beaten by vlogger Mamix.

While Sharij Party is registered to take part in the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, according to the Ukrainian law, Sharij himself cannot take part in the elections, because last 5 years he did not live in Ukraine. Nevertheless, on July 2, 2019, the Central Election Commission registered Sharij candidate running for parliament according to a June 30 decision of the Supreme Court. On the next day, July 3, 2019, this decision was reverted. In an interview to the Ukrainian TV channel Nash TV Sharij explained his actions in the event. When his registration was rejected for the first time due to the 5-year residency criterion, he contested the decision on the grounds that there was no legal evidence of his absence, because the Ukrainian border guard had no data about his border crossing. Accepting this argument, the Supreme Court instructed the CEC to accept the registration. However the next day CEC was ordered to revert this decision based on an additional evidence which in Sharij's opinion has no legal standing. He presented this controversy as a test for the absence of the rule of law in Ukraine, comparing it with the United States, where a case may be thrown out of the court on formal grounds (e.g., failure to read the Miranda warning to a detained suspect).

In May 2018 Shariy posted a series of videos which reported anti-Semitic and other racist posts by Ukrainian consul in Hamburg Vasyl Marushinets (Василь Марушинець) in his Facebook page. Ukrainian officials tried to distance themselves from Marushinets claiming that they did not know anything about his views. Sharij proved that this cannot be true, because a number of posts of this type were "liked" by Ukrainian diplomats, and that Marushinets posted his views not only in the privacy of Facebook, but in open forums as well. The subsequent scandal have led to recall of Marushinets "for disciplinary proceedings", and on May 30, 2018, he was fired.

Shariy is among the 48 authors of the 2018 book of memoirs Oles Buzina. Prophet and Martyr ("Олесь Бузина. Пророк и мученик"), banned in Ukraine.

In 2017 Russian lawyer Mark Feygin accused Shariy of pedophilia both in social networks and traditional media. It particular, in July 2017 during a live broadcast of the show "My Truth" on the "Moscow Talking" radio channel, Feygin stated "He (Anatoly Shariy) is under investigation for pedophilia". Sharij sued him for defamation, and eventually, after Feygin's appeal, won the case. On 24 April 2018 the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers stripped Mark Feygin of his attorney status. He has been allowed to reinstate it after a period of one year by passing a bar exam or by successfully appealing the Chamber's decision. The ruling was based on Feygin's "inappropriate statements" (foul language) made towards Anatoly Shariy's lawyer Stalina Gurevich and Shariy himself . The court agreed with the plaintiff that Mark Feygin used foul language via his Twitter account to address a lawyer colleague and her client. See Mark Feygin#Anatoly Shariy lawsuit for more details.

On November 16, 2017, in a rating of the personalities by number of readers in the Ukrainian segments of Facebook and Twitter, Sharij got the 12th place with the aggregate audience of 511,000 people.

Ukrainian media routinely describes Sharij as a pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian propagandist; see e.g., the Ukrainian News Agency and others. Shariy responded to these accusations by declaring that last years he did not like Vladimir Putin and that he would not call to vote for him. In response in 2015 Sharij announced a reward of 1,000 Euro to anybody who demonstrates a piece of pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian propaganda in his posts. During the 2019 Parliamentary Elections he increased the bounty to 5,000 Euro. Yury Melnik of Lviv National University explains that it is close to impossible to find his quotations in support of his pro-Russianess. However he writes that this conclusion may be drawn from the one-sideness of Sharij's criticism: he criticizes "pro-Ukrainian and pro-European forces in Ukraine and opposition forces in Russia", while he seldom comments on the actions of the Russian state.

From 2014 onwards, Shariy focused on producing video blogs for his YouTube channel, which, among other things carries out debunking misinformation and propaganda in Ukrainian media. He also frequently criticizes mainly Ukrainian publications related to the events in Ukraine after Euromaidan, as well as the current Ukrainian government.

Earlier Sharij was known primarily for his investigations on the police and other law enforcement agencies during the Yanukovych government. He has sought and eventually got asylum in the European Union claiming persecution by Ukrainian law enforcement bodies in 2012.

In 2012 he was granted asylum in the European Union. He received a permanent residency permit in Lithuania for 5 years. Shariy left Ukraine because of two criminal prosecutions. One involved the an incident when he shot at a man from a gun with rubber bullets at a McDonald's restaurant. According to Shariy he did this after the man attacked his wife. In addition, in October 2011 Shariy was charged with a second criminal case when he was accused of fabricating an attack upon himself.

In 2009, Sharij won the Yousmi Web-Journalism Award for "Best Story (Non-Professional)".

In 2008, Sharij became a permanent author at the online editions of From-UA and Obozrevatel, but since 2009 he worked only with online newspapers.

From 2008 to early 2012, prior to the moment Sharij fled Ukraine, he was the head of the Investigation Department of the website Obozrevatel. In 2008–2011 Sharij also authored a number of publications on organized crime in Ukraine.

In December 2006 he wrote the article "Why the Baby Sleeps" ("Почему спит ребенок") about the abuse of babies by professional beggars in Kiev: they sleep because they are sedated by illegal drugs or vodka.

Sharij began to engage in journalism in early 2005. Before that, for many years he suffered from compulsive gambling.

In 2005, he worked at Ukrainian women's glossy magazines Natalie , Edinstvenaya, Polina and at the Ukrainian periodical publication Segodnya and has collaborated with Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets and others.