— How and when did a new generation of street neo-Nazi subcultures emerge?
— Neo-Nazi channels on Telegram had already existed before the war. They were mostly small memorial communities of up to a thousand subscribers honoring Tesak [note: alias of the notorious neo-Nazi Maxim Martsinkevich who died in prison in 2020] and other far-rightists of the previous generation. It was a fringe online activity that had nothing to do with real life. But in 2022, against the backdrop of war propaganda and militarization, ultra-right-wingers, including those who openly endorsed Nazi aesthetics and professed Nazi ideology, experienced a dramatic increase in their social media reach. In some cases, audiences were exposed to social media accounts calling for a 2000s-style reboot of the neo-Nazi movement. Back then, Nazi skinheads probably numbered in the tens of thousands; they killed dozens of people every year and were responsible for a huge number of non-lethal attacks. Although the call for renewal was met with enthusiasm by primarily 15-16 year olds, older people were also involved. For example, the National Socialism / White Power [NS/WP] group criminal case names Roman Zukhel as one of its members and as the group’s likely ideological leader. Zukhel was a member of the previous NS/WP formation; he served a jail sentence for assaulting a punk and in 2014 went to Ukraine to join the Azov regiment. However, in the late 2010s, a conflict arose between him and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, after which Zukhel was kicked out of the movement and ceased his public activities in Ukraine.
Even before the war, neo-Nazi channels would occasionally publish videos of racist attacks on passersby, but in 2023 there was an upsurge in such content. These videos showed teenagers gassing people or slashing the tires of cars that had license plates from Caucasian and Central Asian countries. It looked moronic and not very dangerous, so the media weren’t interested and the victims did not report the incidents to the police. But in September 2023, a new Nazi Video Monitoring Project [NVMP] initiative began monitoring such videos and discovered that as many as three or four per day were being uploaded. It became apparent that it was no longer just a few people but a certain environment, that this environment would continue to develop, and that the neo-Nazi attacks were likely to become more violent.
It seems relevant to recall the scandal around Ilya Ponomaryov [note: a controversial Russian politician who has lived in Ukraine since 2016], who in 2002 shared on Telegram an NS/WP document among other PDFs on subversive activities. It was titled “Direct Action: Instructions for Aspiring Fighters of the Russian Resistance.” It included a plan to develop an environment that specializes in petty rowdiness. Pour a can of spray paint on someone, slash a tire, cut off electricity in an apartment, pretend to be Azerbaijani, and shit on an Armenian car, that kind of stuff. The expectation was that gradually some of these hooligans would become ready for more serious violence. It all looked absurd, but, surprisingly, a year later it began to materialize.
— What is NS/WP?
— NS/WP originally began as a peculiar online community: a forum for neo-Nazis from different Russian cities who committed racist attacks in the 2000s. Many of them were convicted in the late 2000s and early 2010s for murder and other violent crimes. In the 2020s, former forum members decided to relaunch it on Telegram. One of these founders was Andrei Pransky, who in early 2021 was released from a psychiatric hospital where he had been under forced treatment after being convicted of murdering an acquaintance. He and several other gentlemen, who had also served prison time, created a Telegram channel. They already had a community by the time the war started, and so they wanted to commit a high-profile murder: they considered Novaya Gazeta’s Dmitry Muratov or journalist and socialite Xenia Sobchak but settled on host of propaganda TV shows Vladimir Solovyov.
How did they get caught? Before the war, after a fight with anti-fascists, Pronsky was brought in to the police station in a sweatshirt with the name of their Telegram channel written on it. In this channel he published neo-Nazi propaganda, real and fictional stories about killings in the 2000s, and his experience of prison; he vocally encouraged terrorism, posted ads for the sale of weapons, and so on. While they were planning their attack on Solovyov, Pronsky was under house arrest, and his apartment was wiretapped the whole time. Judging by the published transcripts, the group possibly had ties with the Ukrainian secret service, which at that time was looking for people to undertake acts of sabotage and terror inside Russia.
— Is this subculture’s ideology homogenous, and how do they feel about the war and the Russian regime?
— Ideology has never been a strong part of this movement. I guess you could call them right-wing accelerationists: their main goals are to provoke a race war and create a racist state, bringing to life the plot of Turner Diaries, a fictional novel that has cult popularity in that milieu. They perceive the war between Russia and Ukraine as a bifurcation point: everything begins to collapse, and soon it will be possible to engage in racist terror more effectively.
Formally, they oppose the war, but not for humanistic reasons. They are in opposition to the authorities and criticize this war from a racist perspective, as a war between the whites instead of the interracial massacre that they dream about. The slogan “no war but racial war” [note: this is a perverse variation of the left-wing slogan “no war but class war”] is popular on these channels.
As absurd as it is, NS/WP often compare themselves to the Bolsheviks. They believe that the Bolsheviks were a strong-willed organization and that was what made them capable of starting a revolution. They of course ignore the political and theoretical component of Bolshevism.
— However, are there not also circles that gravitate toward the likes of the Rusich Group [note: a neo-Nazi paramilitary unit that since 2014 has fought in Ukraine alongside Russian troops]?
— This has also gradually become the case. At first, most neo-Nazi channels were against the war or took pro-Ukrainian positions. Eventually, opinions divided, and now it is difficult to determine which view dominates. Modern neo-Nazis are eclectic, but they have ever been thus. An affinity for violence and a certain lifestyle is what really brings those people together, while their ideological differences are situational and depend on aesthetic affections.
— Can we say that the state is being lenient to this subculture? Do you expect a return to the 2000s, when dozens of murders occurred every year and the movement had ties to the presidential administration?
— I wouldn’t say so, they are being caught and handed prison sentences. The situation now with violent crime in general is completely different from what it was twenty years ago. In the 1990s-2000s, the number of homicides related to crime and domestic violence was horrifying, at 25-30 per 100,000 people annually. Racist-inspired murders were not as noticeable against such a backdrop. If you look at current statistics, things have become relatively quiet in comparison (three or four homicides per 100,000 people). Securitization is on a different level nowadays: it has become impossible to do what neo-Nazis did in the 2000s. Far-right teenagers still try, but they quickly get caught. However, thanks to their Telegram activity, they can now gather not five idiots, but five hundred, although the environment as a whole is of course much bigger.
The content posted and distributed by neo-Nazi communities consists of racist propaganda, street violence, videos of terrorist attacks, and the fetishization of ethnic cleansing. Neo-Nazis fantasize about torture and mass murder, preparing themselves for it and cultivating hatred. They distribute manuals on how to make poisons, explosives, and other weapons. They are on the fringe of society: despite a growth in xenophobia, people who openly profess themselves as neo-Nazis are not well-liked by other people. And yet, they can carry out destructive activities and physical violence. The videos with attacks and fights are tools for recruiting people ready for political violence.
Today’s neo-Nazis are hardly a serious threat to the current regime: at most, they can cause inconvenience by arsoning and similar activities. However, they may well be dangerous for the left. The situation makes me think of the American movie The Parallax View. In the film, intelligence services conduct psychological tests in order to select unstable, violent psychopaths and use them for political assassinations. Online, though, it all happens of its own accord. You don’t need tests to select people, because they form interest groups without any assistance and can be recruited from these groups as necessary.
For example, the murder of nationalist politician and former member of parliament Iryna Farion in Ukraine in 2024 was a relatively high-profile assassination in the context of modern political terror that was carried out by a schoolchild, also from NS/WP circles. It is quite possible to imagine something like that happening in Russia, although they are unlikely to have the resources and skills to actually reach anyone in power.
— In addition to the street gangs, there are now ultra-right military units and “militias” like the “Russian Fraternity” who join the police in anti-migrant and homophobic raids. Are these interconnected and communicating environments?
— The key difference between them is generational. Subcultural neo-Nazis today are teenagers, while the Russian Fraternity’s target audience is people in their thirties. Generally speaking, though, these are intersecting communities. There are former street neo-Nazis among Russian Fraternity activists, and far-right youth may attend training sessions and events held by legal nationalists. People can move between roles. These environments also share online audiences and themes — all trying to incite hatred against those they consider “non-Russians.”
A military part of the movement also exists, such as the Española Battalion, made up of far-right football fans. Russian Fraternity vigilantes maintain relations with Española and make joint statements. I am not a military expert and cannot say how effective they are as a military unit. But they have invested a lot of resources in PR: they produce media content portraying themselves as strong, cool guys with drones and motorcycles, and state television produces stories about them. They tried to create their own private military company but were eventually included in the regular army after such companies were banned. There is also the Moscow Battalion, assigned to the 106th division of the Airborne Troops, a unit staffed with right-wing fans that is sponsored by ultra-conservative businessman Konstantin Malofeev.
Then, of course, there is the notorious Rusich Group, who made a name for themselves by employing openly racist and inhumane rhetoric. But they no longer take part in the war and are probably seen by the authorities as too toxic. At some point, they asked for a Crimean Tatar prisoner to be extradited to them for a sacrifice, which caused a backlash from a Duma deputy. As a result, Rusich deleted the post. Apparently, they don’t have strong institutional protection. They are perceived as not particularly trustworthy, as a toxic asset. They have a telegram channel called “Russian Sword,” which is followed by neo-Nazi but pro-Russian right-wingers. This is yet another separate segment of the far-right. As I have already said, it is mainly about the environment, within which people can easily fluctuate between a pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian position. The thugs who attack migrants with gas are mostly against the regime. Those who participate in the war on the Russian side are also in opposition to the regime, even if they won’t admit it for tactical reasons.
In the case of the Russian Fraternity, there have been several connections to street neo-Nazis. For example, a gang carried out a pogrom at an educational facility in Chelyabinsk in February 2023. The news of a school attack by people wearing masks and carrying weapons looked like a Columbine-style shooting and was broadcast on federal TV. Then it turned out that it was a group of right-wing hooligans assaulting migrant adolescents of the same age. They ran away from the attackers and hid in the school. The hooligans chased them inside, beat them up, and shot them with rubber bullets.
The thugs were later arrested and charged. Then the Russian Fraternity’s local branch started spreading rumors that they were ordinary guys who had come to protect their friends from the lawlessness of migrant youth. In fact, they were obviously full-on neo-Nazis. Soon enough, videos of their other attacks emerged, which were quite violent. As a result, the father of one of the attackers became the head of the Russian Fraternity’s Chelyabinsk branch, and this organization is still campaigning in their defense and insisting on their innocence.
There is also the case of the Nizhny Novgorod Council of Nationalists [NSN], a group of veteran right-wingers of the 2000-2010s generation. They held meetings in a basement and invited a dozen youngsters. The local Russian Fraternity tried to integrate them and make them their youth organization, taking them to shooting ranges and inviting them to training sessions. In the meantime, one of the NSN youth was assaulting migrants and eventually went to jail for it. That created problems for the NSN, while the Russian Fraternity pretended that it had nothing to do with it, although in fact they had cooperated closely. There are probably more such cases because the Russian Fraternity provides its members with resources for training, shooting ranges, and legal defense. On the one hand, street gangs have a contemptuous attitude toward the Fraternity, whom they see as FSB stooges, but on the other hand, they believe that this resource can and should be used.
— Tell us more about Russian Fraternity. It is surprising that they are allowed some freedom of assembly (marching at cross processions) and that in some places they have established close enough contact with the security forces to go on raids with them.
— The Fraternity is the most successful political startup since Navalny’s network. They have almost 150 regional branches, primarily in big cities. They emerged in 2022, and initially, their backbone was Orthodox activists opposed to abortion. Everything revolved around their own mutual support app. The app’s main feature was local chats facilitating cooperation on the basis of ethnic solidarity. Their slogan was “Russian Diaspora in Russia,” implying that ethnic Russians are being wronged in Russia, and therefore it is necessary to create a kind of diaspora, to stand up for each other, to help each other: in short, to do the things that the diasporas of ethnic minorities supposedly do in the far-right imagination.
The project of creating militias was there from the very beginning. The app had an SOS button, so in case of a conflict, a “Russian brigade” would come to its aid. This became a resource for growth. Actually, the fact that they had their own app from the get-go suggests that a decent amount of money was pumped into them: the truth is that the development and support of an iOS and Android app is quite expensive.
In 2022, the Russian Fraternity’s activities were mainly limited to helping the army, campaigning against abortion, and scolding anti-war activists, which meant that ordinary people did not care much about them. The growth began in 2023 along with an anti-migrant campaign in loyalist and entertainment media, above all on Telegram.
— You are saying that organizations that were created to help the military or go to Donbas with humanitarian aid or military goods have formed a backbone that is now engaged in raids and far-right activism. How are they organized and are there any other ultra right-wingers worth mentioning?
— The organization was formed by ultra-conservative nationalists who, immediately after February 24, 2022, began creating “patriotic initiatives” to support the military. In ideological terms, the Russian Fraternity and similar organizations share a set of values typical for Russian nationalism: anti-communism, Orthodoxy, radical loyalty to the state and Putin. Their rank-and-file members often say in interviews that the most important thing is that we don’t have a revolution. This is probably the whole point of their existence — to channel the energy of people who want to be socially active by “letting off steam” on migrants, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to become a strong combat and political force in case of political instability.
The only thing that distinguishes them from their predecessors is the absence of antisemitism or at least the lack of emphasis on it. The place of Jews today is taken by migrants from Muslim countries. I’d go as far as saying that antisemitism has become unpopular among the ultra-right. The majority of them support Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These vigilantes are paramilitary, while at the same time, they organize humanitarian aid for the war zone and establish contact with soldiers. They have run campaigns to support their “kin”: someone is fighting in the war, his family is vulnerable, so we need to protect them from some “non-Russians.” Such campaigns are regular as the ultra-right are trying to attract future veterans.
We should also add bloggers to the map of the far-right. Some have tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers. These channels’ content is youth-subcultural: sports, thrash metal, and so on. This right-wing lowlife scene has no clear ideology or political ambition; but these bloggers have their own niche and an audience that consumes and reproduces right-wing rhetoric. Many of them became popular by cosplaying Tesak. Then the thrash bloggers’ audience trickled down to the skinhead channels.
Racism is a key feature of all these environments, but it is framed in different ways. On the level of formal policy statements, the Russian Fraternity tries to pretend that they are not racist, although their racism is obvious in their daily statements and is exactly what attracts people to them.
— These developments have been accompanied by a sharp anti-migrant turn in state policy. What was this turn and was it related to the terrorist attack at the Crocus concert hall in March 2024?
— It is unrelated to the attack. The campaign was already underway at the end of 2022, and in 2023, harassment of migrants and raids increased. The patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church started adopting xenophobic rhetoric by the fall of 2023, which he hadn’t done before. The Duma began to discuss anti-migrant measures. A connection to the attack is a distortion created by the media.
It is hard to say what were the true reasons for the anti-migrant campaign. It was partly organic, because the far-right gained strength thanks to military propaganda, and when interest in that propaganda began to wane in late 2022, the right channeled their newly amplified resources into their usual hate agenda. Perhaps the elites from defense and law enforcement were also involved. But we don’t have any insider knowledge about this. We do have some well-known facts: that there were fewer immigrants in 2022-2023 than before COVID-19, that they committed and are committing fewer crimes than ethnic Russians, and that the whole problem was made up but has proved quite effective.
— What is your opinion on why the anti-migrant policy emerged? Could it be tied to the officials who greenlit the Russian Fraternity?
— Maybe it was the extreme right hyping up the subject or maybe it was a political decision made by the authorities. It is difficult to explain it rationally. The anti-migrant turn is taking place amid an acute labor shortage, and it is unclear how the authorities are going to solve this. Construction, production, and import substitution all require large labor resources. But these resources were diluted by sending people to war, after which the authorities started driving away migrants. There is now pushback from economic agencies, such as the Central Bank, which blamed labor shortage for high inflation, and even from the Presidential Administration.
There are various purposes for which this anti-migrant hysteria could be used. I had a theory that in 2022, when all eyes were on the war, the police agencies needed to justify why their personnel must not be sent to the battlefield. For this purpose, the security services and the media tied to them invented a surge in migrant crime and started pushing this agenda. In fact, data from the Interior Ministry and the courts do not show any such surge.
In 2023, the state tried to force migrants to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense in exchange for citizenship, and to call up to regular military service those who had already naturalized. There was a propaganda narrative that migrants lived in safety while “our boys” were dying on the battlefield, and so the migrants should also be sent to war. This narrative was quite common throughout 2023 but then disappeared. From an ethnonationalist point of view, this policy is absurd, because a migrant soldier, one, gets citizenship, and two, gets experience with weapons and organized violence. That is, the people who frightened the population with the idea of migrant crime were the same ones suggesting to hand out passports and machine guns to the migrants.
— What are the prospects for these aggregate right-wingers? Can the military far-right, the paramilitary far-right, and the street far-right unite for political purposes?
— They already regularly make joint political statements and relay them through their social media networks, reaching millions of followers. The main question is what happens if there is a ceasefire: whether the right, for example, should be allowed to control veterans’ organizations. The far-right has some ground to gain in this field. The political imagination of such activists goes back to the fascist movements of the early twentieth century, which were largely made up of World War I veterans. For example, the Azov movement in Ukraine [note: it is distinct from the Azov regiment] has worked with veterans, and after the limited military conflict in 2014-2015, it has been quite successful in doing so, influencing Ukraine’s domestic politics by speaking out on behalf of veterans. It depends on how the Russian far-right reacts to a ceasefire because they could inadvertently come into conflict with the administration if they push for a continuation of the war.
— Is there any reason to believe they wouldn’t aсcept a ceasefire?
— That’s what happened in 2014-2015. The far-right always wants to intensify the war, and also to unleash it somewhere else — in Kazakhstan, for example. Potentially, they are troublemakers. They are convenient for the authorities during a war, but afterward not so much. The political hope of fascism is based on the idea of war, on the idea of a rebirth of society and the state during a military crisis. Their stake is creating an authoritarian militaristic structure, accompanied by political and ethnic cleansing, which will result in the transformation of the state and nation into a different form. Warlord Igor Strelkov, who supported total mobilization, articulated this very clearly. A ceasefire would mean the end of their hopes.