Thread by @ColborneMichael

🧵

The ‘Russian Volunteer Corps’ (RDK), the combat unit on the 🇺🇦 side who claims to have made an incursion into Bryansk 🇷🇺 (i.e., likely not a 'false flag'), are led by a figure well known to myself and those who follow the transnational far right: Denis Kapustin (aka Nikitin)

The RDK was founded in Aug 2022, made up largely of ostensible anti-Putin Russian far-right extremists in Ukraine. Kapustin, leader, is a Moscow-born neo-Nazi who spent time living in Cologne 🇩🇪 and speaks German and English fluently in addition to his native Russian

Do any simple search of ‘Denis Nikitin’ and you’ll find out what you need to know: a violent far-right extremist who has long been active organizing European combat sports events, combat training sessions and other transnational far-right extremist events themoscowtimes.com/2017/11/28/neo…

Kapustin, like some other far-right Russians, has long had links with Ukraine’s far right, as we @Bellingcat have written about. Kapustin at one time was a key cog in the Azov movement's once-prominent international outreach efforts (@ChristopherJM) rferl.org/a/azov-ukraine…

In 2018, however, Kapustin landed himself in trouble. As I write in my book on Ukraine’s Azov movement, Kapustin was arrested that October and charged with being part of a drug manufacturing ring, facing up to ten years in prison. In the end, he managed to escape punishment

But he got in more trouble that put a damper on his int’l activities — Germany banned him from Schengen in 2019, largely confining him to Ukraine. While there’s no hard proof, apparently German intel thought he might have ties to Russian security services spiegel.de/panorama/justi…

Since then, Kapustin kept on with his activities in Ukraine, including playing a lead pre-invasion role in some ugly anti-LGBT+ efforts — and maintaining his friendship with American Rob Rundo, currently holed up in Bulgaria despite his love for Serbia

https://twitter.com/ColborneMichael/status/1630569562516369409?s=20

Rundo, as I’ve alluded to in a few articles in tweets but never really stated outright, is very likely pro-Russia now, despite his past travels to Ukraine and onetime support from the country.

(People on the far right reading this…think about it, guys, come on)

Ironically, I emailed Kapustin last week about this, asking what he thought about Rundo not once speaking out in support of Ukraine and aligning with the largely pro-Russian Serbian far right. Apparently not a big deal for Kapustin — all he replied with was a dumb soyface meme

Fast forward to today, as Kapustin brags about his far-right ‘unit’ making an incursion into Russia, and people on this platform stating, evidence-free, that this was some ‘false flag.’ No, likely not; this was something Ukraine’s military intelligence very likely signed off on!

So how does this all help Ukraine?

It doesn’t.

What did this ‘op’ achieve? A combat unit led by an infamous (alleged) criminal neo-Nazi who’s banned from most of Europe, doing PR-focused things that could give Putin even more (BS) rhetorical justification for Russian attacks?

In short, to end the thread: Ukraine, you don’t need the RDK and you don’t need Kapustin

(also hi denis)

Some questioning the assertion that Ukraine's military intel likely signed off on the op. Their spokesperson is not exactly denying anything: "a continuation of the transformation of Russia, its purification and liberation from Putin's dictatorship"

themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/02/mos…

"...a Ukrainian military intelligence official, Andriy Yusov, said "these are people who are fighting with arms against the Putin regime and those who support him... Perhaps Russians are beginning to wake up, realise something and take some concrete steps"
bbc.com/news/world-eur…