Previous Subchapter → 5.1 The Dugin Connection
Sourced from Meet Alexei Milchakov. He, like some of the other Pro-Russian groups we just talked about, was featured in our little montage of the Russian far-right in the original Ukraine Narratives documentary, he’s not one of the weird “Eurasianists” or “National Bolsheviks”, he’s a classic Nazi, he even says so himself!
Milchakov, commander of "Rusich" group fighting for Russia in Ukraine:
— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) September 5, 2022
"I'm a Nazi, I'm a Nazi. I won't elaborate whether I'm a nationalist, a patriot or imperialist. I say directly: I'm a Nazi. I can raise my hand in Nazi salute"
(interview to Provsvirnin, Sputnik and Pogrom) pic.twitter.com/Yjr64UXlz2
Alexei here is the commander of the Rusich Group, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary we could best describe as Russia’s answer to the Azov Battalion, they even like to use the same symbols, with their main logo being the Kolovrat, a variant of the Black Sun which uses 2 swastikas instead of 3.
The Kolovrat was introduced to the Fascist world by Russian Neo Nazi Alexey Dobrovolsky, who is said to have described it as representing a “national liberation struggle” against the “Zhyd yoke” which coincides with the Nazi swastika, in case you don’t know what “Zhyd” means, he’s talking about the Jews.
Rusich has also happily shown off other Neo Nazi symbols on their social media, including the original Black Sun and the Tyr rune and even the SS Totenkopf, they are possibly the most openly Nazi group we’ve found, and yet this doesn’t stop them mingling with the so-called “Denazifiers” of Ukraine.
For example, one Pro-Russian publication complained back in 2016 that Milchakov had been granted an audience with Sergey Aksenov, the Russian governor of Crimea, complaining that the “holy cause” in Donbas was being damaged by the endorsement of someone who was “100% Nazi” and “inspired by Adolf Hitler”.
They also described another disturbing part of Milchakov’s backstory, his enthusiasm for publicising his violence, noting that he had posted pictures of himself beheading a puppy to social media platform VK, and continued to mock the dead of the war by posting pictures of Ukrainian corpses.
So essentially, the Rusich Group are a bunch of Neo Nazi psychopaths, and yet because they fight on the Russian side of the war, they’re allowed to take up arms and wield power in a warzone.
Rusich is also known to have ties to the Wagner Group PMC, who anyone following this conflict must be aware of by now, but Wagner Group isn’t just relevant for being a dodgy combat unit made up of convicts, oh no, these “Denazifiers” also have a lot of ties to Nazism as well.
Wagner’s founder, Dmitry Utkin, is rather infamous, and it’s easy to see why, if you search up his name you’ll quickly come across pictures of him bare chested where his tattoos are easily spotted, he apparently decided to ink himself up with an SS Hauptsturmführer rank insignia, as well as the national emblem of the Third Reich, the Reichsadler, according to Bellingcat, even the name of the Wagner Group is a reference to Nazism.
Another investigative outlet called the Dossier Center also uncovered alleged leaked internal documents of the Wagner Group signed by Utkin, where he used the SS logo as his signature and went as far as ending his messages to Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin with “Heil Petrovitch”, “Petrovitch” being one of Prigozhin’s aliases.
When confronted with this information by news outlet The Daily Beast, Prigozhin is said to have flown into a rage, ranting that “In order to defeat Nazism, you must try it on yourself. Dmitry Utkin is trying Nazism on for fuck’s sake.”, he then encouraged curious journalists to check out Utkin’s dick, classy!
Just in case that wasn’t clear enough, when the Wagner Group was involved in combat in Libya fighting for warlord Khalifa Haftar, they decorated their surroundings with Nazi symbols, Anti-Muslim slogans and Germanic Pagan runes.
And yet once again none of this seemed to be a barrier for the “Denazifiers” of Ukraine, here we can see Mr Utkin meeting with President Putin, displaying 4 medals for bravery, Utkin is over there on the far-right.
Sourced from https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/08/14/pmc-structure-exposed/
And of course, this turned out to be a disaster to the Kremlin, because Wagner eventually decided to launch their mutiny against the Russian government in mid 2023, nearly starting a civil war in the process, even after this the Wagnerites were treated leniently by the Russian government, with Wagnerites who didn’t want to reintegrate with Russia’s military being allowed to leave for Belarus or Wagner’s outposts in foreign countries like the Central African Republic.
Of course, Prigozhin being the leader of the mutiny, he didn’t get off so lightly, falling victim to what the Kremlin called an aviation accident and what Wagner supporters called a murder, Utkin was also on the plane crash that saw the Wagner leadership demoted to the rank of “ash pile”, so for once we have to give credit where it’s due, Russia on this occasion pulled off a successful “Denazification”.
But let’s not forget that Utkin’s worldview wasn’t what turned him off to the Kremlin, it was only when he and his compatriots pulled off a near civil war that Russia’s leadership finally started cracking down on this particular element of their Nazi problem; Despite the fact that the Kremlin and its supporters are always screaming at the top of their lungs about the Nazis in Ukraine, they didn’t seem to take the Nazi problem in their own country very seriously either, happily welcoming blatant Fascists into their ranks, just as the Ukrainians did after the Euromaidan, despite the obvious problems that brought.
And even though they did chop off the heads of this beast, the Kremlin has still welcomed the Wagnerites into their ranks since the demise of their top brass, rather than disbanding Wagner after the mutiny, the Kremlin integrated it into Russia’s National Guard, with Prigozhin’s son Pavel reportedly becoming the group’s new Fuhrer, while the Rusich PMC has been allowed to continue operating as an unaligned militia group, even being given extra responsibilities patrolling parts of Russia’s border, so even when Russia does try its hand at Denazification, they’re about as thorough as Andriy Melnyk and his magnifying glass.
On top of all this, Wagner and Rusich aren’t the only dodgy PMC groups involved in the Ukraine conflict, a UN report has singled out at least 7 of them, and several more involved in other conflict zones of interest to Russia, one of these companies, the so-called “E.N.O.T. Corp” also has ties to this Neo-Nazi umbrella.
The E.N.O.T. Corp was formed as an affiliate of 2 Russian nationalist groups, “Bright Rus” and the “People’s Cathedral”, under the patronage of Pro-Russian separatist politician Alexander Borodai, and it took on some Rusich affiliates as “instructors” at training camps, teaching martial arts, weapons and medical techniques, as well as “far-right, imperialist” “patriotic education” sessions, according to an article from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.