It used to be common for the Ukrainian régime’s apologists to trivialize the prominence of neofascists by distracting us with Russian neofascists, the implication being that Russian neofascists hate all things Ukrainian. No doubt some do, but long-time readers of this subcommunity should know by now that many neofascists are not at all shy about transnational collaboration. Russian neofascists are no exception, even when it comes to Ukraine:
A group led by Mikhail Oreshnikov, a Russian-Ukrainian neo-Nazi, soon highlighted NS/WP for its militant resistance against the Russian war effort. Oreshnikov and his “Coalition” are loosely connected to the Post-Russia Forum. Although the Banderites refused to cooperate with Russians during the Cold War, now they might find themselves playing second-fiddle to Russian neo-Nazis, who have prominent roles in the Azov movement and the Ukraine-backed “Russian resistance.”
Before he went to Ukraine, Oreshnikov belonged to a group led by Russia’s most infamous neo-Nazi (Maxim “Tesak” Martsinkevich). Later Oreshnikov participated in the “Revolution of Dignity,” joined the Azov Battalion, and became a citizen of Ukraine.
Oleh Dunda, the member of parliament from Zelensky’s party, met with Oreshnikov in the spring of 2023, just days before this Russian neo[fascist] co-founded the “Alliance of Indigenous Peoples,” which ostensibly united more than a dozen groups to destroy the “Evil Empire” from within. The Alliance also formed a Military Council, at least on paper, that included a couple units from Ukraine’s military intelligence service: the far-right “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood) and Chechen “Sheikh Mansur” battalions.
Mikhail Oreshnikov and Oleh Dunda, 2023Since 2023, Oreshnikov has led a “Chuvash-Volga-Bulgarian Diplomatic Council,” which supposedly represents the indigenous people in Russia’s Chuvash Republic. Almost a year later, he merged his Alliance of Indigenous Peoples with a few other groups to form the Coalition.
Although this organization does not openly work with the new ABN, it is reminiscent of the historic ABN, which claimed to be coordinating potent resistance movements in the communist Evil Empire—but in this case Russian neo[fascists] have replaced the Banderites.
October 2023 press conference: “Permanent Genocide as a State Policy of Russia.” Seated left to right: Servant of the People MP Oleh Dunda, “Cardinal” from the neo[fascist] Russian Volunteer Corps, and Mikhail Oreshnikov. “Cardinal” even argued that "the Kremlin authorities are carrying out a genocide of the Russian people," by transforming them into "a multinational people, an exact copy of the Soviet man." A year later, the Russian newspaper Izvestia revealed that this alleged ideologist of the Russian Volunteer Corps is the son of Zelensky’s friend who directed his former TV show, “Servant of the People.”The Alliance of Indigenous Peoples co-founded the Coalition in the spring of 2024 with the “Assembly of National Resistance,” the Georgian-Ukrainian “Caucasian Union” military committee, and the Pan-Finnish “Suur-Suomen Sotilaat” (SSS, Soldiers of Greater Finland). According to the SSS, it “cooperates with right-wing radical movements in Finland and Estonia.”
For example, a white nationalist “Active Club” in Oulu, Sweden reported in October 2023 that SSS members participated in one of their martial arts training sessions. A year earlier, SSS representative Artur Ankkalainen told the third Post-Russia Forum in Gdansk, Poland, “The question that our organization raises is the question of the relevance of blood and our blood family.”
Dmitry Kuznetsov, the head of “Stop the Occupation of Karelia,” also spoke at the third Post-Russia Forum, which produced the “Gdansk Manifesto: a Plan for the Reconstruction of Post-Russia States.” This document called on EU and NATO states “to refuse support and any form of assistance to the imperial ‘Russian opposition’” and instead liberate various Russian cities and territories — for example, the Republic of Karelia, which borders Finland, although there are relatively few ethnic Karelians left (~25,000 or ~5.5% of the population).
Less than two years later, Kuznetsov broke with the “Karelian National Movement” affiliated with the neo[fascist] “Karelian National Battalion (‘Nord’)” which joined the Coalition and fights alongside the Azovite “Russian Volunteer Corps” for Ukraine’s military intelligence service. The “movement,” which is closely linked to the SSS—in fact, they appear to have merged—says that it “unites ethnoactivists fighting for Karelia’s independence,” against “neo-Bolshevism.”
The Karelian “Nord” unit“I’m tired of the fake accusations of the Russian Nazis who collaborated with the Russian special services and called themselves the KND [Karelian National Movement],” Kuznetsov said in January 2024, who decided to speak out “so that every nationalist representative of indigenous peoples from other republics could learn how Russian Nazis replaced nationalism in Karelia.”
As for Mikhail Oreshnikov’s Chuvash resistance movement, that includes “Nukhrat Palkhar” (Silver Bulgaria), named for a medieval state in present-day Chuvashia and Tatarstan, which also joined the Coalition. Nukhrat Palkhar has shared neo[fascist] content on its Telegram channel, and last year announced its cooperation with “Shanyrak,” a neo[fascist] youth group in Kazakhstan that recently dissolved.
Images from “Shanyrak,” on the right announcing cooperation with Coalition member “Nukhrat Palkhar.”The Coalition formed a “National Security Council” in October 2024. Members include Nukhrat Palkhar, the Karelian “Nord” unit, a Russian partisan group “Skrepach” (Violinist) that posted antisemitic fliers in the city of Krasnodar, and the Russian Cossack group “Ezikovy Ertaul” (“Ѣзиковъй Ѣртаул”). The last group spearheaded a small “Free Cossack” detachment in Ukraine’s openly neo[fascist] “Russian Volunteer Corps.”
Paul Goble, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation (who raised the idea of a new ABN years ago), has said that Ezikovy Ertaul “presents perhaps the most cogent argument yet on why Cossackia must gain independence and why the West should support that goal.”
