Viacheslav Datsik Has Become a "Public Defender" Since His Release From Prison

It was reported in March that MMA's most "colorful" character, Viacheslav Datsik, was eager to make a return to competing in mixed martial arts upon his prison release.

Datsik, the self-styled "Red Tarzan", was originally arrested in 2007 for a number of armed robberies on phone shops across the city of St. Petersburg in Russia. However, he was soon recognised by the Russian courts as being insane and avoided prison time with the courts opting to send him to a local psychiatric ward instead. Said psychiatric hospital soon lost track of Datsik after he had escaped the Leningrad clinic to seek political asylum in Norway.

Upon his entry into Norway, the diabolical Datsik proudly declared himself as "not a nationalist, but a racist" without any hint of irony to the on looking Scandinavian press. Not surprising given Datsik's history of claiming Jesus Christ was a Mossad agent for Israel's intelligence service along with many other anti-Semitic and anti-Christian comments to accompany such ludicrous claims. Norway promptly returned Red Tarzan back to Russia, where he was imprisoned for his unlawful escape from the Leningrad psychiatric hospital alongside the charges already made against him.

It would appear those plans to return to MMA have been put on hold for the time being. Hours after his release from his former home in Krasnoyarsk prison, Datsik appeared to want to fight a different battle than from within the confines of the ring or cage—taking on the local authorities that had imprisoned him and to "fight injustice." (H/T Karim Zidan of BloodyElbow).

Datsik's mother, Svetlana, told assembled reporters of her son's renewed plans. "He plans to become a human rights activist," she said. "To do this he must first finish law school. Viacheslav is engaged in the protection of the rights of prisoners and he wishes to become a paralegal."

Red Tarzan himself echoed those sentiments. "For all of my time in prison, I was constantly faced with the lawlessness of the local administration and management of the IR-31 [Krasnoyarsk prison]. This unwarranted conclusion was in the form of my solitary confinement and restriction, and in some cases, obstruction in communicating with relatives and my lawyer. I would also say that I was a witness to the torture of some prisoners. It is for these reasons that I have applied to the prosecutor's office."

Since Datsik's March release, his plans have seemingly changed yet again. He is no longer seeking to bring justice to those who crossed him in the Russian prison system—Datsik is essentially making a nuisance of himself under the guise of a "public defender" and it's certainly catching the attention of the local police.

Datsik appears to have found a friend in controversial musician and quasi-celebrity Stanislav "Stas" Baretsky and they are seemingly joined at the hip in their collective role as public defenders. Baretsky has made his name with his controversial exploits—which usually involve attacking people at random.

The pair's first port of call to defend the Russian people was to carry out a series of raids on brothels and casinos across Russia. According to Russian news outlet NTV. Datsik is very knowledgeable about both brothels and casinos, but only because he had heard stories about them from his prison inmates.

Datsik and his band of Merry Men are made aware of underground casinos operating illegally, before heading over to threaten the people there until they submit and promise to stop operating. The problem is that many of these casinos and accompanying brothels have connections with the local Russian mafias and either ignore Datsik's warnings or respond in kind with threats of violence themselves.

According to the article, during one of his many brothel raids, Red Tarzan met his match on one occasion when a security guard pulled a gun on him. But, he is often able to operate free of resistance—pinning escorts down to the floor in an act of citizen's arrest until the local police can arrest them.

The targets that have earned the Russian's ire are extensive—they include pimps, gambling rings and drug dealers—but Datsik omits thieves from his list. His reasons why? "I was the chief robber of St. Petersburg. Do you not want me to be? Who else is going to fight for the people?"

While the police have played ball with Datsik in terms of his citizen's arrests, they have warned they were "keeping an eye on" Datsik and his activities.

They were indeed. Last week the Russian was arrested after disrupting the delivery of construction materials used to help create the planned M-11 highway that will link Moscow with St. Petersburg.

According to another Russian news outlet, 47news, Datsik and his accomplices blocked a key country road off in Andrianovo Tosno, Leningrad, with a log truck to prevent Turkish construction company AK's trucks in their tracks. When those vehicles were stopped by the Russian's carefully-positioned log truck in the early hours of the morning, Datsik would approach the truck drivers to take their keys before kicking them into the dense woods surrounding the country road.

Red Tarzan states he and his men decided to do this as AK were illegally cultivating Russian sand as construction material. But, this definitely appears to be more in line with Russia's growing anti-Turkish sentiment following an incident which saw the Turkish military shoot down a Russian warplane after it had allegedly invaded their airspace during the height of foreign intervention in Syria. Considering how the article mentions Datsik shouted profanity, anti-Turkish statements at the drivers as well as threatening to beat the Turkish men suggests that this is the case.

With a significant traffic jam created and "hundreds" sets of keys thrown into the woods, the Russian police arrested Datsik and his volunteers and took them to Tosnensky police department before releasing them all later that evening. According to 47news, Datsik vowed to continue to "fight against Turkish mercenaries" as he "does not care for someone who works just to feed their families."

It's been little over a month since Datsik has been released from prison and he's already on a major tear. Expect more terrible news to emerge from Russia soon.