These are the Russians who want to overthrow Putin Unclear situation after attack by “anti-Kremlin militia” – the nightly update without photos

While the world was waiting for Ukraine’s spring offensive, something completely different, completely unexpected, happened: Soldiers marched from Ukraine into Russian territory in the Belgorod region north of Kharkiv. There they would have attacked and possibly captured several villages.

Two groups claim the action for themselves.

Ukrainian intelligence announced that the groups “carried out an operation to create a ‘safe zone’ to protect Ukrainian citizens.” At the same time, the soldiers showed Russia’s vulnerability with their actions.

Here’s what we know about the two groups:

Legion of Freedom of Russia

The Legion of Freedom of Russia (Легион «Свобода России») is a Russian paramilitary group based in Ukraine. According to the private Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, the “Legion of Freedom of Russia” was formed in February 2022 from over 100 Russian soldiers who voluntarily defected to the Ukrainian side. At the beginning of this year, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that the number of members had risen to 4,000. In June last year, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych spoke of several hundred soldiers. The exact numbers are not known.

On April 5, 2022, three members of the unit appeared at a press conference in Kiev – all masked in balaclavas – to urge other Russian soldiers to defect.

One of the soldiers said that the atrocities in Bucha, Irpin and Kharkiv persuaded him to convert. “I have decided to join the ‘Legion of Freedom of Russia’ to fight against Putin’s regime and for a future for our children and grandchildren back home.”

In the meantime, the soldiers would have received training in Kiev and would be an integral part of Ukraine’s territorial defense, writes the New York Times. So they would report directly to the Ukrainian General Staff. The “New York Times” further informs that the soldiers of the “Legion of the Freedom of Russia” are always in a group under their own kind, but under the supervision of Ukrainian officers.

The American newspaper met soldiers from the unit in February this year. The protagonists of the report are introduced as follows:

A soldier nicknamed Caesar – the unit’s spokesman – explains: “It’s not just my job to protect the people of Ukraine.” His plans went further: if he was alive after the war, he would continue to work to overthrow the Kremlin regime.

“I couldn’t just watch,” Caesar told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. His children cried when Russia attacked Ukraine. He then promised them that Ukraine would win and immediately tried to volunteer for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. But at the beginning of the war, these would not have included Russians. “When the ‘Legion of Freedom of Russia’ was founded, I signed up, did some background checks and ended up here,” he adds.

Caesar does not care about the soldiers fighting on Russia’s side. Unlike them, he is a “real Russian man”. Someone like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky would have sung about it. The others, on the other hand, are not Russians, he told the New York Times.

Since March 2022, the “Legion of Freedom of Russia” has its own Telegram presence and a Twitter channel. Both networks regularly call on people to join the armed struggle against the ‘war criminal Putin’.

The Legion posted a message on their Telegram channel on Friday that they had taken the small frontier village of Konzinka and would now march on Graivoron.

Many messages show the unit wearing Ukrainian uniforms. In addition, the soldiers often present a Velcro badge on the sleeve with a white and blue flag. According to the British newspaper Metro, this flag is seen by partisans as a symbol of resistance to the invasion of Ukraine.

In February, Russia’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit in the country’s Supreme Court to classify the Legion as a “terrorist organization.”

Russian Volunteer Corps

In addition to the “Legion of Freedom of Russia”, the “Russian Volunteer Corps” was also said to have been involved in the action. This was founded by Denis Nikitin – whose real name is Denis Kapustin. Only “ethnic Russians” fought in the “Russian volunteer corps”, as Nikitin says.

It is not clear whether the “Russian Volunteer Corps” has the support of the Ukrainian army or government. In October 2022, the “Russian Volunteer Corps” published a manifesto describing itself as “part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”. But Ukrainian officials have never confirmed the military’s ties to the group.

Nikitin has a dark reputation. The Russian lived in Germany for several years from 2001 before the country revoked his residence permit because of his far-right activities. He then returned to Russia, where he founded the racist clothing brand White Rex, which sold T-shirts with the inscription “SS for Sweet n’ Sexy”. As in Germany, he also made a name for himself as a football hooligan. In 2017, he is said to have moved to Ukraine, where he was involved in the far-right scene and taught MMA. The Kremlin critical news portals “Meduza” and “The Moscow Times” as well as the British “Guardian” and the “Telegraph” outline this resume.

In 2017, extremism expert Robert Claus described Nikitin to Vice as “a key figure among right-wing extremists in Europe” and “one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis on the continent”.

Not much is known about the “Russian Volunteer Corps” except that Nikitin launched it last August with the aim of recruiting people in Russia to “fight the bald madman who is sending hordes of Caucasian-Asian killers” to Ukraine. This is where his National Socialist attitude comes through: he wants to protect the white Ukrainians against the non-white Russians. It also fits that he had already criticized the multi-ethnic composition of Russian society in the past.

In early March, Nikitin and his followers allegedly raided a Russian village in the Bryansk region, the Russian secret service FSB reported at the time. As a result, he was placed on the Russian terror list. What exactly happened in Bryansk at that time is unclear. Russian propaganda portals reported that Nikitin and his men had taken hostages, blown up a gas station and fired on a school bus. However, district officials could not confirm this to «Meduza».

Shortly after the reports, two videos appeared on the Telegram channel of the «Russian Volunteer Corps» in which gunmen declared that they were «not at war with the civilian population». They called on “ordinary Russian citizens” to “stand up and fight”.

Interestingly, according to «Meduza», Nikitin recently stated that due to «various ideological differences» one would never work with the «Legion of Freedom of Russia». Russia’s neo-Nazi fighting in Ukraine allegedly broke his own words to “protect Ukrainians from real fascists,” as he put it in the Financial Times a week ago.