Representatives of foreign far-right organizations are taking combat training in Russia.
Right-wing extremists from Germany undergo paramilitary training in a camp near St. Petersburg, according to the German Focus. Several course participants belong to the “Third Way” (Der Dritte Weg) and “Young Nationalists” parties, monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the reporters claim.
The “Third Way” was formed in 2013 by people from the National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and the banned Free Network South organization. The party is tied with the Assad government in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In 2013, Der Dritte Weg announced its formation and outlined a detailed call to boycott Israel. The group, whose goal is the creation of “German socialism,” titled its plan “What every person can do against the Zionist genocide.”
According to the organization’s website, members of the Der Dritte Weg met with the extremist Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in Lebanon and representatives of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.
The website of the Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way) published an April 30, 2-17 report on the right-wing extremist group’s visit to Lebanon to champion Hezbollah’s war against Israel. Members of the Der Dritte Weg can be viewed on the website at the Hezbollah propaganda museum called Where the Land Speaks to the Heavens in the village of Mleeta in southern Lebanon. Kai Zimmermann, a senior leader of Der Dritte Weg, posed next to a plaque reading, “No, Israel is not invincible.” The neo-Nazi group labeled Israel a “terror state” on its website.
The “Young Nationalists” is the youth branch of the oldest right-wing extremist party in Germany, the National Democratic Party. It is politically insignificant by quantity, just about 300 people, but its members are quite motivated, and a clear ideology allows for recruiting campaigns using various narratives, including the environmental ones.
The militants were trained at the Partizan training center, according to the Focus.
RIM (Russian Imperial Movement) may have (or had) boots on the ground in Germany. In 2017 RIM wrote on VK about having “a representative in Germany”. According to RIM’s April 2018 post on VK, RIM participated in “Europe Wake Up!” rally in Dortmund and RIM’s “delegate” spoke at the rally.
Not unlike other far right worldwide, Russia’s RIM has been heavily focused on George Floyd protests, instances of looting in the USA. “Uncontrolled Blacks, antifas and liberals in the USA” was one of the topics of a June 5 video address by RIM’s leaders.
The Partizan center is run by the right-wing extremist Russian Imperial Movement. In April, the United States designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) as a terrorist organization that includes people who “pursue the ideas of white supremacy.” The movement has got two training camps in St. Petersburg, according to the State Department. One of them, according to Nathan Sales, the US State Department Coordinator for Combating Terrorism, was involved in an investigation conducted after the explosion in Gothenburg in 2016. The Swedish prosecutor’s office believes that was the Partizan center.
In July 2017, the Gothenburg District Court found three Swedish citizens – Viktor Melin, Jimmy Jonasson and Anton Thulin – guilty of organizing a series of explosions at the offices of left activists. They were sentenced to 8.5 years imprisonment. Investigators allege they attended the Partizan courses in St. Petersburg as well. The Swedish newspaper Expressen wrote that the Swedish Security Service (SAPO), prepared a confidential report, as part of the investigation, where, as it turned out at a court hearing, alleged that the defendants had taken combat training at the Partizan camp.
In 2020, a case of illicit weapons possession by the nationalist Anatoly Udodov was heard in Stockholm. Swedish investigators openly stated there that Udodov had facilitated the sending of the extremists Melin and Thulin to the Partizan center for training.
RIM leaders are:
– Stanislav Vorobyev (1960, former head of the Monarchist Party of Russia executive board and member of the Derzhava movement committee.) – RIM public figure, member of the Russian national committee of the Derzhava Social Patriotic movement, whose leader is Konstantin Zatulin (charged with political coordination of the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine in 2014).
Nikolay Trushchalov, 1980 – coordinator for external relations.
The Imperial Legion is RIM’s paramilitary branch, designed to provide the Russian movement’s mobilization and military tactical training for future participants at the Reserve military patriotic club managed by Denis Gariev, 1978. Gariev is a public figure and the head of the Partizan Center in Petersburg. He started training fighters in 2008.
The Partizan is affiliated with the DOSAAF, Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation and Navy, officially backed by the Russian military. IMINT analysis of the photos published on social network suggests the training center is in the south of Heinäsenmaa Island, located in Lake Ladoga, 62 miles away from Petersburg.
The Partizan runs urban warfare training, shooting training, tactical medicine, high-altitude training, military psychology, and survival training. Having been accused by the Swedish prosecutor’s office, Partizan’s leaders claimed they had not used explosives, but the courses feature setting up elements for explosive devices handling, in particular, MS-3 mines, that are part of trap mines.
Having analyzed the photos available it is possible to assert that AK-74 5.45, AKM 7.62 Saiga 20S (used by special forces), Makarov pistols and MP-443 Grach are used while training.
Group classes are similar to teaching the basics of sabotage operations and reconnaissance group activity.
The training and teaching activities of the Center are run by war veterans and acting professionals from military intelligence, airborne troops, special forces, and Russia’s Defense Ministry training center. A person trained at the center claimed that one of the trainee-leaders was an intelligence officer, with almost 10 years of military intelligence experience. He wrote on the social network, where he left a positive feedback about the course, that there were members of the military among the trainee-leaders, noting that his group was prepared by a marine corps member. The members of the military undoubtedly cannot run such trainings without the top military command. Having finished the training course, the graduates from among foreign citizens were redirected to participate in hostilities in eastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists.
We, the plenipotentiary representative of the government of the Donbass People’s Republic, hereinafter referred to as the DPR, as the First Party, and the authorized coordinators of the Russian Imperial Movement, as the Second Party, have signed this memorandum of cooperation.
The Parties proclaim the unity of the interests of the DPR and RIM in protecting the Russian population of Donbass from hostile intervention, in developing this territory upon terms of tradition and history, and the need to resist evil in all its manifestations.
With this document, the DPR government grants RIM all rights to open a plenipotentiary and permanent representational office of the DPR in the territory of the Russian Federation and appoints Stanislav Vorobyev, RIM authorized coordinator, as the head of this representational office.
RIM, in turn, assumes the following obligations:
1. informational support for the DPR initiatives in media space;
2. to establish an authorized DPR Office at its premises in St.Petersburg;
3. to raise funds and summon experts for the DPR needs within the RF territory;
4. to render any other assistance agreed upon with the DPR.
The first professionally trained and equipped group of the Imperial Legion, trained at the Reserve and Partizan, was sent to Slavyansk under the command of Igor Girkin – “Strelkov” (affiliated with FSB) in June 2014. It was immediately taken on the second troop of the Semenovsky battalion that sabotaged against Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operation forces in the area of Semenovka village.
Besides, Syrian mercenaries and members of far-right associations were trained there. “People come from Germany, the Baltic states, Kazakhstan, I’m not going to talk to you about them”, Denis Gariev said in an interview.
Nearly 18 thousand users ticked themselves as the Partizan Courses community members on the VKontakte social network. Four of them are under the Swedish flag, twelve under the Finnish flag, and about 30 people from the Baltic countries.
The Higher Land Court of Munich believes that the nephew of the Russian television propagandist Dmitry Kiselev fought in the Donbass, and before that, perhaps, had been trained at the Partizan. Sergei Kiselev, a German citizen, was sentenced to two years and three months imprisonment for run-up to participating in hostilities in Ukraine. This confirms the fact that German citizens were trained at the Partizan center.
40 people avg attended the Partizan courses monthly in 2019, nearly 60% of them were from St. Petersburg, Gariev said.
It is highly probable that, at the initial stage of functioning, the Partizan trained Russian citizens who joined the ISIS. “When we [the center] were established, those who were going to the ISIS came to us as well”, Gariev stated.
Despite the fact that RIM officially declares that it is in opposition to the Putin’s regime, in reality it is affiliated with the government. First, combat training is carried out using military weapons. Urban warfare tactics training does not meet resistance from law enforcement bodies. Second, the troops were sent to Ukraine and Syria under the control of Russian military intelligence. Third, in 2012, only the RIM website was declared extremist by the Russian Ministry of Justice, not the organization itself. German security services believe that Russian President Putin is aware of such camps and at least allows them to exist.
Though the site was blocked, the organization still has an account on the Russian VKontakte network, and their page has about 13 thousand subscribers. Moreover, RIM has a page on the well-known Russian site Odnoklassniki, and sells its ideas on YouTube backup channels, as well as on Facebook.
RIM is politically tied with the Kremlin through the St. Petersburg branch of the Rodina party, i.e., the State Duma member Alexei Zhuravlev, the leader of the Rodina party. Zhuravlev directly backed Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and personally met with the LPR leaders; he is the member of the military intelligence influence group in Russia’s state system (MoD lobbyst). The Rodina party and the Russian National Cultural Center tried to set up the World Conservative Movement.
Zhuravlev is obviously “RIM’s handler”. The movement in St. Petersburg was cooperating with local government and carried out municipal patrols after the Russian Ministry of Justice declared the RIM website as extremist.
