One of the anti-Kremlin groups responsible for an armed incursion into Russia this week, the Russian Volunteer Corps, is led by a far-right extremist described by German officials and humanitarian groups, including the Anti- Defamation League, as a neo-Nazi. .
The Volunteer Corps, made up of Russians opposed to Vladimir V. Putin’s war, does not have any public affiliation with the Ukrainian Army. But the claim of the group fighting for the cause of Ukraine presents an uncomfortable situation for the government in Kyiv. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has falsely claimed that his country fought the Nazis as a pretext for invading his country, a regular theme in Kremlin propaganda.
The corps commander, Denis Kapustin — who has long used the alias Denis Nikitin, but usually goes by his military call sign, White Rex — is a Russian citizen who moved to Germany in the early 2000s. He joined a group of violent soccer fans and later became, according to officials in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, “one of the most influential activists” of a neo-Nazi splinter of the mixed-martial-arts scene.
He is barred from entering Europe’s 27-nation Schengen zone without a visa.
The Volunteer Corps, known by its Russian initials RDK, also claimed credit for two incidents in the Russian border region of Bryansk in March and April. Ukrainian authorities have publicly denied any role in the fighting on the Russian side of the border.
The Russian Volunteer Corps was one of two groups of Russian fighters that carried out a cross-border attack in the Belgorod region of southern Russia that began on Monday, engaging Russian troops in two days of fighting. The goal of the incursions, the groups say, is to force Russia to redeploy soldiers from occupied areas of Ukraine to protect its borders, as Ukraine prepares for a counter- offensive.
The second group is the Free Russia Legion, which operates under the umbrella of the International Legion of Ukraine, a force that includes American and British volunteers, as well as Belarusians, Georgians and others. It is administered by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and directed by Ukrainian officials. Several hundred Russian fighters have been deployed to the front lines in eastern Ukraine, officials said.
At a joint news conference with the Free Russia Legion on Wednesday, Mr. Kapustin said his group was not under the control of the Ukrainian Army, but the military was supporting his fighters with information, fuel, food and supplies. medical, along with the evacuation of injured personnel. That claim cannot be independently verified.
Andriy Chernyak, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, said he had no information about possible material support provided by the Ukrainian military to members of the RDK, but said “Ukraine certainly supports the all ready to fight the Putin regime.”
“People came to Ukraine and said they wanted to help us fight Putin’s regime, so of course we let them, like many other people from foreign countries,” Mr. Chernyak.
Ukraine has called the incursions an “internal crisis in Russia” because the group’s members are Russian themselves, and the episode plays into an attempt by the Ukrainian military to force Russia to send in troops. from the front lines to protect its borders.
Michael Colborne, a Bellingcat researcher who reports on the international far-right, said he hesitates to call the Russian Volunteer Corps a military unit.
“They are largely a far-right group of neo-Nazi exiles who are making these incursions into Russian-held territory who seem more concerned about creating social media content than anything else,” said Mr. Colborne.
Other members of the Russian Volunteer Corps who were photographed during the border raids also publicly espoused neo-Nazi views. One man, Aleksandr Skachkov, was arrested by the Ukrainian Security Services in 2020 for selling a Russian translation of the white supremacist manifesto of the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who killed 51 mosque worshipers in 2019.
Another, Aleksei Levkin, who filmed a selfie video wearing the RDK insignia, is a founder of a group called Wotanjugend that started in Russia but later moved to Ukraine. Mr. Levkin also organized the National Socialist Black Metal Festival, which started in Moscow in 2012 but was held in Kyiv from 2014 to 2019.
Photos posted online by fighters earlier this week of volunteer corps members posing in front of captured Russian equipment show some fighters wearing patches and stylish equipment of the Nazis. One patch depicts a hooded Ku Klux Klan member and another features a Black Sun, a symbol with strong connections to Nazi Germany.
Mr. Colborne said that the pictures of Mr. Kapustin and his fighters could harm Ukraine’s defense by making allies wary that they might support far-right armed groups.
“I’m worried that something like this could come back to Ukraine because these are not obscure people,” he said. “These are not unknown people, and they are not helping Ukraine in any practical sense.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting from London and Oleg Matsnev from Berlin.
