Thread by @pierrevaux

@michaeldweiss and I have a new report out for @4freerussia_org - Vile Bodies: How How Fascists, Cultists and Spooks Spearheaded Russia's War on Ukraine. 4freerussia.org/wp-content/upl…

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a fascist-led project since its inception. The security services employed small but overlapping networks of ultranationalists, anti-Semites and followers of a KGB-concocted cult.

The story begins during the collapse of the USSR, as the KGB embraced the ultranationalist Russian far right, first as pawns to control the opposition, but also a means to inculcate paranoid authoritarianism in the post-Communist state.

Much of the leading cast from the war in Ukraine first appeared in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which presaged the methods later employed in Donetsk and Luhansk, with Russia deploying spooks to run the statelet and intervening militarily when failure loomed.

These included Aleksandr Borodai, “prime minister” of the “Donetsk People's Republic” (DNR); Igor Girkin, an FSB officer turned “defense minister” of the DNR, since convicted in absentia in the Netherlands for downing MH17; and Olga Kulygina, a paramilitary posing as an academic.

The formative experience for the nationalists was the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, when the Supreme Soviet, backed by communists and nationalists, faced off against Yeltsin, leading to institutional paralysis. Yeltsin ended the crisis with violence and solidified power.

Despite vocal opposition to the government, Borodai, Girkin and Kulygina were embraced by the security services: Borodai boasted of his ties to the FSB; Girkin is FSB; and Kulygina, captured by Ukraine before being traded for 17 POWs, is believed by her captors to be GRU.

All first appeared in occupied Crimea in 2014; they then took leading roles in the Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine that same year.

Though much ground had already been laid for the invasion by Eurasianist fascists in the immediate aftermath of 2004’s Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

Members of an anti-Semitic neo-pagan conspiracy cult concocted by the KGB, “Concept of Public Security” or KOB popped up at pro-Russian protests around the country. As the Russian paramilitaries seized control in April 2014, they took over broadcasting at the Sloviansk TV center.

The uniformed man speaking was the late Major General Konstantin Petrov, the public face of KOB who recorded these lengthy lectures on “social control” in the 1990s. The cult’s doctrine was promoted via lectures in parliament and even FSB offices.

As the crisis developed into full blown warfare, Russian fascists and neo-Nazis deployed whole paramilitary units to Donbas.

Two of these groups, the Russian Imperial Movement and Rusich, would continue their adventuring abroad with Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group in Syria and Libya.

Almost all of these fascist actors returned to Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Borodai and Girkin (who hasn’t rejoined the war effort) have fallen out and condemned each other. Kulygina and Borodai formed the Union of Donbas Volunteers, with Kulygina now presenting herself as a “medic.” The group regularly hosts the neo-Nazis of Rusich.

Posting frequently on Telegram, Rusich has encouraged the murder of POWs and documented what are likely their own war crimes.

Once again, the KOB cult re-emerged, with long-time activist Kirill Stremousov appointed "deputy governor" in captured Kherson. Stremousov became the public face of the occupation in the region until his mysterious death in a purported car crash.

Stremousov is a perfect example of how many of these freakish, fringe-dwellers could be dismissed as irrelevant oddities until it's too late. This shouldn't surprise anyone studying the extreme far right in the West, but it's a point that needs to be made often.

Far from being a war to "de-Nazify" Ukraine, regardless of the real presence of neo-Nazi fighters in certain Ukrainian and allied units, this war was led by fascists and anti-Semites from the start.