Anti-Putin Militias Celebrating Attacks on Russia Are Filled With Neo-Nazis
On Monday, Anti-Putin militias Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Freedom of Russia Legion said they had liberated the city of Belgorod in Russia. Pro Ukrainian social media accounts on Twitter and Telegram spent the day celebrating the stunning development in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but people familiar with RDK and its members were wary. Like other groups that have been fighting off Russian invaders since 2014, both groups include Neo-Nazi members.
Both militias are aligned with Ukraine and wore the colors of the Ukrainian flag in the videos they posted on Telegram of their liberation of the city. Many of the members of both groups are ex-Russians. “We are Russians just like you. We are people just like you. We want our children to grow up in peace and be free people, so that they can travel, study and just be happy in a free country,” one member of the Freedom of Russia Legion said in a video posted to Twitter.
In the wake of the attack on Belgorod, pro-Ukrianian social media accounts celebrated the victory of the militias. Kyiv denied it coordinated the attack, but many saw the incursion into Russian territory by pro-Ukrainian groups as an absolute win.
For hours after news of the attack, people posted reviews on the Google Maps site for the App Grayvoron border crossing checkpoint. They uploaded photos of armor rolling through the area and posted fake reviews. “The guards don’t make any trouble crossing the border,” one review said. “10/10 would recommend.” Google is removing the fake reviews, but posters continue to upload them.
Pictures of RDK celebrating in Belgorod flooded social media. In one, a Russian man named Aleksandr Skachkov stands next to a captured BTR-82A with the flag of the RDK unfurled next to him. On his chest is a patch depicting a white hooded Ku Klux Klansman wielding a gun. According to reporting from Bellingcat, Ukraine arrested Skachkov in 2020 during a raid on a group of people who were translating and selling the Christchurch Shooter’s manifesto.
Michael Colborne, a journalist at Bellingcat and the author of From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right, said he put his head in his hands yesterday as people online started celebrating the attack on Belgorod. He recognized many of the men in the videos. “I knew right away who they were,” he said. “I don’t see what military or PR purpose putting these guys front and center does for Ukraine, because Russia knows who they are.”
Another video showed RDK member Alexey Levkin bragging about breaking the border while wearing the group’s flag on his chest. In addition to being part of the RDK, Levkin is also the founder of Asgardsrei, an annual black metal festival in Ukraine that serves as a networking event for neo-Nazis. VICE interviewed Levkin in 2019 and asked him if he was a national socialist. “Yes, sure!” He replied.
According to Colborne, RDK is a hardcore fascist group that does not hide its political views.
“RDK describes itself (it did today) with ‘right wing conservative political views and traditional beliefs’ but at the core it's led by a Russian neo-Nazi and its most prominent members, at least in terms of getting attention and promoting themselves, are also Russian neo-Nazi,” he said. “And I don't say 'neo-Nazi' as a casual slur—these are people who have literally organized Hitler worship nights, written poems about Hitler, and lead bands whose names and songs are about Hitler. Now, as I understand it there may be increasingly non-neo-Nazis, and non-far-right, soldiers joining its small ranks, but it's clear what the RDK is rooted in.”
Fascist and neo-Nazi groups are common in Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe in general. Ukraine’s most famous far-right militias is the Azov Regiment, is media savvy and often gets itself in front of the cameras. In 2022, pictures of a training event where it taught a 79-year-old woman how to fire an AK-47 went viral. Azov fighters also said they were greasing bullets in pig fat to deny Muslim Chechen soldiers entrance into heaven.
Colborne said there was no formal relationship between RDK and Azov, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a connection. “Some of these individuals are people who fought in the Regiment during its earliest years in 2014-2015,” he said. “Others have been heavily involved in the wider Azov movement; others have been involved with even more fringe far-right elements, while others have stayed out of the public eye.”
The conflict in Ukraine exists at the crossroads of ideologies. It’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. Russia has long said it wants to de-Nazify Ukraine, but it has its own Nazis in its rank. The Wagner Group, the mercenaries who’ve done most of the fighting in Bakhmut, was founded by Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian soldier who has SS and Reichsadler tattoos.
“People should know that governments and state actors have long tried to make use of or exploit far-right political actors for their own purposes,” Colborne said. “You can go to a place like Serbia, for example, to see this action outside the Russia/ Ukraine context. But if you choose to play with fire like this, you have a good chance of getting burned.”
#DmtDailyDMT.NEWS
via https://www.DMT.NEWS
Matthew Gault, Khareem Sudlow
