https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_(Ukrainian_political_party)
Brotherhood (Братство) is a far-right political party founded by Dmytro Korchinsky as a splinter group of Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense:
Dmytro Korchynskyi heads the small radical party “Brotherhood”. Previously, he was one of the founders of the right-wing radical organization UNA-UNSO, from which he was expelled.
Before the Donbas War the party had affiliations with organisations in the Russian far-right from the Eurasia Movement, including Ukrainian branches of the National Bolshevik Party, the Youth Wing of the Eurasia Party, the Eurasian Youth Union, and the International Eurasian Movement, these ties ceased after the Eurasia Movement’s Anti-Ukrainian agenda became blatantly obvious:
In order to counter the largely imaginary threat of a “colour revolution” in Russia, the authorities sanctioned the creation of several “patriotic” youth movements: “Nashi” (Ours), “Rossiya molodaya” (Young Russia), “Molodaya gvardiya” (Young Guard), and some others. One of those movements wasEvraziyskiy soyuz molodezhi (Eurasian Youth Union, ESM) – under the leadership of Pavel Zarifullin and Valeriy Korovin – a National Bolshevik youth wing of Dugin’s Mezhdunarodnoe evraziyskoe dvizhenie (International Eurasianist Movement, MED). It is unclear who funded the ESM from 2005, but an analysis of the Russia-based Centre of Economic and Political Reforms shows that the ESM received several presidential grants amounting to more than 18.5 million Russian rubles in 2013-2014.
The ESM was active not only in Russia, but also in other countries, including Ukraine. During 2005-2007, branches of the ESM were established in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Sevastopol and some others. These branches cooperated with the Ukrainian cells of the Natsional-Bol’shevistskaya Partiya (National-Bolshevik Party), as well as with Ukrainian far right parties such as the Rus’ky blok (Russian bloc), the misleadingly named Prohresyvna sotsialistychna partiya Ukrainy (Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, PSPU) led by Natalya Vitrenko, and “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood) headed by Dmytro Korchynsky. Both Vitrenko and Korchynsky were members of the Highest Council of Dugin’s MED.
The Ukrainian branches of the ESM remained on the margins of the Ukrainian political life, while most of its activities were limited to anti-NATO protests and other similar anti-Western actions, and did not produce any significant result in terms of undermining the Ukrainian state. Moreover, some of the Ukrainian members of the ESM did not share the radical anti-Ukrainian ideas of Neo-Eurasianism. For example, after two Russian members of the movement and one Ukrainian activist of the ESM vandalised Ukrainian state symbols on the Hoverla mountain in 2007, this led to the split in the Ukrainian ESM, as many did not support this act of vandalism. This also led to the termination of any cooperation between the ESM and “Bratstvo”, and Korchynsky left the Highest Council of the MED. The radicals, however, welcomed the act and were outspoken in their resentment of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The party has ties to the former St Mary’s Battalion, formed by Brotherhood member Dmytro Linko, which was disbanded in 20161. Linko later formed a new unit called the Stugna Unit after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Some figures from Brotherhood, including Linko and Korchinsky’s wife, later acted as representatives for the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko2.
The party has also organised alongside the Katekhon movement:
On November 18, 2018, members of Tradition and Order, as well as members of the far-right groups Brotherhood and Katekhon, tried to disrupt an event in Kyiv marking the International Transgender Day of Remembrance according to participants in the march. A lack of police action enabled the right-wing radicals to hamper the event, including by using tear gas and smoke bombs and physically attacking several people, including journalists.12
After the 2022 Russian invasion, the party returned to the war effort, forming a unit called the Brotherhood Battalion:
The volunteers of the Bratstvo, Ukrainian for brotherhood, have a peculiar status, technically independent from Ukraine’s army but operating side by side with the official forces. Their arm’s-length status offers deniability.
Their work ranges from the kidnapping of senior Kremlin officials, to the destruction of key military infrastructure and the downing of enemy aircraft on Russian territory.
It might seem odd for a battalion such as theirs to allow their stories to be heard in public. But that is to misunderstand their purpose. In everything they do, there is a single message they want to send. “It is very easy for us to cross the Russian border,” says Vladyslav, the youngest of the three, with a smile.
Bratstvo, which means “brotherhood” in Ukrainian, is a political party led by Dmytro Korchynsky, a veteran of wars in the Caucasus fighting against Russian troops in the 1990s, who is reported to have ties to former Soviet and Ukrainian intelligence services. The party has been described variously as Christian nationalist and right-wing extremist. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, which began in February 2022, Bratstvo volunteers have been integrated with the ranks of the G.U.R. and mounted the first attacks into Russia last year and on Crimean soil this year.
Some Belarussian members later reportedly joined the Belarusian Volunteer Corps:
On December 25, 2022, Belarusian volunteers Ihor “Yanki” Yankov, Andriy “Bezsmertnyi” Trotsevsky and Rodion “Gena” Batulin announced the creation of the Belarusian Volunteer Corps, made up of several different Belarusian units that have been fighting the Russian Army in Ukraine.23
Previously, the leaders of the new formation were members of various volunteer units. Thus, “Yanki” gathered the commander of the Belarusian unit in the Ukrainian volunteer battalion “Brotherhood”, the machine gunner of the Ukrainian group “Tradition and Order”, the commander of the international battalion “Titan”. Before the start of the full-scale war, Rodion Batulin was known as one of the closest associates of Serhii “Botsman” Korotkyh, later he became a representative of the “Terror” battalion. This formation split from the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment in the summer of 2022 and operated as an independent unit before joining the Belarusian Volunteer Corps. 45
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Footnotes
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https://web.archive.org/web/20150218233615/http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/convicts-turned-cops-on-forefront-of-ukraines-battle-against-russia-381135.html ↩
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/between-frontline-and-parliament-ukrainian-political-parties-and-irregular-armed-groups-in-20142019/90BAFE7AA179511DA2B58240D943D8C4#:~:text=armed%20volunteer%20movement.-,The%20Radical%20Party%E2%80%99s%20list%20for%20the%20proportional%20part%20of%20the%202014,3,-The%20most%20prominent ↩