Veterans Joining Radical Russian Nationalist Groups in Increasing Numbers, Bolstering Power of the Latter and Threatening Radicalization, Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA Analytic Center, says that veterans returning from Russia’s war in Ukraine are joining Russian nationalist groups, both the anonymous and more radical and violent and the more mainstream like the Russian Community which are overwhelmingly loyal to the Putin regime.
 

    Their integration into both kinds has been difficult, in the case of the former because most of their leaders are younger than the veterans, and in the case of the latter because of the statist position of these groups. But their involvement is worrisome because it may radicalize each (bereg.io/feature/2025/04/04/uroven-ksenofobii-v-rossii-vse-vyshe-mery-protiv-migrantov-bespretsedentno-zhestkie-eto-splanirovannaya-politika-vlastey).

    Paramilitarization is unlikely to develop quickly in mainstream groups like the Russian Community or Russian Druzhina, Verkhovsky says; but “it’s a very different story with anonymous, neo-Nazi militants.” They are already actively violent and their attacks rival levels not seen after 2010 when the regime repressed many of them.

    According to Verkhovsky, “the number of serious attacks last year is already comparable to 2011. Fortunately, there have been almost no killings so far. These groups operate with caution, despite being made up mostly of very young people. But there is a risk that as they get older, the level of violence could increase — unless they’re stopped in time.”

    The situation with these groups could worsen with the joining up of veterans; but integrating them will be difficult because most of the members of such organizations are teenagers whom the veterans are unlikely to be willing to defer do, the human rights activist and monitor says.

    If both the mainstream and the radical groups “begin to attract large numbers of veterans, especially those returning with serious psychological trauma, the risks will grow,” he continues. And he notes that “in fact, we’ve seen something like this before, in 2015, when volunteers from the first wave of the Donbass campaign came back” although there were far fewer of them.

    The state managed to control the situation then, but it may have far more difficulty doing so in the future, Verkhovsky concludes.