Russia Matters, 6/9/23

More than two-thirds of the residents of 11 EU countries polled by ECFR view Russia as an adversary or rival, but also an average of more than two-thirds of the April poll’s respondents think their country should enter into a partnership with Russia if its war with Ukraine ends in a negotiated peace. The poll, which was conducted in Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden, also revealed 26% of respondents viewed Russia and China as equal partners, while 13% viewed them as unequal partners and 9% did not see Moscow and Beijing as partners at all. (This week alone has seen Russian and Chinese militaries conduct joint strategic air patrols and announce the participation of Russian troops in the PLA’s North. Interaction-2023 exercises.)

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 6/18/23

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday met with African leaders in St. Petersburg and displayed a document that he said was a draft treaty on Ukrainian neutrality that was drawn up during negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022.

“As you know, a string of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey so as to work out both the confidence-building measures you mentioned and to draw up the text of the agreement,” Putin told the African delegation, according to TASS.

“We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is,” he added.

According to RT, the treaty, titled “Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine,” required Ukraine to enshrine “permanent neutrality” in its constitution. The US, Britain, Russia, China, and France are listed as guarantors. Since the treaty was a draft, it indicates that it wasn’t finalized and more details needed to be worked out.

Putin’s claim reflects an article published in Foreign Affairs last year that cited multiple former senior US officials who said Russia and Ukraine tentatively agreed on a peace deal in April 2022. They said the agreement would have involved a Ukrainian promise not to join NATO in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to the pre-invasion lines, and Ukraine would have received security guarantees from several countries.

Russian and Ukrainian officials met face-to-face in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, which was followed up with virtual consultations. After the meeting, Russia’s lead negotiator described the talks as “constructive,” and the Russian Defense Ministry announced it would “drastically” reduce military activity near the northern cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv, which led to a full Russian withdrawal from the north.

Putin said after the Russian withdrawal, Ukraine abandoned the treaty. “After we pulled our troops away from Kiev — as we had promised to do — the Kiev authorities … tossed [their commitments] into the dustbin of history,” he said. “They abandoned everything.”

Ukraine accused Russian troops of intentionally killing civilians in the northern areas it withdrew from, most notably in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. But if Putin’s account is true, Western pressure could have also led to Ukraine scuttling the treaty.

Then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv on April 9, 2022, a few days after Russia completed its withdrawal from the north. According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda, Johnson urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia and that even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Putin, Kyiv’s Western backers were not.

The Ukrainska Pravda report said at the time, Russia was ready for a Putin-Zelensky meeting, but two factors stopped it from happening: the discovery of dead Ukrainian civilians and Johnson’s visit.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet was trying to mediate between Putin and Zelensky in March 2022 and gave a similar account of the West’s position. He said the US and its allies “blocked” his mediation effort and that he thought there was a “legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin” and not negotiate.

After peace talks were scuttled in April 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he expected the conflict to end after the Istanbul talks but then realized some countries in NATO wanted to prolong the war to “weaken” Russia. A few days after Cavusoglu’s comments, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin admitted that one of the US’s goals in supporting Ukraine is to see Russia “weakened.”

As the war has dragged on, the Biden administration has come out explicitly against a ceasefire. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the position earlier this month and said the US would continue building up Ukraine’s military rather than push for peace.

The African leaders who met with Putin on Saturday traveled to Russia and Ukraine to push for peace talks and an end to the war, but the chances of new negotiations between the warring sides are slim. The delegation included the presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia, the prime minister of Egypt, and the foreign ministers of the Republic of Congo and Uganda.

The African delegation was in Ukraine on Friday, but Zelensky did not seem open to their proposals and reiterated his position that peace talks can’t happen until a full Russian withdrawal. In Moscow, the Kremlin said that the peace initiative presented by the African delegation “is very difficult to implement, difficult to compare positions.”

By Phil Miller, Declassified UK, 6/8/23

A Russian football hooligan leading cross-border raids from Ukraine taught at a neo-Nazi camp in Wales where organisers dreamed of recreating Hitler’s SS.

The leader of an anti-Putin militia has disturbing links to an extreme-right wing movement banned in Britain, Declassified has found.

Denis Kapustin, who also uses the names Denis Nikitin and ‘White Rex’, was an instructor at a far-right camp in Wales in 2014.

His presence was noted by a Sunday Mirror investigation that year.

More recently, the White Rex has been in the news for leading the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).

They are a group of armed dissidents launching raids into Russia from their base in Ukraine since March.

At least two civilians and a child have been killed in their attacks so far, with another 13 wounded.

While the RDK’s far-right ideology was belatedly noted in media reports, the fact its leader spent time teaching neo-Nazis in Britain has so far been forgotten.

He taught at the Sigurd Culture Camp in the Brecon Beacons in August 2014, which was designed to “enthuse them with a sense of racial pride, and to awaken the ‘Spirit Warrior’ within”.

Camp organiser Craig Fraser wanted to recreate Hitler’s SS by drilling his men into shape – and even planned to show footage from ISIS training in Syria at the next session.

The Sunday Mirror said a “key trainer at the event…was Denis Nitikin [sic], the owner and organiser of White Rex, a Russian martial arts and cage fighting club.”

Yesterday immigration minister Robert Jenrick refused to tell parliament what information the Home Office holds on Kapustin’s visit to the UK in 2014 or whether he had since been banned from entering the country, claiming not to comment on individual cases.

‘Go kick some immigrants’

In Wales, Kapustin taught over 30 participants how to deal with “attackers armed with knives” in “gruelling full contact practice fighting from which participants often emerged bruised but undaunted”.

When not fighting, organisers “spoke at length about the virtues of…our Pagan spiritual heritage”.

Anti-fascist research group Hope Not Hate found the Sigurd camp was a front for National Action, a neo-Nazi group later banned in the UK under the Terrorism Act for praising the murder of MP Jo Cox.

Two National Action figures who attended the training camp, Christopher Lythgoe and Matthew Hankinson, were later jailed for a total of 14 years for their involvement with the group.

German authorities reportedly banned Kapustin from entering Europe in 2019. He once had a framed photo of Joseph Goebbels in his bedroom and has been heavily engaged in football hooliganism across the continent.

When living in Moscow, he enjoyed hosting forest fights between hooligans after which they would “go kick some immigrants”.

The enemy of my enemy…

Despite Kapustin’s links to a banned British neo-Nazi group and violent racism, he has obtained Western arms in Ukraine for his rebellion against Russia – and appears to receive support from Ukrainian military intelligence (the GUR).

A GUR spokesman called RDK members “one of those forces that will be shaping the future configuration of post-Putin Russia.”

Yet in one Telegram message from May, Kapustin called for Russians to support him by praising the: “Glory of the Great Russian Empire!”

Journalist Leonid Ragozin has said that after the RDK attacked Bryansk region of Russia in March, Kapustin mocked a Muslim boy wounded in the attack over his mixed Tajik/Tartar heritage.

He placed swastikas over photos of his family and wrote: “Russia will be Aryan or lifeless”.

Mark Galeotti, author of the book Putin’s Wars, told Declassified: “I imagine Ukraine will use any weapon at its disposal against Russia, and if this means arming and supporting a neo-Nazi well, so long as he proves a capable leader and can attract like-minded fighters to the cause of challenging the Putin regime, so be it. 

“Churchill’s famous quote that ‘If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons’ springs to mind. 

“This is, after all, only a very small element of the overall war effort and Ukrainian military intelligence, GUR – which seems largely behind these pro-Kyiv Russian forces – is trying to distract and torment the Kremlin, and neo-Nazis certainly fit that bill.”

Maxim Solopov, a journalist who has investigated Russian neo-Nazis, said on his Telegram channel that a White Rex social media account had almost 45,000 subscribers by 2020. 

He estimated that even if only 1% of them remained active, it would give Kapustin around 500 supporters – some of who could be in Moscow, where pro-RDK graffiti has recently appeared.

Western weaponry

Photos from Kapustin’s recent raid in the Belgorod region of Russia show US-made armoured vehicles in his group’s convoy.

Earlier footage posted on the RDK’s Telegram channel indicates they have operated US-made rocket launchers – known as High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) – which cost around $5m each.

For small arms, Kapustin’s men do not all have to rely on rusty kalashnikovs, with some wielding sophisticated Belgian-made FN SCAR assault rifles. This has triggered concern from Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander de Croo, as to how weapons meant for Ukraine have ended up in the group’s hands. 

Swedish Pansarskott rocket launchers are also in Kapustin’s arsenal. And some of his men can be seen wearing camouflage smocks embroidered with union jacks, suggesting their uniforms might come from British army stocks. 

The RDK’s activities have not been limited to cross-border raids. They were responsible in December for guarding Snake Island, Ukraine’s famous outpost in the Black Sea. When a CNN reporter met them there, he omitted to mention the group’s neo-Nazi associations.

Their maritime capabilities often feature in Telegram posts, with members showing off amphibious landings from inflatable boats. 

They even claim to have landed in Zaporizhzhia, where Russian troops are occupying Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. 

Russian friends

Kapustin moved to Ukraine in 2017 following an invitation from Sergei Korotkikh, who founded Russia’s National Socialist Society and is accused of beheading a migrant beneath a swastika flag.

Declassified has previously revealed how Korotkikh obtained five rocket launchers Britain supplied to Ukraine, on whose side he now fights.

Prominent Russian neo-Nazis flocking to join the RDK include Aleksey Levkin, from the band Hitler’s Hammer. He organised the annual National-Socialist Black Metal festival in Kyiv. 

He is heavily involved with the Wotanjugend Telegram channel, which promoted the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 Muslims at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Levkin posted a photo of a British-made NLAW rocket launcher with the caption “mastering NLAW”, suggesting he was learning to use the UK-supplied anti-tank weapon.

Freedom of Russia Legion

Another anti-Putin militia fighting alongside White Rex is the Freedom of Russia Legion, which also has far-right figures involved in its Ukraine-based leadership.

The Legion’s commander, Maximillian ‘Caesar’ Andronnikov, is a former member of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which was designated as a global terrorist group by the US State Department in 2020.

The then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said RIM “has provided paramilitary-style training to white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Europe”, linking their alumni to the bombing of refugee shelters in Sweden.

Vladimir Putin says his illegal invasion of Ukraine is needed to “de-nazify” the country, a claim which has been widely derided, partly owing to President Zelensky’s Jewish heritage.

Increasing evidence of the role played by neo-Nazis in attacking Russian soil from Ukraine will only fuel the Kremlin’s narrative.

This week the New York Times said some journalists asked Ukrainian soldiers to remove Nazi emblems on their uniforms before photographing them.

They expressed concern that the use of such patches “risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.”

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Link here.

Full written transcript here.

By Kyle Anzalone, The Libertarian Institute, 6/8/23

Two recent reports have uncovered billions in trade between members of the North Atlantic alliance and Russia, after the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last year. 

Corisk, a Norwegian risk-management firm, issued a report in May detailing billions in trade between Russia and Western states that transited through a third nation. “This report presents total estimates of Western circumventions of sanctions against Russia.” The report states, “Through a combination of top-down and bottom-up methodological approaches, we estimate the indirect trade of 16 Western countries with Russia at 8 billion Euros of indirect exports via third countries, and the indirect imports at 6 billion Euros via third countries in 2022.”

Corisk believes third-party counties are used to circumvent sanctions on Moscow. “This means that the indirect exports, largely likely to be circumventing sanctions, represented almost one-fifth of all Western exports ending up in Russia.” It continued, “The main Western countries behind most indirect exports to Russia in 2022 were Germany (2.05 billion Euros), Lithuania (1.45 billion), the United States (980 million), Poland (725 million), Japan (575 million), Czech Republic (490 million), France (400 million), and the Netherlands (290 million).”

A second study conducted by the Atlantic Council accuses Turkey of acting as a “critical” economic lifeline for Russia. “Although Turkish exports of electronic machinery, including critical integrated circuits, fell in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, they have since recovered and grown well beyond the pre-invasion average,” the report stated. “From March 2022 to March 2023, Turkish electronic exports to Russia jumped by about 85%.”

It added, Turkey’s “trade with Russia remains a vital economic lifeline for its businesses as the country recovers and reconstructs from a devastating earthquake earlier this year.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, President Joe Biden pledged to “cripple” Moscow’s economy with a sanctions package the White House compared to an “economic nuclear weapon.”

Part of the reason the economic war failed to harm Moscow’s ability to wage war in Ukraine is that the global community has largely refused to comply with the Western sanctions. The participants in the economic war are limited to Washington and its close allies. 

The Atlantic Council – a group funded by the US and UK governments – acknowledged that refusal to enforce sanctions is not condoning the war in Ukraine. “Such surges in trade, however, are not necessarily an indicator of support” for the war, the report says. “Instead, it is more likely they are predominantly the result of companies — and countries — pursuing legal opportunities for cheaper exports and new gaps in the Russian market.”