2023-05-23 19:43:14
The team of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalnyimprisoned by the regime of Vladimir Putin, called a few days ago a day of mobilizations to everything Russia to protest next June 4 against the situation of their leader, who will spend that same day on his third birthday in solitary confinement. But as usually happens with the fractured Russian opposition, it didn’t take long for some voices to stand out. “Make calls to the peaceful protest and other ‘demonstrations of presence’ in Russia in full 2023 is an act of stupidity and sabotage. Don’t listen to the idiots who keep living like it’s 2013,” said the so-called Legion Freedom for Russia. The message stated that the protest will only serve to expose valuable activists and urged his followers to act from underground with the armed struggle as currency. “The People’s Guerrilla War in Russia it’s slow, but it’s inevitable,” he added.
This same one Legion Freedom for Russia starred on Monday, alongside the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the most daring incursion to date in the Kremlin’s sovereign territory of the paramilitary militias of Russian volunteers who fight in the service ofUkraine. In just a few hours they managed to take at least two towns in the border region of Belgradean assault that led to the evacuation of several villages and forced Moscow to activate an “anti-terrorist operation” to “liquidate” the “saboteurs». The situation in the area remains unclear, but the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that it had managed to drive the attackers from its territory after killing more than 70 militiamen.
In the absence of confirmation from independent sources, what has happened in recent days has served to give visibility to Russian paramilitary organizations that are fighting on the Ukrainian side and ultimately aspire to overthrow Putin’s regime. The first to form-will be the Legion Freedom for Russiacreated in March 2022 and initially composed by Army deserters i antics prisoners of war captured while fighting in Ukraine. In its manifesto it is read that it is composed of “free citizens of Russia who take responsibility for their actions and begin to fight for a new Russia». As emblems they use the white and blue flag of the Russian opposition, who recently managed to fly over the University of Moscow with the help of balloons, and the ‘L’ of the Legion, which some of their followers are painting on walls and walls of the motherland.
Its most visible boss is the former Russian deputy Ilya Ponomarevthe only member of the Duma who voted in 2014 against the annexation of Crimea. The gesture cost him a formal indictment for embezzlement, and two years later he ended up in exile in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the invasion, Ponomarev has emerged as the best-known representative of the Russian rebel movementofficially created on August 31, 2022 with the signature of theIrpin’s statement. That document, in which its signatories pledged to organize an armed front against the Putin regime and to recruit new cadres in Russia, was supported by the Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and theNational Republican Armya partisan network that operates clandestinely in Russia and was attributed in Augustmurder of Daria Duguinathe daughter of the Kremlin’s leading ideologue, Alexander Duguin.
A former vice president of Gazprombank in its ranks
According to some information, the members of the Legion, which would have two battalions, have fought in recent months in Donbassintegrated in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. An accession that formally came in August, when Ukraine changed the law to allow its legionnaires to integrate into its Armed Forces, as a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence told ‘The New York Times’. One of its members said in October that they had received “5,000 requests” from Russian citizens to join their ranks, although Ponomarev himself acknowledged this week that their numbers are still limited. “At the moment we don’t have enough forces to liberate Russia”, he said to the magazine ‘Newsweek’.
On their Telegram account, they periodically upload crypto accounts to raise funds. But it’s likely that they don’t lack money. In June, the former vice president of Gazprombank joined the Legion, Igor Volobuev, who is originally from the Ukrainian region of Sumi. “Our cause is just. Putin will be destroyed”, cried the Legion then after announcing the accession.
The Kremlin has not taken its activities in jest. From Moscow it is repeated that these militias are one product of Ukrainian espionage or, to use the words spoken this Tuesday by the former president Dmitri Medvédev,“slag” what «has to be exterminated with rates». In March, the Supreme Court of Russia declared the Legion “terrorist organization”.
Extreme right radicals
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At the ideological opposite of Ponomarev, who defines himself as an ultra-left politician, is the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), created in July 2022 and consisting mainly of far rightsome of whom have been fighting in Ukraine since 2014 in the ranks of the Azov battalion. their leader, Denis Nikitinis one of the Europe’s most notorious neo-Nazis. Born in Russia, immigrated to Germany when he was a teenager and it didn’t take him long to make a name for himself among the ultras of the Colony. “I don’t like football, I like fights,” he told a Ukrainian magazine in 2017. That same year he moved to Ukraine, where he dedicated himself to organizing MMA fightsone of the most extreme forms of martial arts and to promote his roba brand White Rexwhich is based on Nazi symbology.
The number of members of the RDK is unknown, but it is not the first time that its cadres have led incursions into Russian territory. In March, Moscow accused them of killing two civilians in the border region of Briansk. “The main thing was to remind the Russians that they don’t have to live in chains”, he said shortly afterwards to the ‘Financial Times’ regarding the attack. You can and must take up arms. We will support anyone who wants to remove the usurpers of the Kremlin from power».
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