Denis Nikitin arrived for an interview at a Kyiv restaurant flanked by two armed bodyguards and with a pistol strapped to his side. It would not have been a surprising sight in wartime Ukraine but for one detail: Nikitin is Russian.
Before Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine last year, Nikitin was a notorious Russian nationalist, who built links between far-right groups across Europe and was once a major figure on Russia's football hooliganism scene. These days, Nikitin runs the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK, to use its Russian abbreviation), a controversial unit of Russian citizens that fights alongside the Ukrainian army.
RDK, along with another group of Russians fighting on Kyiv's side, performed several cross-border raids this year, briefly seizing villages inside Russia before retreating to Ukraine.
The raids - captured in chaotic, high-energy videos posted online provided a huge PR boost for Kyiv, showing that the Kremlin could not control Russia's borders and is vulnerable to partisan attacks. Russian authorities labelled RDK "terrorists" and subjected Ukrainian cities to a heavier-than-usual bombardment of missiles in response.
Ukrainian officials suggest that, after the defeat of Russia and the collapse of the Putin system, RDK and units like it could be part of a pro-Ukrainian force that marches into Russia, perhaps seizing permanent control of parts of Russian territory.
But RDK is a complicated ally for Ukraine. Many of its members have far-right views. Nikitin, who grew up in Russia and Germany, has been banned from the Schengen zone since 2019 and has a reputation as one of Europe's most notorious neo-Nazis. He goes by the name White Rex, also the name of a brand of clothing he set up that uses far-right imagery.
This story is from the September 29, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the September 29, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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