Far-right militias who stormed a Russian region bordering Ukraine this week used US-made tactical vehicles in the attack, raising questions over Kyiv’s support for the Ukraine-based Russian extremist groups.
Ukraine has denied direct involvement in the raid on Monday, but one military official acknowledged “co-operating” with the nationalist groups, who on Monday entered Russian territory to “liberate” a village.
Denis Nikitin, leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, told the Financial Times that his fighters assaulting the Belgorod region were in possession of American-made military vehicles. These included at least two M1224 MaxxPro armoured vehicles and several Humvees, he said, while declining to disclose how they were obtained.
Some but not all images of US-made vehicles in the raid were taken on the Russian side of the border, according to FT analysis of the videos and photos. Russian defence ministry footage separately showed the US-made tactical vehicles damaged by gunfire and apparently abandoned.
Ukraine has received the same military vehicles from the US as part of the $37bn worth of assistance provided to the country in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
American officials have repeatedly stressed that they are not encouraging or enabling Ukrainian forces or their allies to attack inside Russia using US equipment. One US official said: “We are sceptical about the veracity of such reports and remain in close contact with our Ukrainian counterparts.”
State department spokesman Matthew Miller said it was up to Ukraine to decide how to conduct their military operations but that the US opposes attacks in Russian territory. “We have made very clear to the Ukrainians that we don’t enable or encourage attacks outside Ukrainians’ borders,” he said.
Initially, Ukrainian officials publicly kept their distance from the Russian sabotage units.
But on Tuesday, Andriy Chernyak, an official from Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, HUR, acknowledged for the first time some form of co-operation with the Russian Volunteer Corps and Free Russia Legion.
“Of course, we communicate with them. Of course, we share some information,” Chernyak said. “And, one might say, we even co-operate.”
However, he said that Ukraine’s military was not directly involved in the attack, suggesting that it was the Russians’ own initiative.
“They are rebelling,” he said. Chernyak also denied having supplied the militias with any equipment. All western weaponry obtained by the Ukrainian armed forces remains “under . . . the toughest control”, he said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office declined to comment on the Belgorod incursion and the use of American equipment.
The Russian Volunteer Corps, founded by Nikitin last summer to fight against his home country’s invading army, includes self-avowed neo-Nazis. Born in Moscow, Nikitin also uses the surname Kapustin and goes by the call sign White Rex. This is also the name of his white nationalist clothing brand, which is popular among western far-right extremists.
“Nikitin is a real self-promoter, an intelligent, educated man who seems to be primarily interested in his own power, image, and standing,” said Michael Colborne, a journalist at the open-source investigative group Bellingcat who leads its research on the global far-right.
Colborne identified another member of the Russian Volunteer Corps in photographs posted by the group during its Belgorod operation as Russian Aleksandr Skachkov, a rightwing extremist. Skachkov was arrested in Ukraine in 2020 during a raid on people selling translations of the manifesto of the gunman behind the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, according to Bellingcat.
The Free Russia Legion says it was formed after the full-scale invasion in spring 2022, “based on the desire of Russians to fight against [Vladimir] Putin’s armed gang”. The legion claims to be officially recognised by the Ukrainian military “and under the leadership of the Ukrainian command”.
Both Russian units shared videos on their Telegram channels, where they have a combined 300,000 subscribers, showing their fighters storming into Belgorod province on Monday. One video showed several American-made armoured tactical vehicles marked with insignia used by the Ukrainian military. Another showed three of those American vehicles firing on Russian border guards.
A photo shared on Russian Telegram channels on Tuesday appeared to show a damaged American MaxxPro vehicle abandoned by the fighters near the town of Graivoron. It had been taken as a “trophy”, one Russian military blogger said. The vehicle shown is covered in pro-Russian graffiti and the Z logo.
Nikitin declined to answer other questions about the goal of the operation. He previously said that his unit’s incursions into Russia, which began in early March, were aimed at exposing the country’s weak defences and inspiring more compatriots to rise up against the Kremlin.
Russian authorities in the Belgorod region claimed that the sabotage group had been “defeated” on Tuesday afternoon with “air strikes, artillery fire and active measures”.
“The remnants of the nationalists were pushed back into Ukrainian territory and were hit by gunfire until they were completely eliminated,” Belgorod authorities said in a statement, adding that 13 civilians had been injured and one elderly woman had died from heart failure while being evacuated.
Russian authorities said they had opened a terrorism case. Several of the men involved are on Russia’s most wanted list.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed that 70 fighters of the Russian Volunteer Corps and Free Russia Legion had been killed and several vehicles destroyed. But Nikitin laughed at the Russian claim. “I’m still alive,” he said, adding that the operation was “ongoing”.
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