Extreme Right Russian Community Militants Now Patrolling Murmansk Streets in Alliance with Local Government

 Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 11 -- The Russian Community, an extreme right Russian nationalist organization with close parallels to the Black Hundreds movement at the end of tsarist times, is now patrolling the streets of Murmansk, presenting itself as "a parallel structure" to local government for managing the situation there.

    Founded in 2020 by radical right members of the Russian Orthodox Church and business community, the Russian Community now has branches across the Russian Federation and is actively involved in crowd control and other police functions. (For backgrounds on this group and its ideas, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/todays-russian-community-differs-from.html  and the sources cited therein.) 

    The Russian Community has acted most often outside of Moscow and has attracted less attention than it deserves given the threat it poses to what remains of the rule of law in Putin's system. That makes a report by The Barents Observer especially important (thebarentsobserver.com/news/militant-nationalists-in-uniform-are-patrolling-the-streets-of-murmansk/426263).

    Since the start of this year, Russian Community militants have been serving as adjuncts to the police there both at major public gatherings and in the arrest of those the Putin regime deems its enemies and taking ever greater public pride in what the Community is doing.

    One reason why the Russian Community has risen so quickly is Russia's dramatically increasing shortage of police (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/03/russia-scrambling-to-cope-with-mounting.html). But another is the Putin's regime desire to have groups like this to do its dirty work so that it can intimidate more people while avoiding any direct responsibility.

    The Barents Observer points to both the actions the group has carried out in Murmansk since the start of this year and the pride the Russian Community has taken in doing so as worrisome indicatoins of the latest evolution of the Putin regime given that these developments recall both the Black Hundreds in the final years of tsarism and the bully boys during the rise of Nazism in Germany.