One of the anti-Kremlin groups responsible for this week’s armed attack on Russia, the Russian Volunteer Corps, is led by a far-right extremist described by German officials and humanitarian groups. , including the Anti-Defamation Leagueas a neo-Nazi.
The Volunteer Corps, which includes Russians opposed to Vladimir V. Putin’s war, does not have any public connection to the Ukrainian Army. But the group’s claim to fight for the Ukrainian cause creates an uncomfortable situation for the government in Kiev. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin falsely claimed that his country was fighting Nazi Germany as an excuse to invade his country, a frequent topic of Kremlin propaganda.
Legion commander, Denis Kapustin – who has long used the alias Denis Nikitin, but is often referred to as his military call sign, White Rex — is a Russian citizen who moved to Germany in the early 2000s. He became associated with a group of violent football fans and later, according to officials in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, became “a among the most influential activists” in a neo-fascist spoilers of the mixed martial arts scene.
He was forbidden entry into the Schengen area of 27 European countries visa-free.
The Volunteer Corps, known by its Russian abbreviation RDK, has also claimed responsibility for two incidents in Russia’s Bryansk border region in March and April. Ukrainian authorities have publicly denied any any role in the fighting on the Russian side of the border.
The Russian Volunteer Corps is one of two groups of Russian warplanes that launched a cross-border attack in the Belgorod region of southern Russia on Monday, fighting Russian troops for two days of fighting. The groups say the purpose of the incursions is to force Russia to redeploy troops from occupied Ukraine to defend its borders, as Ukraine prepares for a counterattack.
The second group is Free Russian Army Corps, operating under the auspices of the Ukraine International Corps, a force consisting of American and British volunteers, as well as Belarusians, Georgians and others. It is supervised by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and is commanded by Ukrainian officers. Officials say hundreds of Russian warplanes have been deployed to the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
At a joint press conference with the Free Russian Army on Wednesday, Kapustin said his group is not under the control of the Ukrainian Army, but that the military has been supporting his fighters with information, gasoline, food and supplies. medical advice, along with the evacuation of the injured. That statement cannot be independently verified.
Andriy Chernyak, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, said that he did not have any information about the possibility of material support that the Ukrainian military may have given members of the RDK, but said that ” Ukraine certainly supports all those who are ready to fight against the Putin regime.”
“People come to Ukraine and say they want to help us fight Putin’s regime, so of course we let them, like many other foreigners,” Chernyak said.
Ukraine has called the incursions an “internal Russian crisis” because the members of this group are Russians and the episode serves as Ukraine’s military goal to try to force Russia to deploy. redeploy troops from the front lines to defend their borders.
Michael Colborne, a researcher at Bellingcat who reports on the international far right, said he was hesitant to call the Russian Volunteers a military unit.
“Most of them are a far-right group of neo-Nazis making inroads into Russian-held territory who seem to care a lot about creating content,” Mr. social media more than anything else.
Several other members of the Russian Volunteer Corps photographed during the border raids have also openly embraced neo-Nazi views. A man, Aleksandr Skachkov, was arrested by the Ukrainian Security Service in 2020 for selling a Russian translation of a manifesto of white supremacy about the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter who had kill 51 followers of the mosque in 2019.
Another, Aleksei Levkin, who shot a selfie video wearing the RDK badge, is the founder of a group called Wotanjugend started in Russia but later moved to Ukraine. Mr. Levkin also organized the “National Socialist Black Metallic Festival,” which started in Moscow in 2012 but was held in Kyiv from 2014 to 2019.
Photos were posted online by the militants earlier this week of members of the volunteer corps posing in front of the captured Russian equipment, including several fighters wearing German-style costumes and patches National Socialist. One patch depicts a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan and another depicts the Black Sun, a symbol closely associated with Nazi Germany.
Mr Colborne said the images of Mr Kapustin and his fighters could damage Ukraine’s defenses by making allies wary that they could support far-right armed groups.
“I worry that something like this could backfire with Ukraine because these are not dubious people,” he said. “These are not unknown people, and they are not helping Ukraine in any practical sense.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff Contribution reports from London and Oleg Matsnev from Berlin.
