MOSCOW, May 7 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court has issued an arrest warrant for alleged extremist Aleksey Levkin in absentia, the court’s spokesperson Yekaterina Krasnova has told RAPSI.

The defendant is to be placed in detention for two months after his extradition, Krasnova said.

According to case papers, Levkin stands charged with establishing an extremist group and inciting hatred and enmity.

Reportedly, Levkin is an associate of Russian national Roman Zheleznov sentenced to 4 years in prison in absentia for fighting as a mercenary of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Donbass

Investigators claimed that Zheleznov came to Ukraine and voluntarily joined the Azov Battalion for fighting in Donbass in July 2014.Then spokesperson of Russia’s Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin said that Zheleznov, was fighting in Ukraine for 4,000 hryvnias (about $309 at that time) a month.

The Azov Battalion is a far-right paramilitary unit of hundreds of volunteers that reports to the Interior Ministry of Ukraine. It has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Kiev’s war with the self-defense forces in eastern Ukraine.