Who are the anti-Putin militias in focus for the attack in a Russian border region

2023-05-26 23:21:26

As Russian anti-Kremlin militias in Ukraine prepared their risky foray into Russia’s Belgorod region this week, a man with slicked-back hair, camouflage clothing and an automatic rifle stared into a camera lens.

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“We are Russians like you,” he said in a recording, which was later uploaded to the Internet. “We are people like you; We want our children to grow up in peace and to be free people to travel, study and be happy in a free country, but this is not possible in Putin’s modern Russia, rotten to the core by corruption, lies, censorship, repression and restriction of freedoms.

The man on the recording was Maximillian Andronnikov, a self-proclaimed commander of the Russian Freedom Legion, a paramilitary group that, until this week, has been criticized for its excessive activity on the Internet and in the media. Nicknamed ‘Caesar’, Andronnikov has also been the media spokesperson for the group, which has tried to act in the background by keeping the identity of its members secret.

But this week’s raids in southern Russia have turned all eyes on both the Russian Freedom Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, another group made up of Russians who now claim to be fighting Putin.

Connections to the Russian far right

According to their profiles, among the Russian guerrillas there are several veterans of anti-Kremlin groups. Many, especially among the members of the Russian Volunteer Corps, have connections to far-right Russian organizations. In a photo taken in April, Andronnikov appears next to the acquaintance neo-nazi Denis Nikitin in the place where the Russian Volunteer Corps organizes mixed martial arts fights.

Andronnikov himself was once a member of the Russian Imperial Movement (IRM), an ultranationalist group that publicly opposes Vladimir Putin but has also deployed pro-Russian fighters in the war since 2014.

The independent Russian news agency Agentstvo published earlier this year a photograph from a 2011 Russian march showing Andronnikov alongside Denis Gariev, the head of the MRI’s paramilitary arm. According to an IRM member who knows him, Andronnikov left the group before the war in Ukraine began in 2014.

Andronnikov was born in Sochi, and later lived in St. Petersburg. In 2012, he was called to testify as a witness in a trial for an alleged military coup planned by several men from the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. Andronnikov, who at the time was the head of a St. Petersburg “military patriotic club”, was not charged.

The plot was linked to Vladimir Kvachkov, a hardline retired colonel. He was thrown in jail after members of his group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Russia, were accused of training with crossbows in a plot to overthrow the government.

When the Russian invasion began in 2022, Andronnikov quit his job as an archery coach and rushed to Ukraine, where he has been fighting on Kiev’s side ever since. Earlier this year he said his ultimate goal was to remove Putin from power.

Before the assault on the Belgorod region, he said that he had been fighting near the city of Bakhmut. “I am a good Russian and on the other side there are bad Russians,” he said in another interview earlier this year. “And I kill them every day.”

Defectors from the espionage services

In the militias there are also deserters from the Russian intelligence services. Former FSB agent Ilya Bogdanov left Russia via Ukraine in 2014 and, five years later, narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt by his country’s secret services. Video of the raids released this week shows Bogdanov stealing a Russian BTR-82A armored personnel carrier during fighting.

Around 10 fighters from the Russian Freedom Legion and another 30 from the Russian Volunteer Corps met with the press in a field on Wednesday, a meeting that was also their victory lap after the assaults in Belgorod, which were the first sustained combat on Russian soil since the war began.

It is the first show of force by the two organizations, which appear to have access to US-made weapons and armored vehicles. The White House has communicated that it is evaluating the information according to which the militias used MRAP M1224 MaxxPro supplied by the US. Russia has stated that this would amount to further US involvement in the war.

The Ukrainian authorities have denied any relationship with the militias, while expressing evident satisfaction that Russia faces a threat similar to that of the unmarked soldiers and groups proxy that Moscow used against Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas in early 2014.

The joke has spread to call the Belgorod region the “Bilhorod People’s Republic”, a reference to the Ukrainian regions that have been captured by Russia. “BREAKING: Putin announces another Special Military Operation to defend Russian-speaking Russians from Russians invading Russia from Russia,” read another.

Translation by Francisco de Zárate.