Ucrania recluta al más notorio neonazi ruso

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Ukraine embraces far-right Russian ‘bad guy’ to take the battle to Putin
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-goo ... raine-war/

Germany describes Denis Kapustin as a top neo-Nazi, and his role in the war is a double-edged sword for Kyiv.

KYIV —“We’re the bad guys but fighting really evil guys,” wisecracks Denis Kapustin.

For now, Ukraine is willing to embrace his form of bad guy. As a Russian militant who led eye-catching paramilitary raids into Russia from Ukrainian territory this year and last, Kyiv sees Kapustin has a role to play as an ally against President Vladimir Putin.

But there are hazards in holding him too close. German authorities say Kapustin — sometimes known as Denis Nikitin — is “one of the most influential neo-Nazi activists” on the European continent, and that’s a godsend to Russian propagandists, who are seeking to whitewash their murderous invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to “de-Nazify” Kyiv.

“Think of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’” adds Kapustin, who leads the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), the largest of three anti-Kremlin Russian militias fighting for Ukraine. “Before, you just had good guys and bad guys dressed in black in cowboy movies, and then Clint Eastwood comes along and he’s dressed in black and fighting for good,” he says.

Kapustin is indeed dressed in black for his discussion with POLITICO in a downtown Kyiv hotel — though his clothing is free of any neo-Nazi logos or flashes. That’s despite the fact he runs a far-right apparel line of T-shirts and caps emblazoned with white nationalist and xenophobic imagery as well as the Nazi symbol 88 — the eighth letter of the alphabet twice being a not-so-subtle code for “Heil Hitler.”

“I walk a thin line,” Kapustin says, disputing the neo-Nazi label and noting, almost teasingly, that he doesn’t put swastikas on any of the T-shirts he flogs, as though that proves anything.

Russian state media relish pointing to Kapustin’s origins as a far-right football hooligan as it bolsters their pretext for the war.

Moscow’s continual attempt to cast their struggle as a rerun of World War II against Nazism rings hollow in reality, however.

Kapustin’s RVC and two other Ukraine-based anti-Putin paramilitary groups — Freedom of Russia Legion and the newest formation, the Siberian Battalion — are in the news again after launching on March 12 their biggest cross-border raids of the war around Kursk and Belgorod, remaining on Russian soil and fighting for more than two weeks. Prior to that, their biggest raid was in May 2023, when they stormed villages and towns in the Belgorod region.

Alexei Baranovsky of the Freedom of Russia Legion claimed at a press conference last week that the latest raids “disrupted the plans of the Russian army and caused significant damage to it.”

Militias’ murky status

The status of these militia groupings in relation to Ukraine’s armed forces is murky.

Baranovsky claims his group is “a regular unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” telling POLITICO at last week’s press conference: “When we are on the territory of Ukraine — we are servicemen of the Ukrainian army, equal in all rights and duties to all other servicemen of Ukraine. When we go to the territory of Russia — we are no longer Ukrainian servicemen, we are Russian citizens who have taken up arms.”

Some in Ukraine’s regular army frown on the tie-up between the militias (especially the RVC) and Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR), arguing it offers the Russians a propaganda opportunity.

“And for what?” asked an official who sits on Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council but who asked not to be named in this article to be able to speak freely. “These militias are a sideshow. They can’t influence the war’s dynamics. Maybe they disrupt a bit behind the lines and are embarrassing for the Kremlin but that doesn’t outweigh the overall propaganda disadvantages of using them,” the official added

The whole enterprise is a pet project of Kyrylo Budanov, the head of HUR. As the cross-border raids unfolded last month, Budanov praised the Russian paramilitaries as “good warriors” on a national newscast. “They’ve been helping us since the first day … They have fought in many of Ukraine’s hottest spots. We’re going to try and help them as much as we can,” he said.

As far as HUR sees it, their enemy’s enemy is their friend. According to Andriy Yusov, a HUR spokesman: “Ukraine should obviously also assist those Russians who are fighting against the Putin regime to free Russia.” He said the militias don’t act in Russia on the direct orders of Kyiv, and their actions just go to show “the Kremlin is once again not in control of the situation in Russia.”

Maybe so, but it depends on how you define “under orders.”

Kapustin says the militias have freedom of action once across the border but the raids are closely coordinated with the HUR, which provides logistical assistance, vets their operational plans and arms and pays them. All three militias are formally part of the Ukrainian armed forces, enlisted in the International Legion, says Kapustin. “We are an official part of Ukrainian army but we have serious political ambitions and political agenda — to get rid of Putin,” he adds.

From football fields to the battlefield

The 40-year-old Kapustin was born in Moscow. He moved with his parents at the age of 17 to Cologne, Germany, where he quickly established a fearsome reputation as a street-brawling white-power skinhead always up for a punch-up with everyone, especially Antifa activists. He tells POLITICO he was unhappy with the move and missed his friends and felt disconnected.

He’s long been prominent on the European football hooliganism and far-right martial arts fight club scene — participating in the riots at the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament in the French port city of Marseille. After he moved to Kyiv, Germany canceled his residency in 2019 and imposed a Schengen-entry ban on him for “efforts against the liberal democratic constitution.”

He has links with American neo-Nazi groups, and in 2021 co-hosted a podcast with Robert Rundo, founder of the Rise Above Movement, which participated in the Charlottesville white supremacist rally.

Nonetheless, Kapustin bristles at being called a neo-Nazi himself, even though he is hazy about what he is. He relishes sparring with Western journalists, seeing how awkward many of them feel interviewing him, torn between disapproval of his far-right ideology and hooligan history and their sympathy for Ukraine, not wanting to put the county in a bad light for Western liberal audiences.

“Will you try to remain unbiased?” he asks. “It is a very funny position for you and your colleagues because you all have been trying hard to put us in a bad light for years. Neo-Nazis, racist, white supremacists, terrible guys, blah, blah, blah. And then the darkest hour in Ukraine’s modern day history arrives. And all of a sudden the eternal bad guys turn out to be brave, courageous, determined, stubborn and heroes. And they’re like, ‘damn, how should I write about them?’”

Kapustin thoroughly savors his notoriety. “Throughout my life, I always wanted to be the Hollywood-style bad guy. Darth Vader is my ultimate inspiration. At the age of seven, I watched Star Wars, and was like, ‘wow this guy’s so cool,’” he says.

So if he’s not a neo-Nazi, what is he?

“Definitely conservative, definitely traditionalist, definitely right wing-ish,” he says.

“It’s easier for me to say what I detest, oppose in the modern world than to name my personal political views,” he adds. “I consider myself a big part of the right-wing movement. But when we say right-wing movement, what does that mean? Would that mean me agitating for beating up immigrants or things like that? No, I’m a grown up person. And if I had my time as a youngster fighting with immigrants on the street, that time is long gone. We were thinking the immigrant is the enemy. This is not the problem. The problem is Putin’s government,” he adds.

Above all, he says, he’s a Russian nationalist, hence fighting for Ukraine because Russian nationalists should be against Putin. “Being a patriot, being a nationalist, obviously means wishing the best for your own people, for your own kids, for your country. But I know exactly that Putin is the worst that could happen to Russia. So that’s why guys, my former comrades, who are fighting for him, and they consider themselves nationalist, they’re the worst enemy for me. They consider me a traitor. I consider them traitors,” he explains.

For Kapustin, Putin’s regime is not nationalistic enough. He complains: “You can have a French National Football Association in Russia … But you can never have a truly Russian one. Whenever you say, I want to start a Russian national club for something you get told, ‘Your grandfather was fighting against Nazis and now you are a neo-Nazi!'”

On a trip to South Africa, Kapustin claims he found that most people thought life was better under Apartheid — though he admits he didn’t speak to Black South Africans.

“My trip to South Africa was very significant for me because I realized what it used to be and what it is now, this decay, it’s obviously very pity to see that.” He concedes, “I didn’t talk to the Blacks. So I’m being open. I was just saying how it was.”

Kapustin started the RVC with just five members. Like the commanders of the other two Ukrainian-based Russian militias, the Freedom of Russia Legion and Siberian Battalion, he won’t say how many fighters he has now, though Russia last month said more than 2,000 fighters were involved in the raids in Kursk and Belgorod.

“We are an official part of Ukrainian army but we have serious political ambitions and political agenda — to march to Moscow and dismantle the Putin regime. That is obviously in the interests of Ukraine,” Kapustin says. He doesn’t explain what system of government he would like to see in Russia.

“We are now definitely a sizable force, possessing our own arms and vehicles, possessing our own mortars, heavy machine guns and artillery. RVC is not anymore a gang. It is a regiment. We have bases. We have our recruitment system,” Kapustin says.

The original core of the RVC comprised Russians already living in Ukraine before Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kapustin says most recruits now are Russians who travel through Georgia to enlist. “They’re not Russian army defectors on the whole,” he says.

He says the three militias have different political stances. “And because of that we do have different approaches to recruitment, to how we run our units. We have lectures in ideology in my corps, not just military craft, not just physical education, because from my point of view ideology is something that fortifies a unit,” he says.

“One of your colleagues tried to corner me recently and asked if we would take a Black, or homosexual or transgender who wanted to join the corps. And I said: ‘No, because he wouldn’t feel comfortable around us, and we would not feel comfortable around him.’”

[Quinto Elemento]

y como para divertirte... (asumiendo que esto es verdad) por qué no puede haber neo nazis? Eres de los que prohiben corrientes de pensamiento?

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y como para divertirte... (asumiendo que esto es verdad) por qué no puede haber neo nazis? Eres de los que prohiben corrientes de pensamiento?

El neonazismo sirviendo al sionismo es un absurdo.

[Quinto Elemento]

y como para divertirte... (asumiendo que esto es verdad) por qué no puede haber neo nazis? Eres de los que prohiben corrientes de pensamiento?

El neonazismo sirviendo al sionismo es un absurdo.

¿Pero Ucrania es sionista? Entendido esto el como movimiento político que propone el establecimiento de un Estado para el pueblo judío, no me parece que es lo que este ocurriendo, esa lucha es diferente, no toca ese aspecto, sigo sin entender el elemento nazi que traes como cierto y más aún, porque no es lícito tener una posición política, sea incluso "extrema"

[verdinegro]

y como para divertirte... (asumiendo que esto es verdad) por qué no puede haber neo nazis? Eres de los que prohiben corrientes de pensamiento?

El neonazismo sirviendo al sionismo es un absurdo.

¿Pero Ucrania es sionista?

Es un gobierno ocupado por sionistas o ZOG.

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Tucker Carlson sabe...

[Quinto Elemento]

Tucker would, of course, deny this if ever pressed, but it's hard to imagine he's suggesting that ethnic Ukrainians have much sway in Washington

No es correcto lo que sugieres: nombres, puestos, acciones, eso si demostraría o al menos llevaría la discusión al terreno de los hechos, caso contratio es una estrategia de desprestigio

[verdinegro]

Tucker would, of course, deny this if ever pressed, but it's hard to imagine he's suggesting that ethnic Ukrainians have much sway in Washington

No es correcto lo que sugieres: nombres, puestos, acciones, eso si demostraría o al menos llevaría la discusión al terreno de los hechos, caso contratio es una estrategia de desprestigio

Busca la trayectoria de Richard Spencer y el coronel McGregor.

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With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... y-options/

KYIV — As Russia steps up airstrikes and once again advances on the battlefield in Ukraine more than two years into its bloody invasion, there is no end to the fighting in sight. And President Volodymyr Zelensky’s options for what to do next — much less how to win the war — range from bad to worse.

Zelensky has said Ukraine will accept nothing less than the return of all its territory, including land that Russia has controlled since 2014. But with the battle lines changing little in the last year, militarily retaking the swaths of east and south Ukraine that Russia now occupies — about 20 percent of the country — appears increasingly unlikely.

Negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war — something Zelensky has rejected as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian land — is politically toxic. The Ukrainian public is hugely opposed to surrendering territory, and Putin shown no willingness to accept anything short of Ukraine’s capitulation to his demands.

The status quo is awful. With the fight now a grinding stalemate, Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield daily. But a cease-fire is also a nonstarter, Ukrainians say, because it would just give the Russians time to replenish their forces.

Ukrainian and Western officials view Zelensky as largely stuck. Aid from the United States, Ukraine’s most important military backer, has been stalled for months by Republicans in Congress. Previously approved modern fighter jets — the U.S.-made F-16 — are expected to enter combat later this year — but in limited quantity, meaning they will not be a game changer. NATO countries are still exercising restraint in their assistance, evidenced by the recent uproar after French President Emmanuel Macron said European nations should not rule out sending troops.

“How will Zelensky get out of this situation? I have no idea,” said a Ukrainian lawmaker who, like other officials and diplomats interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the highly sensitive politics. “And of course it concerns me.”

Most tricky for Zelensky will be managing his own country’s expectations. Support for him among Ukrainians remains high, but after two years of war and steep casualties, the “solidarity is fraying,” said a Western diplomat in Kyiv.

A senior Ukrainian official said: “Everyone wants quick solutions, but everyone has come to understand that there won’t be quick ones.”

This was supposed to be an election year for Zelensky, but Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections under martial law, and some officials here worry that Russia will try to cast Zelensky as an illegitimate ruler once he is serving longer than his elected five-year term — despite the inherent hypocrisy in Putin’s own repeated disregard for term limits.

Zelensky will also have to live up to his own promise — which he restates regularly — of returning Ukraine to its 1991 borders, including Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally invaded and claimed as its own 10 years ago.

“Smart people know that’s not realistic,” the Ukrainian lawmaker said, adding: The political leadership “needed to adjust this rhetoric at some point.”

Pessimism about Ukraine’s battlefield chances has increased in recent months as Russian forces have regained the initiative on the battlefield, largely because Ukrainians are short on troops and ammunition.

Ukraine is reliant on its Western partners for weapons, but a $60 billion security package from the United States has been stalled in Congress for six months. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s government is struggling to address its personnel shortages as measures to mobilize more soldiers have divided society.

Kyiv is now bracing for the possibility that aid from the United States could be cut off. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said recently that the package could be put to a vote next week but it is expected to face revisions, such as perhaps providing the money as a loan, which would add to Ukraine’s already huge debt.

Even if the aid is approved soon, the delay has sent a clear signal that future assistance is not guaranteed, especially with the U.S. presidential election this year. Officials also worry that Europe lacks the production capacity to compensate for a U.S. shortfall, especially in artillery and air-defense ammunition — Ukraine’s biggest needs.

Zelensky has said Ukraine is prioritizing domestic production but so far makes only a small fraction of its needs. Russian forces are now firing six times as much as the Ukrainians along the front line.

“Look, we have been without ammunition for half a year already. Not enough of it, at least,” the Ukrainian official said. “Well okay, it will get worse. And so what? What other options are there? If partners who have promised to give us ammunition don’t give it, of course the situation gets worse. But the image of the U.S. will get worse in the world.”

A year ago, the mood in Kyiv was cautiously optimistic as Ukraine readied a large counteroffensive with modern tanks and fighting vehicles freshly provided by Western partners. But that assault failed to make significant gains, and the new weapons did not prove decisive.

Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia targeting military infrastructure and logistics such as oil depots have increased, but Kyiv’s forces are still under pressure along the front line and lately have been pushed backward.

Ukrainians have resigned themselves to a long war. Some have been fighting since 2014, when Russia first stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“Ukraine does not have the power to make another offensive,” said one Western ambassador. “There are two scenarios. One scenario is they get the support to maintain defensive lines. … The second is there is not enough support and Ukraine will defend itself anyway, desperately and with less manpower.”

If Kyiv faces Russian forces with inadequate support this year, the ambassador said, there will be increased casualties and territorial losses, putting Ukraine on the back foot.

Ukraine and its partners must prepare for 2025 as “another year of war, not peace talks,” the ambassador said. “If [the] West wants peace, it should not only respond to current Ukrainian needs, but use 2024 to provide Ukraine with everything that’s necessary to enter into offensive mode and make substantial gains in 2025.”

But Ukraine must meet some needs on its own. Field commanders have reported troop shortages along the front line, especially infantry who deploy at the forwardmost positions. Military commanders have pushed for a large-scale mobilization but Zelensky has voiced doubt even as Kyiv says Moscow is planning to conscript 300,000 more soldiers.

Zelensky recently signed a law that lowered Ukraine’s minimum draft age to 25, but he has said mobilizing some 500,000 more troops, as Ukraine’s former commander in chief suggested, won’t happen. Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the new military chief, has said the 500,000 figure was “significantly reduced” after a personnel audit. Meanwhile, a draft law in parliament to widen the parameters of who can be conscripted has undergone thousands of amendments.

A second Western diplomat in Kyiv said Zelensky’s administration and Ukraine’s parliament are playing “political ping pong” on mobilization because it is unpopular. While thousands volunteered to fight early in the war, few who have not already signed up want to now.

“Nobody wants to really bear the responsibility at this point,” said the diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“But it will have to be done,” the diplomat said. “I mean, you cannot go on like this. I hear about people who are at the front who just can’t take it anymore. And then when they come back here on leave and they see all these young guys who could be there, I would be resentful of that. So you get social tensions surrounding that as well.”

A large-scale mobilization would also pose economic challenges. The money for soldier salaries cannot directly come from foreign aid, and some industries already face labor shortages. Ukraine’s economy is under strain from repeated missile and drone attacks targeting energy infrastructure, which also scare away foreign business investment.

So how long can Ukraine withstand being at war? The Ukrainian lawmaker said the country will not survive the status quo for another 10 years. Others, however, think the fight could go on even longer.

“This is an unpleasant thought but when some people say it might take decades, no one challenges that,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics and former government minister.

“No one will concede territory, but people understand that getting it back might take a long time,” Mylovanov added. “What form can that take? Views differ here. A long war with eventually a victory? A sudden collapse in the Russian power structure? A successful counteroffensive? But that requires a very different type of support than what Ukraine has now.”

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Luego pongo el texto.

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El ex-asesor de Zelensky lo dice claro y raspa'o:

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