YEKATERINBURG, March 7 - RAPSI. A court in Russia’s Urals city of Yekaterinburg sentenced a man to 9.5 years in prison after finding him guilty of committing race-hate crimes, a spokeswoman for the court said.

The court found Alexander Solovyov guilty of 21 attacks on people of non-Slavic appearance, including nine attacks connected with murders and attempted murders. According to investigators, all crimes were committed, when Solovyov was 17 years old.

His accomplice, Alexander Minin, who was on the same trial, did not participate in murders and the court handed him a sentence of two years probation.

Both of the suspects on trial were members of the so-called group Volksstrumm, set up by a gang of adolescents in the Urals in 2006. Armed with knives, brass knuckles, glass bottles, metallic chains and sticks they attacked non-Slavic-looking people and filmed their assaults in order to upload them later on internet.

Four other members of Volksstrumm, which used to be the name for German Nazi militia in the last months of WWII, were also sentenced by court orders to different prison terms in 2011, with one of the leaders having received a 13-year long prison term.