Readers of this blog may have heard of the Center for Eurasian Strategic Intelligence (CESI) that seems to promote a "hawkish" view on Russia's foreign policy. In his Twitter, Edward Lucas has recently raised doubts about the authenticity of this organisation, and, as I found out, for a good reason. Let's have a closer look at CESI.

(Note that I will not be discussing their analyses, as they tendto plagiarisefrom other sources.)

Major resources of CESI:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eurasianintelligence. Registered on 18 March 2014.
- Website: http://eurasianintelligence.org. Registered on 18 July 2014.
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/eurasianintelligence/ Registered on 6 August 2014.
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EurasianIntel. Date of registration unknown, first tweet on 12 August 2014.

(The first two dates: This may be just a coincidence, but on 18 March 2014, "Republic of Crimea" and the Russian Federation signed a "treaty on accession of the republic of Crimea to Russia", and, on 17 July 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by (pro-)Russian right-wing extremists in Eastern Ukraine).

According to their website, CESI "provides analysis and surveys of political, economic and security processes in Eurasia region. CESI was founded in 2014 with a focus on Russian policy of expansion and military aggression in the Eastern Europe". It lists the following individuals involved in the workings of the organisation:

- William Fowler, Chairman and CEO
- Alex Kraus, Chief Analyst
- Kelly Hunt, Chief Operating Officer
- Steven J. Hudson, Chief Geopolitical Analyst
- David Carpenter, Chief Economy Analyst
- Gareth McCallister, Jr., Information Supervisor

As Edward Lucas pointed out, William Fowler's profile picture in his Facebook is a picture of an anonymous "old businessman with gray hair and glasses".

A screenshot from William Fowler's Facebook

An image search on Google

Thus, Fowler's Facebook is, at the very least, misleading. Moreover, it is unlikely registered to any "William Fowler" at all. Most likely, the real name of the registrant begins with a "t" and ends with a "y":


So, is "William Fowler" a real person? I doubt it. And I even doubt that anyone mentioned as a staff member of CESI is a real person. (I will not go into detail with all of them, but I would invite the interested readers to do so.)

The only member of CESI with a "face" is Alex Kraus.

A screenshot from one of CESI's videos

Alex Kraus is the only person from CESI who appears in their videos. His native language is not English and he pronounces Russian names with a Slavic (i.e. close to Russian, yet not exactly Russian) accent. Kraus may be a Czech; at least he mentions his proficiency in the Czech language on his LinkedIn page.

A screenshot from Alex Kraus' LinkedIn page. Note that his profile photo is not professional, but rather a screenshot from a CESI's video uploaded on YouTube on 12 August 2014, the date when CESI posted its first Tweet

CESI's website is registered in the name of Abigail Kalopong, and she is probably the most interesting person in the whole story.

According to her LinkedIn page, she is a "nominal director" of CESI:

A screenshot from Abigail Kalopong's LinkedIn page

Note that "nominal" is a key word in the story.

She is a national and resident of Vanuatu, and appears to be a real person. An e-mail account registered in her name is linked to a Twitter account of CESI -

- while her Gmail account (abigail.kalopong@gmail.com) is linked to CESI's official e-mail address (office@eurasianintelligence.org):

However, the real Kalopong residing in Vanuatu may not be in control of the Gmail account registered in her name.

Another interesting thing about Abigail Kalopong is that, apart from being a "nominal director" of CESI, she is currently a director of 59 companies!


If you add companies registered in the name of Abigail Kalopung, you will have 86 companies in total.



Almost all her companies are registered with one and the same address (which is actually a mailbox): Office 11, 43 Bedford Street, London, United Kingdom, WC2E 9HA. If one looks at the companies that are registered with this address, they will see that all these companies are "offshore-type" businesses. Moreover, those are largely connected to companies in Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as those associated with the regime of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and other Ukrainian businessmen.

Just a few examples concerning the Ukrainian connections:

- Kalopung's Fineberg Limited seems to own a yacht named "First Wave" that apparently belongs to Serhiy Arbuzov, chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine and, later, interim prime minister under Yanukovych;
- Kalopong's Helix Capital Investments Ltd. is a typical pyramid scheme that operatesin Ukraine;
- Kalopong even "set up" a company named "Roshen UK Limited", most likely to "squat" the name of the Ukrainian company Roshen in the UK;
- around 75% of the Zaporizhia Automobile Building Plant is allegedly owned by three British companies, of which two aredirected by the same Kalopong, but, eventually, are most likely owned by some Ukrainian or Russian businessmen.

It should now be clear that Kalopong/Kalopung is simply a front-woman whose name is used to conceal real owners of the businesses she allegedly manages.

The same is the case for the "think-tank" CESI. What I do not know is who is the ultimate owner of CESI, but most likely they are either Ukrainian(s) or Russian(s).

At the first glance, the website of CESI seems to be anti-Putin, as it presumably aims to show the threats that Putin's regime poses to Western democracies. However, a more nuanced analysis would probably show that the aims of CESI are very different. To fully understand these objectives, I suggest reading The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss. In this report, the authors, in particular, argue that one of the strategies of the Kremlin's foreign policy is a reversal of "soft power": Putin's aim is not to be attractive, but to present himself as a bogeyman.

CESI pictures Russia as an immediate threat to the West, but it does so in a manner that exaggerates the threat in order to discourage the West from opposing the aggressive politics of Moscow and impel to appease Putin's Russia at all costs.

UPDATE:
The web-site of the bogus think-tank CESI is down. On their FB page, they write: "Our site is temporary unavailable because of attack. Sorry for inconvinience".


Leaving aside the English language proficiency of the staff of this "British think-tank", I suspect that the shutdown of their website, even if temporary, is a result of my investigation into CESI.

Alex Kraus has closed down his LinkedIn account, CESI have deleted all the videos on their YouTube channel, while the page of CESI's chairman "William Fowler" (who, I believe, does not exist) has been removed from Facebook.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s declaration in summer 2014 that his government was going “to build an illiberal nation state” was far from a revelation. Rather, it was a statement of a long-acknowledged fact: Orbán’s Hungary is increasingly becoming a right-wing authoritarian kleptocracy bearing a growing resemblanceto Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The pro-Putin United Russia party formed its first parliamentary majority after the 2003 elections. Putin took this opportunity to modify the electoral law to marginalise minor parties in the next elections and strengthen the major parties and, in particular, the United Russia. These changes helped the United Russia to win enough seats in the 2007 parliamentary elections to form a constitutional majority. Since Orbán’s party Fidesz returned to power after the 2010 parliamentary elections, he has moved swiftly to consolidate it. Amid the popular disappointment with the previous, Socialist-led government that failed to effectively tackle the 2008 financial crisis, Fidesz and its minor coalition partner Christian Democratic People’s Party secured two-thirds of the seats in the parliament. Forming a parliamentary majority allowed them to modify the country’s constitution, including the electoral law, in 2012. The electoral reform helped Orbán retain the constitutional majority after the 2014 elections.

Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin

The modification of the electoral laws to the benefit of Fidesz or the United Russia was not the only instrument of seizing and maintaining power. Three steps were crucial in this process. The first step was to take control over the judiciary aiming to use it as a tool of political pressure. In Putin’s Russia, judicial independence was undermined by Presidential Administration and Security Services; according to Constitutional Court Judge Vladimir Yaroslavtsev, judiciary in Russia may be independent when addressing minor issues but will conform to the authorities in politically sensitive cases. In Orbán’s Hungary, members and sympathisers of Fidesz are the main source of leadership in courts of different levels. The Fidesz-initiated amendments to the Constitution, as former president of the Constitutional Court László Sólyom put it, removed the last traces of separation of powers from the Hungarian constitutional system.

The second step was to undermine the media freedom. Putin chose to curtail the freedom of speech through the direct and indirect state ownership of the major national media and exertion of psychological and physical pressure on independent journalists and media companies. The murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova are only the best-known cases among dozens of others. In his turn, Orbán chose to introduce an institutionalised way of controlling the media: the pressure is exerted through the National Media and Infocommunications Authority whose members are elected by the Fidesz-controlled parliamentary majority. The head of the above-mentioned Authority also chairs the Media Council that regulates media content. Both chairs of the Media Council in Orbán’s Hungary, late Annamária Szalai and Monika Karas, have been linked to Fidesz. 80% of the population have access only to the Fidesz-dominated media.

The third step was to appeal to ultranationalism as a source of internal political cohesion. Both regimes consider their nations as organic communities threatened by external and internal enemies. Orbán never misses a chance to slam “profiteers, monopolies, cartels and imperial bureaucrats” of the EU that allegedly want to damage the well-being of Hungarian families. Putin’s Russia is straightforwardly anti-Western, with an emphasis on anti-Americanism. The US is presented as conspiring against Russia and using its political and economic weight to incite the EU to do the same. The internal enemies vary, but “national traitors” and foreign NGOs are common targets in both regimes. They are also concerned about the alleged foreign imperialism and its attempts to turn their countries into colonies despite both Putin and Orbán being revisionists whose visions of the borders do not coincide with the internationally recognised status quo. For Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) was “a major geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century that damaged the “Russian world” he is now trying to rebuild by endangering the post-war order. For Orban, the Treaty of Trianon (1920) after which Hungary lost around 70% of the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary was a disaster for ethnically defined “Hungarian-ness”.

The political systems under Orbán and Putin are right-wing kleptocracies in which the political power of the elites is used to extend their personal wealth at the expense of the wider population and provide material reward to loyal supporters of the regimes. Orbán’s Hungary is a milder version of Putin’s Russia, although the situation in Hungary has been deteriorating every year since 2010. The crucial difference is that Hungary is a member of the EU that can exert significant influence on Orbán’s domestic policies. However, it also seems viable that the potential strengthening of Russia as a regional power may produce further toxic effect and reinforce the illiberal tendencies not only in Hungary but in other Central European countries too.

Adrian Karatnycky, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has written a good article, titled "Warlords and armed groups threaten Ukraine’s rebuilding", in which he discusses important issues related to today's Ukraine.

In March this year, I wrote that the newly-elected (then acting) government had to "urgently address two most important problems: the military Russian invasion that [had] already started in the Crimea, the southernmost region of Ukraine, and the dire economic situation". Writing at the end of this year, Karatnycky argues that Ukraine's established government is relatively successfully dealing with these two problems: "Ukraine is intelligently addressing its key challenges: restructuring the national budget to avoid default and meeting the military threat posed by Russia".

At the same time, Karatnycky highlights another problem, namely "independently operating warlords and armed groups", some of which are guided by far right ideology, as well as the cooperation between these groups and Ukraine's Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov - the cooperation that I have briefly discussed here.

However, there is one inaccurate passage in Karatnicky's article, where he writes about "the notorious Azov brigade, whose members had been shunned during the Maidan protests because of their white-supremacist, anti-democratic views".

The truth is that the Patriot of Ukraine, a neo-Nazi organisation that formed the core of the Azov volunteer battalion in May 2014, was never "shunned during the Maidan protests".

For example, members of the Patriot of Ukraine (or Social-National Assembly that is yet another name for the Patriot of Ukraine) were taking an active part in the confrontation by the Presidential Administration on Bankova Street on 1 December 2013.

Members of the Patriot of Ukraine/Social-National Assembly with armbands with the neo-Nazi wolf's hook symbol. Bankova Street, Kyiv, 1 December 2013

Oleh Odnorozhenko, the ideologue of the Patriot of Ukraine, is watching the members of his organisation burning a flag of former president Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions. Bankova Street, Kyiv, 1 December 2013

During the revolution, some members of the Patriot of Ukraine were part of the Right Sector, while some others preferred to cooperate with C14, a neo-Nazi organisation that was then associated with the far right Svoboda party. (In his interview with BBC, the leader of C14 Yevhen Karas claimed that they were fighting against particular ethnic groups, Russians, Jews, Poles).

However, apart from Oleh Odnorozhenko, the ideologue of the Patriot of Ukraine, none of its leaders took part in the revolution, because all of them had been imprisoned since 2011. The leader of the Patriot of Ukraine, Andriy Bilets'ky, was charged with an attempt to commit murder.

All the leaders of the Patriot of Ukraine were released on 24-25 February 2014 at the initiative of MP Oleh Lyashko who put forward a resolution giving a number of jailed or convicted individuals a status of "political prisoners". Lyashko would later use the leaders of the Patriot of Ukraine for his PR campaign, but they parted ways afterwards.

MP Oleh Lyashko (in a suit) with Andriy Bilets'ky standing behind him, by the Ukrainian parliament, Kyiv, 27 March 2014

To reiterate: while the leaders of the Patriot of Ukraine were imprisoned during the revolution, its rank and file did take part in it, although they constituted a minor element of the whole far right movement that, in its turn, constituted a minor element of the revolution itself.

When I asked Adrian Karatnycky what he meant by saying that members of the Patriot of Ukraine "had been shunned during the Maidan protests", he replied that his source was Andriy Parubiy.

During the revolution, Parubiy was a coordinator of the volunteer security corps for the mainstream protesters. Since he was also coordinating the relations between the mainstream protests and the Right Sector, he simply could not have been unaware of the fact that the activists of the Patriot of Ukraine had been taking part in the revolution. If he indeed said that they "had been shunned during the Maidan protests", then he obviously lied. The question, however, is why take his words at face value, without taking into consideration the existing research on the participation of the far right in the revolution?

The fact that Parubiy lied about the involvement of the Patriot of Ukraine is also quite unfortunate. Actually, it was Parubiy who founded, in the second half of the 1990s, the original Patriot of Ukraine (it has little in common with Bilets'ky's current organisation), as a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) that was renamed into Svoboda in 2004. Then Parubiy was one of the leaders of the SNPU and wrote racist articles that featured statements such as this:

Russia and the US are two centres of mondialism that essentially aspire to destroy the European spirit as antagonistic to their nature. Aspire to destroy the identity of the European nations. Yet they do not understand: barbarians may temporarily win, may destroy many things, but they will not destroy the European spirit, the spirit of the white race. Barbarians come and go, but Europe remains; Europe as the centre of the world spirituality and civilisation, Europe of the free nations.

For fairness' sake it should be said, that Parubiy has distanced from the SNPU/Svoboda already in 2004; he has refrained from using racist rhetoric ever since and seemed to have reformed himself into a mainstream national-democratic politician. This makes his lies about the involvement of the Patriot of Ukraine in the revolution even more unfortunate.

UPDATE: Adrian Karantnycky's article does mention that members of the Patriot of Ukraine (later Azov) took part in the revolution. He also clarified that Parubiy, when saying that the Patriot of Ukraine "had been shunned during the Maidan protests", referred only to his mainstream security units (called Samooborona) that allegedly shunned the Patriot of Ukraine. However, the Right Sector, which featured members of the Patriot of Ukraine, was the 23rd "hundred" (sotnya) of Parubiy's Samooborona, and it was Parubiy himself who allocated the 5th floor of the Trade Union building to the Right Sector.

Учитывая терминологический беспорядок в русскоязычном и украиноязычном медиа-пространстве, я решил составить краткий ликбез, в котором объясняются различные понятия ("крайне правые", "фашисты"и т.д.), которые не только неверно употребляются в медиа, но и стали - совершенно несправедливо - ругательствами, хотя они являются научными терминами в политологии и новейшей истории.

Итак, крайне правыми (far right) называют все идеологическое поле, которое находится правее (т.е. является более радикальным), чем консерваторы (правые). Поле "крайне правые"является общим термином, который может употребляться для описания любой идеологии - от правого радикализма до нацизма.


Правый радикализм (right-wing radicalism, radical right), он же праворадикальный популизм (radical right-wing populism) - это "популистский и романтический ультранационализм, основанный на мифе однородной нации, в рамках которой нация ставится над личностью и ее гражданскими правами, что противопоставляет его либеральной и плюралистской демократии (но необязательно в пользу фашистского государства), ее основополагающим ценностям свободы и равенства и сопряженным категориям индивидуализма и универсализма" (Микаэль Минкенберг).

Мое собственное определение правого радикализма: идеология, основывающаяся на идее сохранения, реализации и воспроизводства этнически или этнокультурно однородного типа общества в рамках демократической системы. (Несмотря на то, что в определении Минкенберга присутствует тезис о противопоставлении правого радикализма и либеральной демократии, а в моем говорится о сосуществовании обеих систем, конфликта между двумя определениями нет: правый радикализм противоречит ценностям либеральной демократии, однако он может существовать в ее рамках, т.к. является ее легитимной оппозицией).


Если "миф однородной нации, в рамках которой нация ставится над личностью и ее гражданскими правами" - или если идея "этнически или этнокультурно однородного типа общества" - реализуется или предлагается для реализации путем насильственных действий, то мы имеем дело с правым экстремизмом (right-wing extremism, extreme right), который не может существовать в рамках демократической системы.



Фашизм (fascism) - это идеология, направленная на революционное обновление, "новорождение" (палингенез) нации (или расы), которая самими идеологами фашизма воспринимается как особый надличностный субъект истории, способный переживать как периоды упадка, обусловленного нарушением органической целостности нации, так и периоды восстановления или периоды повторного рождения (Роджер Гриффин).

"Фашизм"также является общим термином для описания различных видов фашизма. Например, в английском языке принято писать "Fascism"с прописной буквы, чтобы выделить конкретно итальянскую разновидность фашизма. Соответственно, если речь идет о не-итальянской разновидности фашизма (например, об идеологии румынской "Железной гвардии"), то слово "fascism"пишется со строчной буквы. Как и правый экстремизм, любая разновидность фашизма выходит за рамки демократической системы.

Нацизм (Nazism) - это разновидность фашизма, где объектом революционного обновления является не абстрактная нация, а именно раса (как бы она не опредлялась).

Префикс "нео-"в терминах неофашизм (neo-fascism) или неонацизм (neo-Nazism) указывает на временной период возникновения движений, организаций или партий, которые исповедуют фашизм или нацизм. Обычно "неофашистскими"или "неонацистскими"называют такие движения, организации или партии, которые возникли после Второй мировой войны. Однако использование префикса "нео-"для описания послевоенных фашистских и нацистских идеологий не является обязательным.

Как уже упоминалось в самом начале, термином "крайне правые"можно описывать как правый радикализм, так и любые разновидности фашизма. Схожим образом, термином "правый экстремизм"можно описывать фашизм и нацизм.

Формулы для запоминания:

Крайне правые = правый радикализм | правый экстремизм | фашизм | нацизм.
Правый радикализм + насилие = правый экстремизм.
Фашизм + понятие расы = нацизм.

After a landslide victory in the early parliamentary elections held on 25 January 2015, the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) that secured 149 seats in the new parliament has surprised the left-wing voters and sympathisers by agreeing to form, already on 26 January, a coalition government with the far right Independent Greeks party (ANEL) that now has 13 seats. Popular support for the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn led by currently imprisoned Nikolaos Michaloliakos has slightly decreased: the neo-Nazis have secured 17 seats (one seat less than in 2012), but the Golden Dawn is still the third largest party in Greece.

Both SYRIZA and ANEL are so-called "anti-austerity parties" implying that they oppose reducing budget deficits as a response to the Greek financial crisis, as well as rejecting the austerity package put forth by the EU and the IMF. The "anti-austerity" platform may seem the only agenda that has drawn the two parties they share, but they also share a similar approach to foreign policy issues - an approach that may undermine the EU unity over the Russian threat.

Both parties are overtly pro-Russian, and SYRIZA's leader Alexis Tsipras denounced the sanctions against Russia imposed by the EU for Russia's annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine that has already cost Ukrainians thousands of lives. In May 2014, i.e. already after Russia had started its invasion of Ukraine, Tsipras travelled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin's major allies such as Valentina Matviyenko, chairman of Federation Council of the Russian Federation, and Aleksey Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee. Both Matviyenko and Pushkov are sanctioned by the US, while Matviyenko is also sanctioned by the EU. This did not prevent Tsipras from holding a meeting with her.

Valentina Matviyenko and Alexis Tsipras at a meeting in Moscow, May 2014

According to Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin, writing in 2013,

In Greece, our [i.e. Russia's] partners could eventually be Leftists from SYRIZA, which refuses Atlanticism, liberalism and the domination of the forces of global finance. As far as I know, SYRIZA is anti-capitalist and it is critical of the global oligarchy that has victimized Greece and Cyprus. The case of SYRIZA is interesting because of its far-Left attitude toward the liberal global system. It is a good sign that such non-conformist forces have appeared on the scene.

The pro-Russian sentiments of SYRIZA were manifested, in particular, in its voting behaviour in the European parliament. For example, on 16 September 2014, when the European Parliament ratified the EU-Ukraine Association agreement - an agreement that was one of the reasons of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - all six MEPs of SYRIZA voted against the ratification of this agreement.

If SYRIZA is Russia's "Trojan horse" in the EU, then ANEL led by Panos Kammenos may be even worse.

ANEL (founded in February 2012) is a far right party that Daphne Halikiopoulou and Sofia Vasilopoulou describe as "highly conservative and nationalistic right-wing". In its opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, ANEL is similar to, yet is more moderate than, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. ANEL is also prone to conspiracy theories. For example, as argued by Pavlos Zafiropoulos, ANEL and its supporters believe that the Greek government "is spraying the populace from airplanes with mind-controlling substances". Anti-Semitism is not alien to ANEL either: "Panos Kammenos, speaking on a TV program made the baseless claim that Jewish people in Greece are not taxed in contrast to Christian Orthodox Greeks".

The driving force behind the pro-Russian approach of ANEL seems to be Gavriil Avramidis, who was elected MP with ANEL in Thessaloniki in 2012. He is also head of the Patriotic Social Movement "Greek-Russian Alliance" founded in 2001 and aimed at widening co-operation between Greece and Russia.

Yet Avramidis may be not the only politician in ANEL who is lobbying Russian interests in Greece. Kammenos visited Moscow in the first half of January 2015. Moreover, an article titled "An Attempt at Reviving the Russian Party" that was published on 22 January in the Greek Russian-language newspaper Afinskiy Kur'er (Athens Courier) discussed the pro-Russian approach of ANEL in general.

An article titled "An Attempt at Reviving the Russian Party" published in Afinskiy Kur'er (Athens Courier). Gavriil Avramidis is featured on the central photo

Several questions remain, however. Are pro-Russian sentiments indeed important for ANEL? Will ANEL contribute to the strengthening of SYRIZA's pro-Russian positions? Will the new coalition government push for lifting the EU sanctions against Russia that is escalating its invasion of Ukraine?

Doubtlessly, Russia will try to capitalise both on the victory of SYRIZA and the formation of the SYRIZA/ANEL coalition government. Putin has already congratulated Tsipras on his party's victory saying that he is "confident that Russia and Greece will continue to develop their traditionally constructive cooperation in all areas and will work together effectively to resolve current European and global problems". BBC correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse, currently in Athens, reports that he has seen the Russian ambassador Andrey Maslov entering the SYRIZA main office:

Just seen the Russian ambassador walk into Syriza HQ
— Gabriel Gatehouse (@ggatehouse) January 26, 2015

Kammenos' visit to Moscow was most likely connected to the possibility of the formation of the SYRIZA/ANEL coalition government. At the same time, Avramidis visited the General Consulate of Russia in Thessaloniki on 23 January 2015, i.e. just a few days before the parliamentary elections, to discuss, with Consul General Aleksey Popov, the renewal of the cooperation between Greece and Russia, as well as lifting the sanctions against Russia.

(left to right) Russian Consul General in Thessaloniki Aleksey Popov and MP Gavriil Avramidis, 23 January 2015, Thessaloniki

Since the EU is a consensus-based organisation, imposing or tightening sanctions against Russia requires all the Member States to agree to such moves. Hence, the issue of sanctions may become a negotiating point for the new Greek authorities when they meet with more influential EU players to renegotiate the terms of the bailout programme for Greece. SYRIZA and ANEL are "anti-austerity" parties in the first place, so their pro-Russian sentiments may increase the cost, rather than contribute to lifting or blocking, of the EU sanctions against Russia.

Following the previous article on the far left/right coalition government in Greece, I was asked to provide more comments on the connections between SYRIZA and Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin.

First of all, a few words about Dugin himself (interested readers will find my longer piece on Dugin here, and a thesis on him by my colleague Andreas Umland here).

Who is Dugin?

Dugin's ideology is called Eurasianism, but experts prefer to use the term "Neo-Eurasianism", because Dugin's ideology has a limited relation to Eurasianism, the interwar Russian émigré movement that could be placed in the Slavophile tradition. Rather, Neo-Eurasianism is a mixture of the ideas of French esoteric René Guénon, Italian fascist Julius Evola, National Bolshevism, the European New Right and classical geopolitics.


Dugin attempted to enter Russian political life twice. The first attempt was associated with the marginal National-Bolshevik Party (NBP). In 1995, Dugin even contested elections to the State Duma, but he obtained less than one per cent of the vote. His second attempt to get involved in politics is associated with the creation of the Eurasia party in 2002, but already in 2003 the party's other co-founder expelled Dugin from the party.

Aleksandr Dugin, speaking at the HQ of the National-Bolshevik Party, 1996, Moscow

Since then, Dugin firmly settled on the metapolitical course. Here, "metapolitics" implies pursuing a strategy of modifying the democratic political culture, rather than aiming to participate in the political process directly. This strategy was adopted from the theory of cultural hegemony of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). The "right-wing Gramscism" stresses the importance of establishing cultural hegemony by making the cultural sphere more susceptible to non-democratic politics through ideology-driven education and cultural production, in preparation for seizing political power by the far right.

Dugin founded the International Eurasian Movement in 2003 and was appointed professor at the Moscow State University in 2008. From 2005 onwards, he also became a popular political commentator who frequently appeared on prime time talk shows and published in influential newspapers. These positions allowed him to bring his Neo-Eurasianist ideas directly to the academic world, whilst using his academic title as a prestigious cover-up for his irrational ideas.

American anti-Semite and former leader of Ku Klux Klan David Duke (left) and Aleksandr Dugin (right)

Dugin hailed the ascent of Vladimir Putin. In its turn, the Kremlin clearly perceives Dugin’s ideas as useful. By being regularly present in the public sphere, Dugin and other Russian right-wing extremists extending the boundaries of a legitimate space for illiberal narratives make Russian society more susceptible to Putin’s authoritarianism.

Discussing the relations between Dugin and Putin, I would advise against associating Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism with Putin's right-wing authoritarian kleptocracy. At the same time, three points are worth noting:

1. Dugin’s organisational and intellectual initiatives are integral elements of Putin's authoritarian system. In this role, Dugin joins dozens of other agents of right-wing cultural production who, in one manner or another, contribute to the public legitimisation of Putin's regime.

2. Dugin has worked his way up from the eccentric fringes to the Russian socio-cultural mainstream, but his ideology has not changed since the 1990s. What has radically changed is the Russian mainstream political discourse.

3. While not being directly associated with the Kremlin, Dugin belongs to a circle of individuals that is trying to exert influence on Putin's policies. Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, who has been sanctioned by the EU for sponsoring Russian extremists, including Igor Girkin-Strelkov (sanctioned by the EU and US), involved in separatist activities in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, belongs to this circle too and apparently provides funds Dugin's initiatives. Dugin, however, is not yet sanctioned either by the EU or US.



Dugin's approach towards Ukraine

Dugin became especially famous in Russia for the Neo-Eurasianist version of classical geopolitics. His book The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997)  outlined his political and ideological vision of Russia's place in the world, as well as revisionist and expansionist foreign policy. In that book, he wrote in relation to Ukraine:

The sovereignty of Ukraine represents such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that it can, in principle, easily provoke a military conflict. [...] Ukraine as an independent state with some territorial ambitions constitutes an enormous threat to the whole Eurasia, and without the solution of the Ukrainian problem, it is meaningless to talk about the contitental geopolitics. [...] Considering the fact that a simple intergration of Moscow with Kyiv is impossible and will not result in a stable geopolitical structure [...], Moscow should get actively involved in the re-organisation of the Ukrainian space in accordance to the only logical and natural geopolitical model.

In August 2006, Dugin and his Eurasian Youth Union organised a summer camp where right-wing extremists from the Donetsk Republic group (it was involved in organising the initial separatist activities in Eastern Ukraine in 2014) were further indoctrinated and trained to fight against established Ukrainian authorities.

Dugin actively supported Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 and craved for the complete occupation of that country. For Dugin, the war in Georgia was an existential battle against the West: "If Russia decides not to enter the conflict ... that will be a fatal choice. It will mean that Russia gives up her sovereignty" and "We will have to forget about Sevastopol" [i.e. Ukrainian city situated in Crimea].

Aleksandr Dugin and his followers in Georgian South Ossetia invaded by the Russian troops in 2008

Naturally, Dugin fanatically supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and urged Putin to invade south-eastern Ukraine.

Already at the height of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in August 2014, Dugin became even more explicit in his hatred of Ukrainians: In a Facebook post dated 24 August 2014, Dugin wrote:


Translation: "Ukraine needs to be cleansed of idiots. A genocide of cretins suggests itself. Cretins who are virulent, closed for the voice of Logos, deadly and ... in addition to this, extremely stupid. I don't believe that these are Ukrainians. Ukrainians are a fine Slavic people. [But] these are some race of bastards that emerged from the sewage".

Dugin's ideology also inspired French and Serbian neo-Eurasianist activists to illegally go to Eastern Ukraine in summer 2014 to kill Ukrainians.
The SYRIZA connection

It is unclear when exactly Dugin established more or less significant contacts with Greek left-wing SYRIZA. Thanks to an e-mail hack by the Anonymous International, it is viable to suggest that these contacts were established with the help of Georgiy Gavrish, director of the marginal Russian Centre of Geopolitical Expertise and a close associate of both Dugin and Malofeev. Gavrish lived in Greece in 2012 and, possibly, 2013.

In 2013, Nikos Kotzias, now Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Alexis Tsipras's cabinet, invited Dugin to deliver a lecture "International Politics and the Eurasianist Vision" on 12 April at the University of Piraeus, where Kotzias held a post of professor of Political Theories. In his lecture, Dugin implicitly suggested that, rather leaving the EU and joining the Russia-led Eurasian Union, Greece should remain in the EU to promote the pro-Russian vision of international politics. The same day, Dugin presented his lecture "The Geopolitics of Russia" at the Panteion University; Konstantinos Filis, research director of the Institute of International Relations at the Panteion University, hosted the event. [This paragraph has been updated, to reflect the fact that Dugin delivered two lectures on the same day, rather than one, as was erroneously stated in the earlier version of the paragraph.]

Nikos Kotzias, current Greek Foreign Minister (far left), Aleksandr Dugin (centre) and PhD student Antonis Skotiniotis (far right), 12 April 2013, Piraeus

Aleksandr Dugin (left) delivers a lecture "The Geopolitics of Russia" co-hosted by Konstantinos Filis (right)

During his visit to Greece, Dugin also met with SYRIZA's member Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, who also was a correspondent for the Athens News Agency in Moscow (1989-1999). Dugin interviewed Konstantakopoulos, and Konstantakopoulos interviewed him back.

Aleksandr Dugin (right) interviews SYRIZA's Dimitris Konstantakopoulos (left), April 2013, Greece

On 18 May 2013, Kotzias, in collaboration with KAPA Research, conducted a public opinion survey on the Greeks' attitude to Russia. Some of the conclusions of the analysis are:

For the Greeks, Russia is a state ally that they trust and want closer relations with. Russia is a strong state, with a perspective for greater growth, with a strong government that the Greeks are in favor. Generally, the Greeks seem to have realised that the world is changing and new forces come into play. [...] Russia, for the Greeks, is a potential military and economic ally that they respect and seem to know relatively well. The new generation is strongly in favor of closer relations with Russia, while the majority shares this view. The Greeks seem to be partly frustrated with their traditional allies in recent years and, therefore, turned to Russia.

It is unclear who funded or ordered this survey, but two things are known: (1) the survey was not published on the official website of KAPA Research, and (2) the PDF file containing the analysis and results was created on 4 June 2013 and sent by Kotzias to Gavrish on 5 June, together with the original results and raw data from KAPA Research. It seems reasonable to suggest that Malofeev's group ordered and funded the survey via Gavrish or Dugin, in order to test the waters for the promotion of Russian foreign policy in Greece.

After his visit to Greece, Dugin kept in contact with the Greeks and wrote the following:

In Greece, our partners could eventually be Leftists from SYRIZA, which refuses Atlanticism, liberalism and the domination of the forces of global finance. As far as I know, SYRIZA is anti-capitalist and it is critical of the global oligarchy that has victimized Greece and Cyprus. The case of SYRIZA is interesting because of its far-Left attitude toward the liberal global system. It is a good sign that such non-conformist forces have appeared on the scene. Dimitris Konstakopulous writes excellent articles and his strategic analysis I find very correct and profound in many cases.

In September 2013, Konstakopulous sent to Dugin a position paper that explained why full support should be given to SYRIZA, as well as establishing "the movement of Resistance and Subversion 'Free State'", in response to "a full blown and ruthless War" launched by the "International of the Finance" and "the emerging Totalitarian Empire of Globalization".

In December 2013, Dugin wrote a paper "Countries and persons, where there are grounds to create an elite club and/or a group of informational influence through the line of Russia Today". In a footnote, Dugin wrote that, with all these people, he or his representatives "met personally and indirectly or directly talking about a possibility of their participation in the organisational and/or informational initiative of the pro-Russian nature". The paper, in particular, listed Konstakopulousand Alexis Tsipras, the leader of SYRIZA and current Greek Prime Minister. Apart from Dugin's own statement, there is currently no evidence that Dugin or his representatives met with Tsipras, although this might have happened during 2013.

As argued earlier, Dugin is not the person who directly influences the decision-making process in Moscow. Rather, he is a "right-wing ambassador", a representative of Malofeev's group, who gathers information and intelligence and establishes contacts with particular European politicians who may be useful for the promotion of Russia's foreign policy in the EU. Were Russia to influence Greek politics, this would be done through the Greek government's collaboration with the Russian officials. However, Dugin's role in establishing the initial contacts should not be underestimated.

Following the publications in this blog and elsewhere about the contacts between current Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin, Professor Angel Kotios, speaking on behalf of the University of Piraeus, has issued a statement in which he has tried to distance from Dugin. In particular, the statement says:

With relation to the negative reports referred to a lecture by Professor Aleksandr Dugin at the University of Piraeus and in particular the Department of International and European Studies, as Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Business and International Studies, I would like to clarify the following:

The lecture by Professor Dugin held on 12 April 2013 as part of the course "The Foreign Policy of Russia" with tutor Professor N. Kotzias, and it took place after a proposal of Mr. Dugin himself, via his collaborators, and, therefore, in no case was he invited by Professor Kotzias.

Anyone who is more or less familiar with the academic practice, knows that a lecturer cannot simply "invite himself" to give a paper in a course of another lecturer. Even if this were the case, then Kotzias had to check the background of the intrusive lecturer and eventually reject to have Dugin at the University of Piraeus. He did not reject. However, this was not the case at all, and the transcript of the lecture confirms that Dugin was invited.

Greece Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias

Here is the quote in Greek:

Νίκος Κοτζιάς (συντονιστής): Καλώς ήρθατε. Μπορείτε να ξεκινήσετε.

Αλεξάντρ Ντούγκιν: Σας ευχαριστώ πολύ για την πρόσκληση να μιλήσω εδώ στην Ελλάδαγια τη διεθνή πολιτική, για το ρόλο και τη θέση της Ρωσίας στο πλαίσιο του σύγχρονου κόσμου, για τον Ευρασιατισμό ως μια ιδέα η οποία γίνεται όλο και πιο δημοφιλής όχι μόνο στη Ρωσία, αλλά και στο πλαίσιο των γειτονικών της χωρών, τις οποίες ακόμη αποκαλούμε μετασοβιετικό χώρο ή Εγγύς Εξωτερικό.

And here is the official English translation:

Professor Kotzias (coordinator of the discussion): You are welcome. You may take your seat.

Professor Dugin: Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here in Greece about international affairs, about the role and the place of Russia in the context of the actual contemporary world, about Eurasianism as an idea which is becoming more and more popular not only in Russia but also in the context of the near countries that we are still calling post-Soviet space or Near Abroad.

As one can see, Dugin thanks for being invited to give a lecture in Greece.

In his statement, Kotios continues:

The above-mentioned publications are malicious and unacceptable, and challenging academic freedom and democracy. The University is an area of free movement of ideas, dialogue and reflection. It is open to speakers from all over the world and from all ideological trends. How could it be the opposite?

So, does Kotios indeed allege than any extremist can come - or even invite themselves! - to the University of Piraeus to deliver a lecture to students? How many lecturers from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn has the University of Piraeus hosted so far?

Instead of apologising for inviting a fascist and proponent of genocide to indoctrinate their students, as well as promising to adopt the progressive No Platform policy, the University of Piraeus has unfortunately resorted to opportunism and ridiculous lies.

Introduction

The early presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine that took place in May and October 2014 correspondingly proved to be disastrous for the Ukrainian party-political far right.

Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom” (Svoboda), obtained 1.16% of the vote in the presidential election, while his party secured only 4.71% of the vote in the parliamentary election and, eventually, failed to pass the 5% electoral threshold and enter the parliament. In comparison, Svoboda managed to obtain 10.44% of the votes in 2012 and form the first ever far right parliamentary group in the history of Ukraine.

Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector, obtained 0.70% in the presidential election, and 1.80% of the voters supported his party in the parliamentary election. The Right Sector, at the same time, can only provisionally be considered a far right party, and “national conservative” would perhaps be a more relevant and cautious term. In contrast to Svoboda, the Right Sector interprets the Ukrainian nation in civic, rather than ethnic, terms, while Yarosh’s election programme even insisted that the values of human dignity and human rights should become a fundamental ideology of a new constitution of Ukraine.

Weakness of the Party-Political Far Right

The failure of Tyahnybok and Yarosh in the presidential election, however, had little to do with their own political popularity. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the invasion in Eastern Ukraine, Ukrainians voted in the presidential election in a largely tactical manner. They supported the most popular candidate at that time, Petro Poroshenko, as they were eager to elect a new president already in the first round of the election, in order to focus on the anti-terrorist campaign in the East of the country. These attitudes affected all the other presidential candidates, including Tyahnybok and Yarosh.

The unsuccessful performance of Svoboda and the Right Sector in the parliamentary election requires a more elaborate explanation. Naturally, an element of tactical voting was present during the parliamentary election too. According to public opinion polls conducted before the election, Svoboda was on the verge of passing the electoral threshold and many voters decided not to risk supporting this party. At the same time, the popularity of the Right Sector was very low, to the extent that some sociological companies often did not mention it. However, the tactical voting cannot fully explain the far right’s failure.

Why did the far right, in particular Svoboda, fail in the parliamentary election? First, Svoboda’s popularity started to decrease already in 2013, as their former supporters became disappointed with its work in the parliament. Second, Svoboda and the Right Sector split the nationalist vote; Svoboda was affected the most, as some of its former supporters presumably swung to the Right Sector. Third, Svoboda’s success in 2012 was a success of a political force that was considered the most radical in its opposition to former president Viktor Yanukovych. Svoboda was largely an “anti-Yanukovych party”, but with Yanukovych gone, Svoboda lost the major source of negative mobilisation. Fourth, in 2012, Svoboda was also considered almost the only patriotic party, but since the Russian invasion forced all the democratic Ukrainian parties to turn to patriotic rhetoric, Svoboda lost its “monopoly” on patriotism. Last, but not the least, the questionable conduct and dubious activities of Svoboda’s top members (including those who were ministers in the provisional cabinet of Arseniy Yatsenyuk) in spring-summer 2014 drove off many of their former supporters.

However, the electoral failure of Svoboda and the Right Sector did not mark “the end of history” of the Ukrainian far right, and some other developments proved to be much more problematic. Before discussing some of these developments, it is useful to understand how some far right groups have been making a living in Ukraine.

Shady dealings

Since the 1990s, Ukrainian far right activists – as well as activists of other political movements – always fell in two broadly generalised, yet sometimes overlapping, categories: “romantics” and “pragmatists”. “Romantics” take their political beliefs seriously, are ready to sacrifice their time and energy for the cause, and work fulltime for their political organisations on a voluntary basis. “Pragmatists” may be driven by genuine beliefs in the political cause too, but earning a living is always their number one concern.

This dual, “romantic-pragmatist” character of the far right movement in general often determines its hidden agenda: promoting and fighting for a political cause goes along with making money through activities that are not necessarily relevant to their politics. More often than not, “pragmatists” head far right organisations and parties and, therefore, turn them into enterprises with “romantic” rank-and-file being either low-paid or non-paid employees or interns. In this capacity, far right organisations are business machines able to offer various types of services.

As political parties, far right organisations can provide three major services. First, they can be employed by more powerful (and usually incumbent) political subjects, to pose as “scarecrow” or “bigger evil” actors to mobilise popular support for the incumbents presented as “lesser evil”. Second, during elections of any level, far right parties, which have very limited chances of success, yet are entitled to have representatives in electoral commissions, may financially gain by either exchanging their own representatives for those who represent other parties or participating in electoral fraud themselves to the benefit of more popular candidates. Third, more powerful political actors may promote far right parties, for example by covertly investing in their campaigns, in order to weaken or undermine major competing players, in particular of the mainstream right.

Naturally, far right politicians elected into the parliament or appointed to the government as ministers can engage in a large number of corrupt schemes available to representatives of other political forces too.

The spectrum of the services that the far right can offer as social organisations or groupuscules is even wider than those of the far right political parties, although the level of reward is lower than in the second case. Most of the services provided by the far right can be grouped into – again, often overlapping – four major categories concisely named “illegal economic developments”, “protection and security”, “fake protests” and “violence”.

First, far right activists are sometimes hired as strong-arm men to provide support during illegal takeovers. In Ukraine, redistribution of assets, property, businesses and wealth sometimes take place outside the legal space, and the rule of law is replaced by the rule of force. Far right activists who often practice martial arts and/or bodybuilding are, thus, useful in these situations, especially when an interested party needs to physically break through and occupy particular enterprises and/or offices. While activities such as these are predominantly non-ideological, ideology may play a mobilising role when a far right group is hired to drive out a business run by people of non-Slavic origin from a market. To mobilise their rank-and-file for such an operation, “pragmatists” leading a far right group may interpret it as a part of the “racial holy war”, while in reality the original “need” to force out a business from a market has nothing to do with ethnicity.

Caught on CCTV: Ihor Moseychuk, then a member of the Patriot of Ukraine and currently an MP, is raiding an office and apparently stealing belongings of office workers. July 2014, Kyiv, Ukraine. Source: YouTube

Second, some far right groups can be characterised as criminal gangs running protection and/or extortion rackets. In the case of the protection racket, far right activists would offer to protect a business against a real threat, for example an illegal takeover or aggressive competitors. In the case of the extortion racket, the far right would threaten to attack a business if it refused protection.

Third, and this point is similar to the extortion racket, far right activists sometimes organise or threaten to organise protests against particular political, social or cultural developments or events in order to extort a reward for stopping them. For example, real estate developers do not always take into account opinions of tenants of neighbouring houses who can make a weak protest that will then be hijacked and/or reinforced by a far right group. A strong legitimate protest can potentially stop a construction project that would lead to significant financial losses, so a building company would offer a payoff to a far right group in exchange for its withdrawal from the protest that would eventually die out without a mass backing of far right activists. In a similar vein, a far right group can threaten to block a concert of an “unpatriotic” singer or disrupt an event of social or cultural minorities in order to extract a payoff from the promoters or the organisers of the concert or the event.

Caught on a hidden camera: Ihor Mazur (aka "Topolya"), a leader of the Ukrainian National Assembly, is trying to "sell" an anti-government protest to a representative of the authorities. A Ukrainian investigative journalist pretended to be one. July 2013, Kyiv. Source: YouTube

Fourth, far right activists can be hired by an interested party to perform acts of violence against its political opponents without giving away the connection between the “customer” and the “contractors”. More often than not, “customers” are incumbents who would be interested in disrupting opposition protests or demonstrations that can potentially pose a serious challenge to the incumbents. The violence may be either direct, i.e. physical attacks, or mediated. In the latter case, far right activists would infiltrate the opposition protests without disclosing either their political affiliation or their “customers” and radicalise them to the degree where a police action against the entire protest would be legitimate. In most cases, far right activists would attack the police to provoke them into using violence against the genuine protesters.

It is important to note that all the described activities are neither confined to the far right milieu nor to the Ukrainian context. Moreover, the brief description of these largely illegal activities does not imply that all the Ukrainian far right parties and groups are engaged in them or that those far right activists who are indeed engaged in them necessarily represent organisations that are fake in political terms. It is true that some Ukrainian far right organisations will only care about making money, but normally raising money would still contribute to the struggle for a political cause.

Networking

The recent developments in Ukraine marked by the rise of the previously obscure neo-Nazi organisation “The Patriot of Ukraine” (PU) led by Andriy Bilets’ky can be seen from a purely political perspective but they cannot be fully understood without taking into account the above-mentioned activities of some of the far right organisations in Ukraine.

The political perspective is as follows. Like some other leaders of the PU, Bilets’ky did not take part in the 2014 revolution, as he had been in jail since the end of 2011: he was charged with attempted murder. Bilets’ky and his associates were released only after the ouster of Yanukovych as “political prisoners”, and later the PU formed a core of the Azov battalion, a volunteer detachment governed by the Ministry of Interior headed by Arsen Avakov. From the very beginning, the Azov battalion employed imagery such as Wolfsangel and Schwarze Sonne that in post-war Europe is associated with neo-Nazi movements.

A member of Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party, minister Avakov promoted the Azov battalion and granted the rank of police Lieutenant Colonel to its commander Bilets’ky in August 2014. The People’s Front also brought Bilets’ky into the military council of the party and apparently planned to officially support his candidacy in the parliamentary election, but, due to the opposition to such a move from the Ukrainian expert community and representatives of national minorities, the People’s Front was forced to re-think its decision. However, the People’s Front, in particular Avakov and his advisor Anton Gerashchenko, still supported Bilets’ky unofficially, and he was elected into the parliament in a single-member district in Kyiv. After the elections, Avakov appointed Vadym Troyan, deputy commander of the Azov battalion and a top member of the PU, as head of the Kyiv region police.

The political perspective raises troubling questions: Why did Ukrainians elect a neo-Nazi into the parliament? Why did the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior promote the leaders of the neo-Nazi organisation?

One can answer the first question still within the conceptual framework of political science. Bilets’ky’s neo-Nazi views and his leadership in the PU played no role in his victory. He was elected into the parliament for three major reasons: (1) he was a commander of a volunteer battalion that defended Ukraine against (pro-)Russian extremists in Eastern Ukraine, (2) although he was not taking part in the revolution – a little-known fact to the public – he was considered almost the only representative of the victorious Maidan movement in his electoral district, and (3) his nearest competitor was a representative of the ancien regime.

The framework of political science, however, fails to explain why the Ministry of Interior supported the leaders of the Patriot of Ukraine, as neither Avakov nor Gerashchenko is a neo-Nazi. The explanation seems to lie in the past and has to do with a sinister legacy of cronyism.

Avakov, Bilets’ky and Troyan are all coming from the Kharkiv region and have known each other at least since 2009-2010, when Avakov was still the governor of the Kharkiv region. In Kharkiv, the PU was involved in some of the largely illegal activities described earlier. In 2010, the PU activists headed by Troyan seized four dozens of news kiosks in Kharkiv in favour of, according to the media reports, Andriy Liphans’ky. The latter was a business partner of Avakov and headed the board of media and information of the Kharkiv region during Avakov’s governance. Media reports also suggested that Liphans’ky rented a gym for training of the PU activists. In their turn, the PU activists provided manpower for paid protests, as well as protection for the demonstrations of the Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko (BYuT) in Kharkiv – at that time Avakov, after having been dismissed from the post of the Kharkiv region governor, headed that the regional office of the BYuT. Furthermore, a leader of the Kharkiv football hooligans who was close to the PU took part in Avakov’s mayoral campaign in 2010.

Today’s involvement of the PU leaders in Ukrainian police seems to be driven by Avakov’s trust in the organisation that he worked with in the past. Avakov also seems to believe in the personal loyalty of the PU-led Azov battalion and may use them as his “private army” to protect his business and political interests.

The problematic relationship between the Ministry of Inferior and the neo-Nazis is undermining the credibility of the newly formed Ukrainian government both internationally and domestically. It was most likely Avakov who suggested to Poroshenko to grant Ukrainian citizenship to Belarusian fighter of the Azov battalion Sergey Korotkikh who had been involved in the neo-Nazi movements in Belarus and Russia since the late 1990s. Furthermore, under Avakov, the police in Kyiv have already proved unable or unwilling to investigate a number of hate crimes. In July, far right thugs – not necessarily associated with the PU – attacked four black people in the underground, a gay club and a Jewish student by a synagogue. The police initiated two criminal cases, but so far nobody has been prosecuted. In September, the head of the Visual Culture Research Centre Vasyl Cherepanyn was beaten apparently by far right activists, but the police failed to investigate this attack too. The police is also unwilling to address the issue with the tortures of political opponents inflicted by the neo-Nazi C14 group during the revolution in winter 2013-2014. There is no ground to believe that the infiltration of the far right into the police will contribute to the efficiency of its investigations in general and of the hate crimes in particular.


Conclusion

Avakov may consider the PU-led Azov battalion as his “private army”, but not everybody in the PU and Azov see the current cooperation with the Ministry of Interior as a goal in and of itself. The PU may benefit from this cooperation, but it still has its own political agenda that goes beyond this cooperation. The PU has also started advertising employment in the Security Service of Ukraine on their webpages.

Further infiltration of the far right into the Ukrainian law enforcement and other institutions of the state will most likely lead to the following developments. First, the coalescence of the police and the far right who were engaged, inter alia, in the illegal activities will necessarily increase the corruption risks. Second, the growth of the far right within the law enforcement will lead to the gradual liberation of the PU from the personal patronage of Avakov that will likely result in the PU’s independent action.

While Svoboda and the Right Sector have failed in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the infiltration of some other far right organisations in the law enforcement is possibly a more advanced long-term strategy in their fight against not particularly well established liberal democracy in Ukraine.

This article was originally published in German language in Ukraine-Analysen, No. 144 (2015).

Just two weeks after the leader of the pro-Russian right-wing terrorist organisation "Donetsk People's Republic" (DNR) Aleksandr Zakharchenkodeclared that Ukraine was run by "miserable Jews", a delegation of the German party Die Linke visited the author of this anti-Semitic jibe and delivered what they called "humanitarian help".

Pro-Russian right-wing terrorist Aleksandr Zakharchenko (2nd from the left) and the delegation of Die Linke: Wolfgang Gehrcke (3rd) and Andrej Hunko (4th), Donetsk, 16 February 2015

Previous foreign visitors of right-wing terrorist Zakharchenko included representatives of the European extreme right organisations who have particular links to Die Linke, on which more below.

DNR terrorist Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Polish far right politician Mateusz Piskorski, 1 November 2014, Donetsk

DNR terrorist Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Fabrice Beaur of the neo-fascist Parti communautaire national-européen, 1 November 2014, Donetsk

Both Wolfgang Gehrcke and Andrej Hunko entered Eastern Ukraine illegally. They first travelled from Germany to Moscow's Sheremetyevo International airport and then - to the Russian city of Rostov. From there, they went to Ukraine via a segment of the Ukrainian-Russian border that was not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. Hence, they entered Ukraine without passing any Ukrainian border control point which constitutes an administrative offense (unauthorised border crossing). No internationally recognised body (OSCE or Red Cross) was able to check the contents of Die Linke's alleged "humanitarian help".

Originally they travelled together with another Die Linke's member Julius Zukowski-Krebs, who was going to violate the Ukrainian border too, but he says that he was attacked by a dog and did not go to Ukraine.

Julius Zukowski-Krebs updating his Facebook from the Sheremetyevo International airport where he was waiting for a flight to Rostov together with Wolfgang Gehrcke and Andrej Hunko, Moscow, 15 February 2015

Illegal entry in Ukraine and the picture that Die Linke's representatives took together with right-wing terrorist Zakharchenko constitute a very clear political message: Die Linke respects neither the territorial integrity nor the laws or the sovereignty of Ukraine. Furthermore, by entering Ukraine via Rostov, Gehrcke and Hunko followed the route of the Russian troops that continue their invasion of Eastern Ukraine to help the DNR terrorists in their occupation of of particular territories.

This is not the first time when Die Linke cooperated with the pro-Russian extreme right and Putin's right-wing authoritarian regime. In March 2014, Die Linke's representatives Hikmat Al-Sabty, Torsten Koplin (former informant of Stasi), Piotr Luczak and Monika Merk joined German far-right activist and Russia Today celebrity Manuel Ochsenreiter in their trip to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea - then occupied by the Russian troops - to "observe" the illegitimate and illegal "referendum" on the status of Crimea after which Russia annexed this Ukrainian region in violation of every international norm.

It is worth reminding that "observers" of the Crimean "referendum" were invited by two organisations: the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections (EODE) and the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis (ECGA). The EODE is headed by Belgian fascist Luc Michel, the leader of the "National-Bolshevik"Parti Communautaire National-européen. The ECGA is headed by Polish far right activist Mateusz Piskorski, a former member of neo-Nazi pagan Niklot group and the right-wing populist Samooborona political party, and contemporary founding member of the "National-Bolshevik"Zmiana party. The activities of the EODE and ECGA are largely funded by Moscow through payments for "observing" and, eventually, legitimising controversial or fraudulent elections and referenda in Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia.

Member of Die LinkePiotr Luczak was one of the directors of the ECGA, but decided to found his own branch of the ECGA in Germany in 2011-2012: Europäisches Zentrum für Geopolitische Analyse e.V.Luczak has been closely cooperating with Piskorski’s ECGA and Michel’s EODE. For example, in 2011, Luczak took part in the EODE’s "election observation mission" in Russia.

(left to right) Fabrice Beaur, administrator of EODE Russia-Caucasus Zone and General Secretary of the neo-fascist Parti communautaire national-européen, and Piotr Luczak of Die Linke, Moscow, 13 October 2011

In December 2011, Luczak and yet another member of Die LinkeSabine Golczhyk took part in the joint EODE/ECGA"monitoring mission" in Transnistria to legitimise the "presidential election" in this unrecognised "state".

EODE/ECGA press conference: (left to right) Mateusz Piskorski, Sabine Golczyk, [unknown], Luc Michel, Yuriy Baranchik (advisor to Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenka) and Piotr Luczak, Tiraspol, 12 December 2011

Apart from the Crimean "referendum", Luczak took part in the "monitoring mission" in St. Petersburg on 14 September 2014. The "mission" was coordinated by Piskorski’s ECGA and featured, in particular, "election observers" from the far right parties such as Vlaams Belang (Belgium), Front National (France) and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Austria).

Die Linke's collaboration with the far right represents yet another example of the growing trend in the EU, namely the tactical convergence of the (far) left and the far right, especially in foreign policy. The (far) left and the far right votein a similar way in the European Parliament on the issues related to Putin's right-wing authoritarian regime, while the associates of Die Linke in Greece, Syriza, has recently formed a coalition government with the far right Independent Greeks party.

The European far right remains largely a fringe force in the EU, but the "red-brown" collaboration - whether for tactical or any other reasons - between the (far) left and the far right constitutes an increasing threat to liberal democracy in the EU.

The Russian fascist Rodina (Motherland) party that was founded by Russia's current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin is organising a large conference titled "International Russian Conservative Forum" (IRCF) to be held in St. Petersburg on 22 March 2015.

According to Kommersant's journalist Grigory Tumanov, the following European organisations are taking part in the conference:

1. Attack (Ataka), Bulgaria.
2. Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), Austria.
3. Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka), Serbia.
4. Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF).

The APF is a newly established umbrella organisation that was established in Brussels on 4 February 2015 and is represented by the following parties:

1. New Force (Forza Nuova), Italy.
2. National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), Germany.
3. Party of the Swedes (Svenskarnas parti), Sweden.
4. Golden Dawn (Chrysí Avgí), Greece.
5. National Democracy (Democracia Nacional), Spain.
6. Nation, Belgium.
7. Danish Party (Danskernes Parti), Denmark.

The first congress of the APF, chaired by Nick Griffin (former leader of the British National Party), Rome, 4 February 2015

(I assumed already in September 2013 that Fiore was building an umbrella organisation that would unite political parties and movements that are generally more extreme than the Alliance of European National Movements. In February 2015, with the creation of the AFP, my assumption has been proven correct.)

The exact composition of the AFP delegation to the IRCF is unknown at the moment, but the following representatives seem to be confirmed: Nick Griffin, Roberto Fiore of the Forza Nuova, Udo Voigt of the NPD, Eleftherios Sinadinos and George Epitidios of the Golden Dawn.

The IRCF has almost a year-long history. It was first planned to be held on 15 March 2014, under the name "Russian National Forum against Tolerance", but due to the annexation of Crimea and the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the organisers decided to postpone the conference to 3-4 October (under the name "Russian National Forum"), then to 7-9 November 2014. Eventually, the organisers settled the final date: 22 March 2015, i.e. only one day instead of 2-3 days that they planned for October and November - this change apparently indicates the organisers failed to invite as many participants as they originally wanted.

The prospective participation of the FPÖ in the IRCF raises eyebrows. The FPÖ is clearly on the far right - it is a radical right-wing party - but all the other participants of the IRCF, including the Russian organiser (Rodina) are explicit fascists and neo-Nazis. Moreover, a number of European parties eventually refused to take part in this Russian fascist event, in particular the Swiss People's Party (Switzerland), Scottish National Party (UK), Identitarian Bloc (France), National Front (France), and Jobbik (Hungary). None of these parties wanted to fraternise with the European and Russian fascists.

What is behind the FPÖ's ideological promiscuity? I believe the answer is clear: the FPÖ is struggling to repeat the "success story" of the French Front National that has secured a multimillion loan from a Russian bank in 2014. To remind the readers, according the available information, these were former leaders of the Rodina party - namely Alexander Babakov and Dmitry Rogozin - who played a significant role in assisting Front National's Marine Le Pen in getting that multimillion loan. Hence, if the FPÖ wants the same, it now must obediently stooge for the Rodina party and the Kremlin. High rhetoric about sovereignty? Obviously not when the money is involved!

UPDATE 1:
According to the report from the ORF, the FPÖ has decided not to take part in the IRCF. Yuriy Lyubomirsky of the Rodina party says that, on Monday (9 March), he received an email from FPÖ's Johan Gudenus who cancelled his participation in the conference. Gudenus, at the same time, argues that he was not going to participate in the IRCF at all, but this seems highly unlikely. The organisers were planning to inviteFPÖ already in January 2014, and Lyubomirskyconfirmed, in December 2014, the participation of the FPÖ in the conference. This is the only reason why the organisers of the IRCF mentioned the party in the list of participating organisations on 4 March 2015:


UPDATE 2:
More evidence emerged on Tuesday (10 March) strongly indicating that FPÖ's Gudenus had been planning to participate in the IRCF. Alexander Fanta, a journalist of Austria Presse Agentur (APA), published a screenshot of Gudenus' letter in which the latter thanked for the invitation to the IRCF, said he was "looking forward to join the conference", and asked to put him and his attendance on the organisers' list.

A letter from Johan Gudenus to the organisers of the IRCF. Credit: Alexander Fanta

UPDATE 3:

Following Gudenus' cancellation of his participation in the conference, the Serbian Radical Party also decided not to take part in the event. At the same time, the Lombardy-Russia Cultural Association established by the Italian far right Lega Nord will participate in the forum.

Two American racists – Jared Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance, and Nathan Smith of the Texas Nationalist Movement– are also expected at the IRCF.

The conference will be chaired the head of the Rodina party Aleksey Zhuravlyov who is also Russian MP and a member of the pro-Putin United Russia parliamentary group. The Russian side will also be represented by a member of the Federation CouncilIgor Morozov, president of the social-patriotic club “Stalingrad” Fyodor Biryukov, and some other political figures.

The Uneasy Reality of Antifascism in Ukraine
First published in German language in Beton International: Zeitung für Literatur und Gesellschaft (10 March 2015). The German version can be found below.

Ukrainian antifascists hold a banner that reds: "Against political terror". Kyiv, 19 January 2015

For almost twenty years of Ukraine’s independence, the term “antifascism” used to have very limited currency in the established political discourse in Ukraine. Until 2010, “antifascism” was primarily used as a form of self-identification by an element of Ukraine’s left-wing movement, as well as being employed by the far right groupuscules to refer to their left-wing opponents. Hence, until 2010-2011, “antifascism” remained a notion that largely belonged to the subcultural sphere of the physical and symbolical strife between left-wing and far right activists.
Yet when the notion of antifascism did enter the mainstream political discourse in Ukraine, it immediately became extremely problematic. The problematic nature of the notion had little to do with what “antifascism” essentially implied – that is opposition to fascism – but resulted from the manipulated use of the notion of antifascism in the post-Soviet space in general and Ukraine in particular.

The manipulated use of “antifascism” has been increasingly prominent in Russia since Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term (2004-2008). During the “Orange revolution” in Ukraine, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested against the fraudulent “victory” of pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych in the 2004 presidential election, pro-Yanukovych media in Ukraine and pro-Kremlin media in Russia slammed the leaders of the largely pro-European “orange” protest movement as “orange fascists”. To oppose the virtual threat of an “orange revolution” in Russia itself, the Presidential Administration launched the Youth Democratic Antifascist Movement “Ours” (Nashi). The imagery of the movement drew extensively on the legacy of the Soviet Union: the prevalence of the red colour, Soviet-style slogans, and even their official website was registered in .su domain (.su was originally assigned to the Soviet Union).

These events reveal the basic argument behind the manipulated use of the notions of both fascism and antifascism in Russia. Since it is the Kremlin’s geopolitical belief that particular sovereign post-Soviet states belong to the Russian sphere of influence, Moscow interprets post-Soviet sovereign countries’ attempts to move away from this sphere as anti-Russian actions. As the Kremlin also adopts the political cult of the “Victory in the Great Patriotic War” seen as the struggle between the Soviets and fascists, as well as drawing on the Soviet legacy of defining fascism as anticommunism and equating it with Anti-Sovietism, Moscow tends to interpret the perceived anti-Russian sentiment as fascist too. Hence, the term “antifascism”, in its manipulated interpretation, implies an opposition to the perceived geopolitical threats that Putin’s regime allegedly faces.

It was in a similarly distorted interpretation that the notion of antifascism entered the mainstream Ukrainian political discourse in 2010-2011. This development was associated with three major events. First, in the beginning of 2010 Viktor Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine, adopted pro-Russian foreign policy and started suppressing political opponents. Second, the same year, Russian politician and businessman Boris Spiegel, who had close ties to the Kremlin, founded, in Kyiv, the World without Nazism organisation (WWN). Third, in 2011, Vadym Kolesnichenko, Yanukovych’s major ally, launched the International Antifascist Front (IAF).

While both organisations, i.e. the WWN and IAF, officially aimed at fighting against xenophobia, racism and glorification of Nazi crimes, their real objectives were different. The WWN promoted the Russian version of history of the twentieth century, advanced Russian foreign policy and tried to influence public opinion in former Soviet republics. The IAF, in its turn, organised protests against the political opposition to Yanukovych. Originally, the IAF attacked the far right Svoboda party that was critical of Yanukovych, but since Svoboda strategically sided with the democratic opposition, the latter was attacked too. Therefore, the protests held by the “antifascist” organisation against the entire political opposition to Yanukovych aimed at discrediting it as “fascist”. The IAFG adopted this tactic from the Russian Nashi movement that attacked, from the “antifascist” positions, all the opponents of Putin.

The activities of the WWN and IAF resulted in a conceptual conflict between the original definition of antifascism as a struggle against racism and right-wing extremism practiced by Ukrainian left-wing activists and the implicitly manipulated interpretation that implied promotion of Russian interests in Ukraine. The Ukrainian anti-authoritarian left-wing movement, due to its political weakness, failed to defend their interpretation of the notion. Especially after pro-Russian media and commentators started describing the “People’s Republics” in separatist-held areas of Eastern Ukraine as antifascist “states” fighting against the “Kyiv fascist junta”, the term “antifascism” became completely discredited. Today, Ukrainian left-wing activists have almost abandoned the use of the term in the public discourse and tend to talk about the struggle against racism, intolerance and political terror.

Ukrainian antifascists commemorate Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova killed by Russian neo-Nazis in Moscow on 19 January 2009

Die unbehagliche Realität des Antifaschismus in der Ukraine

In den fast 20 Jahren seit der Erlangung der Unabhängigkeit stand der Begriff „Antifaschismus“ in der politischen Debatte in der Ukraine nicht besonders hoch im Kurs. Bis 2010 verwendete ein Segment der ukrainischen Linken den Begriff „Antifaschismus“ in erster Linie als eine Möglichkeit der Selbstidentifikation. Zugleich machten auch rechtsextreme Aktivisten von diesem Ausdruck Gebrauch, um ihre linken Gegner zu bezeichnen. Bis 2010 war der Ausdruck „Antifaschismus“ hauptsächlich in der subkulturellen Sphäre des physischen und symbolischen Kampfes zwischen linken und rechten Aktivisten zu finden.

Als der Begriff „Antifaschismus“ im politischen Mainstreamdiskurs in der Ukraine angekommen war, wurde er sogleich massiv problematisiert. Das problematische Wesen dieses Begriffs hatte weniger damit zu tun, was Antifaschismus essenziell implizierte - nämlich die Opposition zum Faschismus -, sondern resultierte aus dem manipulativen Gebrauch des „Antifaschismus“ im postsowjetischen Raum im Allgemeinen und in der Ukraine im Speziellen.

Der manipulative Gebrauch des „Antifaschismus“ erfreute sich seit Wladimir Putins zweiter Amtszeit (2004-2008) besonderer Prominenz. Im Zuge der „Orange Revolution“ in der Ukraine, als hunderttausende Ukrainer gegen den gefälschten „Wahlsieg“ des prorussischen Politikers Wiktor Janukowitsch bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen 2004 protestierten, diffamierten die mit Janukowitsch sympathisierenden Medien in der Ukraine und die Pro-Kreml-Medien in Russland die Anführer der proeuropäischen „orange“ Bewegung als „orange Faschisten“. Um die virtuelle Bedrohung einer „orange Revolution“ in Russland selbst abzuwehren, rief die Präsidentschaftsadministration eine „Demokratische Antifaschistische Jugendbewegung“ ins Leben, „Die Unseren“ C,Naschi“). Das Image der Bewegung nahm Anleihen am Vermächtnis der Sowjetunion: Die dominierende Farbe ist Rot, und die Webseite wurde sogar in der .su-Domain registriert, die ursprünglich für die Sowjetunion vorgesehen war.

Diese Faktoren geben den Blick frei auf den manipulativen Gebrauch des Begriffspaars Faschismus und Antifaschismus in Russland. Da der Kreml dem geopolitischen Glauben anhängt, die souveränen postsowjetischen Staaten würden zur Einflusssphäre Russlands gehören, interpretiert Moskau die Bestrebungen dieser Staaten, die russische Einflusssphäre zu verlassen, als antirussische Aktionen. Da der Kreml außerdem den politischen Kult des „Sieges im Großen Vaterländischen Krieg“ pflegt, wobei dieser Krieg gesehen wird als ein Kampf zwischen den Sowjets und den Faschisten und zudem in Fortsetzung der sowjetischen Tradition der Antikommunismus mit dem Antisowjetismus gleichgesetzt wird, neigt Moskau dazu, das, was als anti-russische Ressentiments wahrgenommen wird, ebenfalls als faschistisch zu deklarieren. Daher impliziert der Begriff „Antifaschismus“ in seiner manipulativen Interpretation eine Opposition zu den geopoliti-schen Bedrohungen, die das Putin-Regime als solche wahrnimmt und mit denen es sich konfrontiert sieht.

In einer ähnlich verzerrten Interpretation fand der Begriff „Antifaschismus“ Eingang in den politischen Mainstreamdiskurs der Ukraine nach 2010. Diese Entwicklung wurde mit drei wichtigen Ereignissen in Verbindung gebracht. Erstens wrurde Janukowitsch 2010 zum Präsidenten der Ukraine gewählt, implementierte eine prorussische Außenpolitik und begann damit, politische Gegner zu verfolgen. Zweitens gründete der russische Politiker und Geschäftsmann Boris Spiegel, der enge Verbindungen zum Kreml unterhielt, im selben Jahr in Kiew eine Organisation namens World With-out Nazism (WWN). Drittens rief im Jahr 2011 Wadim Kolesnitschenko, ein wichtiger Verbündeter Janukowitschs, die Internationale Antifaschistische Front (IAF) ins Leben.

Beide Organisationen verfolgten offiziell das Ziel, gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit, Rassismus und die Glorifizierung von Nazi-Verbrechen zu kämpfen, jedoch waren ihre eigentlichen Ziele andere. Die WWN brachte sich aktiv in die russische Außenpolitik ein und versuchte, die öffentliche Meinung in den früheren Sowjetrepubliken zu beeinflussen. Die IAF organisierte Proteste gegen die politische Opposition Janukowitschs. Ursprünglich attackierte die IAF die rechtsextreme Partei „Swoboda“, die Janukowitsch gegenüber kritisch eingestellt war, aber da sich „Swoboda“ mit der demokratischen Opposition verbündete, geriet letztere ebenfalls ins Fadenkreuz der IAF. Die Proteste der „antifaschistischen“ Organisation gegen die gesamte politische Opposition zielten also darauf ab, diese als „faschistisch“ zu diskreditieren. Die IAF hatte diese Taktik von der russischen „Naschi“-Bewegung übernommen, die ebenfalls sämtliche Gegner Putins aus einer „antifaschistischen“ Position heraus angreift.

Die Aktivitäten der WWN und der IAF führten zu einem konzeptuellen Konflikt zwischen der ursprünglichen Definition des Antifaschismus als einem Kampf gegen den rechten Extremismus, wie er von der ukrainischen Linken geführt worden war, und der implizit manipulierten Interpretation, die darauf hinausläuft, dass Russland in der Ukraine seine eigenen Interessen verfolgt. Die ukrainische antiautoritäre linke Bewegung hatte nicht genug politische Kraft, um ihre eigene Interpretation des Begriffs „Antifaschismus“ zu verteidigen. Nachdem die prorussischen Medien die „Volksrepubliken“ in den von den Separatisten kontrollierten Gebieten der Ostukraine als „antifaschistische Staaten“ bezeichneten, die gegen die „faschistische Junta in Kiew“ kämpften, geriet der Begriff „Antifaschismus“ vollends in Verruf. Inzwischen verwenden die ukrainischen linken Aktivisten den Begriff so gut wie gar nicht mehr im öffentlichen Diskurs und sprechen stattdessen lieber vom Kampf gegen Rassismus, Intoleranz und politischen Terror.

Aus dem Englischen von Mascha Dabić

In the course of the violent protests that took place by the Verkhovna Rada (the building of the Ukrainian parliament) on August 31, three National Guards were killed, and several dozens more servicemen, as well as protesters themselves, were wounded. The 3,000-strong protesters demanded from the parliament not to endorse amendments to the Ukrainian constitution. They were co-organised by the far-right Svoboda party, and two populist parties – the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko and the Ukrainian Union of Patriots (better known as UKROP).

The three national guards were killed by a single grenade. The Ukrainian authorities suspect that it was thrown by a member of the Sich Battalion associated with Svoboda. (While it is not clear whether the suspect was an actual member of Svoboda, he expressed his positive attitudes towards the party on social media.)

However, even if a Sich Battalion member threw the deadly grenade that killed three and heavily wounded many more, it may be too convenient to blame him alone for the incident. (Some verybad, manipulated analyses of the incident only obscure the problem.) Metaphorically, the grenade had three safety pins; in other words, there are three aspects that one needs to consider to understand the complex nature of this tragedy.


Pin one

Svoboda was one of the three co-organisers of the protest, but its representatives were the most violent party at the protest. The latter started quite peacefully – at least in terms of Ukraine’s recent experience. The protesters became violent later, after they learned that the Rada passed the constitutional amendments in the first reading. They started burning debris and attacking the policemen verbally and physically – with clubs and other implements. According to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, both sides of the conflict threw tear gas canisters and smoke bombs. Then came the grenade.

An important point here is that Svoboda representatives anticipated that the protests would grow violent, and for this particular reason the protesters from the Svoboda’s side brought clubs with them although they did not use them until the Rada’s vote. Why would Svoboda be interested in the violent protests?

The answer is the regional elections scheduled for October 25 this year. Svoboda obtained 10.44 per cent of the vote in the 2012 parliamentary elections (and became the first Ukrainian party ever to have formed a far right parliamentary group).

However, in the early 2014 parliamentary elections, its former supporters became disappointed with Svoboda’s performance both in the parliament and during the revolution, and the party failed to pass the 5 per cent electoral threshold required to enter parliament as a party.

In 2012, Svoboda’s trick was to persuade the voters disaffected by the regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych that they were the most radical opposition to him. The regional elections in 2015 are virtually the last chance for Svoboda to re-enter politics against the background of dwindling public support, so the leadership now attempted the same trick: to persuade those disaffected with President Petro Poroshenko’s rule that Svoboda is the most radical opposition to him.

While increased protest activity and harsh rhetoric may have been a characteristic of radicalism in 2012, today they no longer are. The revolution and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war “coarsened” many a Ukrainian and modified the meanings of “moderate” and “radical”. Today, to be radical is to be violent. Thus, although it is highly unlikely that Svoboda’s leadership sanctioned the use of the grenade, they did sanction the creation of a violent space that eventually set off the grenade.

Pin two

The Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko and UKROP are two dodgy populist parties that many commentators link to the Ukrainian oligarchs Serhiy Levochkin and Ihor Kolomoisky, respectively. The oligarchs in general and Kolomoisky in particular have a reason to be dissatisfied with Poroshenko: he set a course for the “de-oligarchisation” of Ukrainian politics, and while the success of this course is debatable, the oligarchs seem to be losing rather than maintaining the status quo.

Levochkin was the head of the Presidential Administration under deposed president Viktor Yanukovych, and although he left this post in the very beginning of the revolution to distance himself from the regime’s violence against the Euromaidan protests, he nevertheless belongs to the camp that lost in the revolution.

Since spring 2015, Kolomoisky has been in conflict with the state over the control of two state-owned energy companies, Ukrnafta and Ukrtransnafta. The conflict is still going on, but Kolomoisky had to resign as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Region in March 2015.

Ihor Kolomoisky

The oligarchs are clearly on the offensive, and although the Ukrainian authorities would still cooperate with them, they no longer can enjoy the possibility to exert influence on Ukrainian politics to the same extent as in the previous years. Naturally, they are opposed to Poroshenko and the government, and, in the pre-revolutionary era, they would turn to pro-Russian rhetoric to mobilise society against a reform-oriented government.

Today, however, given the total failure of the pro-Russian discourse underpinned by the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the oligarchs need to change their political tactics, so now they increasingly turn to populist, ultra-patriotic rhetoric to challenge Poroshenko. Indeed, the anti-system, falsely-understood patriotism has become the major instrument of the opposition to President Poroshenko and his team.

Through their media and social networks, the oligarchs are promoting the idea of zrada (treason), implying that the authorities have betrayed Ukrainian national interests, in particular by signing the Minsk 2 agreement. The parties controlled by the oligarchs are doing the same, and they are interested in destabilizing the government, hence the presence of the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko and UKROP at the protests by the Verkhovna Rada. These are oligarchs who have significantly contributed to the radicalisation of the opposition to Poroshenko and helped create the tense atmosphere of distrust towards the authorities that set off the grenade.

Pin three

The oligarchs, however, only contributed to the pre-existing distrust towards Poroshenko and the government. The “patriotic” distrust towards the authorities is the result of a series of military defeats by the Ukrainian army, National Guard, and volunteer battalions in their fight with the Russian troops and Russia-backed extremists in eastern Ukraine. While Ukraine was forced to sign Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements to stop the covert Russian invasions of the Donbass in August-September 2014 and January-February 2015, some people in the Ukrainian military believed that they could continue fighting and retake the occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine.

The fact that the deadly grenade was allegedly thrown by a member of the battalion associated with the far right Svoboda party, by no means implies that this is a problem only with the far right. The zrada sentiment is widespread among different volunteer battalions (not necessarily affiliated with far-right parties or organisations) and even among the rank and file of the army and National Guard.

This is an extremely dangerous development. Not that the disaffected military can stage a coup d’etat, but they can obviously try to do this, and, thus, destabilise the government to the benefit of the Russian aggressor. It is highly possible that they will engage in terrorist acts against representatives of the Ukrainian establishment.

For example, some of the members of the far right Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) are openly threatening the government with terrorism. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has recently arrested a commander of one of the non-political volunteer battalions and claimed that they uncovered a plot to murder “several high-level public officials, an MP, volunteers, and businessmen”, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the commander of the Azov regiment Andriy Biletsky.

If the suspicions of the Ukrainian authorities are correct and a member of the Sich Battalion has indeed thrown the deadly grenade at national guards, then this incident is a natural result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian authorities on the part of a particular element of the Ukrainian military. Yet the dramatic incident might not have happened, if some political forces and some oligarchs have not created the favorable conditions for setting off the grenade.

(This article originally appeared in Norwegian in Verdens Gang.)

Russia seems to be getting serious about building an international alliance of extreme right parties that would aim at undermining the liberal democratic consensus in the West. In addition to providing financial support for parties such as France’s Front National and using extreme right activists and politicians as tools of propaganda, Russia is now building what it calls the “World National-Conservative Movement” (WNCM). A number of the internal documents (passed to me by the Moscow-based "Sova Centre") provide an insight into the agenda and structure of the WNCM.

The logo of the World National Conservative Movement

The driving force behind the movement is the St. Petersburg branch of the extreme right Rodina (Motherland) and the Russian Imperial Movement. Rodina was founded in 2003, and one of its co-founders was current Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. While Rogozin is not a member of the party now, he is rumoured to maintain the contacts with the party. The Russian Imperial Movement, whose self-described ideology is “Christian Orthodox imperial nationalism”, was founded in 2002.

The chair of the organising committee of the WNCM is a prominent member of RodinaYuriy Lyubomirskiy. The phrase “national-conservative” in the title of the movement should not confuse the readers. “National-conservatism”, while being a legitimate term in political science, is only a misleading self-description of the WNCM to avoid the term “extreme right”.

Yuriy Lyubomirsky

The WNCM describes itself as “an international association of political parties, organizations and private citizens formed on a voluntary and equal basis by representatives of various countries and peoples on the basis of their commitment to achieving the goals” of the movement.

The manifesto of the movement claims that the world is governed by the ideology of “liberalism, multiculturalism and tolerance”. This, in the view of the activists, results in “the erosion of nations, massive migration from countries with foreign civilizational bases, falling away from religion, replacement of spirituality by materialism, impoverishment of cultures, destruction of the family and healthy moral values” through “abortion, propaganda of debauchery and acceptance of sexual perversions”. Furthermore, the manifesto refers to the “super-national institutions” such as the EU and NATO, and argues that these forces represent “the global cabal” which, in the Russian cultural discourse, is essentially a euphemistic reference to the global Jewish conspiracy. The WNCM aims to counter liberalism and globalisation by staging a “conservative revolution” and bringing far right parties to power in Western societies. The manifesto claims that a “victory of the conservative revolution even in one country [...] will provide an example for other countries”. Establishing the WNCM is considered the first step in this direction.

The scope of the Russian project is rather impressive, and the list of parties and groups that the founders of the WNCM have invited to participate in the movement consists of 58 organisations. The majority of them come from Europe and the US, but there are also organisations from Chile, Japan, Mongolia, Syria, and Thailand. The political positions of the majority of these parties leave no doubt that the WNCM is an extreme right, rather than a “national conservative”, movement. Here are some of the names from the list: Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen and Nordisk Ungdom (Scandinavia), Danskernes Parti (Denmark), Golden Dawn (Greece), Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Germany), Falanga (Poland), Generace Identity (Slovakia), Renouveau français (France), Noua Dreaptă (Romania), British Unity (UK). The list, however, also features less extreme – yet still far from the mainstream right – political parties such as Perussuomalaiset (Finland), Jobbik (Hungary), Slovenská národná strana (Slovakia), Kongres Nowej Prawicy (Poland), and some others. However, the core of the organisations invited to the WNCM is clearly on the extreme right, verging on neo-Nazism.


The complete list of the invited groups and organisations is found at the bottom of this article.





Some of the organisations invited to participate in the WNCM already took part in the “International Russian Conservative Forum” that took place in St. Petersburg in March this year, and the idea to found the WNCM was most likely conceived at that event. Back then, Rodina's initiative looked insignificant, but today the WNCM goes further than just a framework for conferences, and its programme gives evidence that the movement is focused on action.

In particular, the WNCM is going to create an information network consisting of the web-sites and pages on social networks as a platform for exchanging information and experience, defend “persecuted national-conservatives and activists” by petitioning the governments, provide “humanitarian help” to Serbs in Kosovo, Christians of the Middle East, and “inhabitants of Novorossia” – a region in Eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia-backed separatists. It should be noted that, in April 2014, Rodina and the Russian Imperial Movement formed the All-Russian Social Movement “For Novorossiya” that called for the annexation of not only Crimea but most of Ukraine’s territory too.

A more frightening part of the programme is the intention of the WNCM to organise “joint camps for military and athletic instruction” and form volunteer international brigades that would be used in zones of military conflict. This is hardly surprising that one of the organisations invited to take part in the WNCM is “Unité Continentale” that was formed in summer 2014 by French and Serbian ultranationalists who volunteered to go to Eastern Ukraine to support Russia-backed separatists. Moreover, in July-August 2015, the Russian Imperial Movementadvertised a week-long military camp called “Partisan” and invited men to learn survival techniques, urban guerrilla tactics, military topography, as well as practicing with Kalashnikovs and other weapons.


It may be too early to sound alarm, but the formation of a Russia-backed far right international movement that will have a military component may become a serious challenge to democratic societies in Europe.

A new book published in the "Explorations of the Far Right" book series which I edit for ibidem-Verlag:



Alina Polyakova, The Dark Side of European Integration: Social Foundations and Cultural Determinants of the Rise of Radical Right Movements in Contemporary Europe



Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies.

This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.

Table of contents can be found here.


180 pages, paperback, 2015
ISBN 978-3-8382-0766-7
ISSN 2192-7448

Polyakova's sophisticated exploration of why and how ultra-nationalists succeed challenges widely held assumptions about the determinants of right-wing electoral support and individual radicalization. Her study is unusual in comparing the European far right beyond the borders of the EU and in including field research results from Western Ukrainian provinces. This succinct investigation should find wide attention among researchers of political extremism and will help us better understand the reasons for the current surge of xenophobia across Europe.
Dr. Andreas Umland

Buy the book via ibidem-Verlag or Amazon: UK | France | Germany | Canada | US

One of the previous posts addressed the issue of two Russian far right organisations, namely the Rodina party and the Russian Imperial Movement (Russkoe Imperskoe Dvizhenie, RID), engaged in building of an international extreme right network under the title “World National-Conservative Movement” (WNCM). According to its political programme, the WNCM - rather than being just a framework for conferences - is focused on action.

A few days ago, new information has emerged that further corroborates this argument. On 5-6 September 2015, representatives of the RID visited Sweden and took part in a meeting of the Swedish fascist organisation Nordic Resistance (Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen), which was invited to join the WNCM earlier. During his talk, the RID's leader Stanislav Vorobyov, warned about "a full-scale war against the traditional values of Western civilisation" and explained that the uniform in which he showed up at the meeting was a symbol of their fight against "the Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine" on the side of pro-Russian extremists in Eastern Ukraine. Furthermore, he claimed that "the Zionist strategy in the Middle East would be used int he future to divide and rule the nations of Europe".

Stanlislav Vorobyov, the leader of the Russian Imperial Movement, speaking at the meeting of the "Nordic Resistance", 5/6 September 2015

Most importantly, however, the Swedish report on the meeting states that, during its visit to Sweden, the Russian delegation has donated money to the Swedish fascists as a contribution to the building of a political party on the basis of the "Nordic Resistance". The information about the donation has been confirmed by the RID itself. The amount of the donation remains has not been disclosed.

The RID is not an ordinary far right organisation, but a fascist paramilitary movement that poses a potential terrorist threat to democratic societies. To understand the nature of this movement, as well as getting more insight into the WNCM that was co-founded by the RID, it seems appropriate to consider the current activities of the movement.

The RID was established in 2002 in St. Petersburg by Stanislav Vorobyov. Its major political goals are the revival of the Russian Empire (and regaining the "lost" territories) and the restoration of the Russian monarchy.

Since 2014, the RID was actively involved in the Russian war on Ukraine. Curiously, Vorobyov arrived in Ukraine right after the start of the occupation of Crimea by the Russian "little green men". The building of the Crimean parliament was seized by the Russian special ops forces on 27 February 2014, and Vorobyov arrived in Crimea the next day.

The arrival of the "delegation" of the Russian Imperial Movement in Simferopol, Crimea, 28 February 2014. Stanislav Vorobyov is on the far right

Vorobyovdescribed their visit to Crimea as follows:

I accompanied an airplane to Crimea that carried Russian military instructors who were to organise the local resistance movement. I remember one night the SBU guys [Ukrainian security officers] burned documents in their yard - then I understood that we were going to annex [Crimea].

On 14 March 2014, yet another groups of the RID members headed by Nikolay Trushchalovwent to Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine. In Donetsk, they met with the representatives of a number of pro-Russian right-wing extremist organisations, in particular with the members of the "Donetsk Republic" that had long-standing relations with the Eurasianist movement headed by Russian fascist Alexander Dugin.

The "delegation" of the Russian Imperial Movement with the activists of the "Donetsk Republic", Donetsk, Ukraine, 14 March 2014. Nikolay Trushchalov is on the far right

As a footnote, Trushchalov, as a leading member of the RID, was also present at the fascist conference in St. Petersburg on 22 March 2015.

(left to right) Nikolay Trushchalov, a leading member of the Russian Imperial Movement, and Nick Griffin, ex-leader of the fascist British National Party, St. Petersburg, Russia, 22 March 2015

In Donetsk, the representatives of the RID agreed to start providing the pro-Russian right-wing extremists with "humanitarian help" and manpower. Two members of the RID were key players in this operation.

The first key player is Denis Gariev, a member of the RID and the head of its paramilitary club "Imperial Legion" that holds "Partisan" military courses.

Participants of the "Partisan" military courses, Russia, September 2015

Under the leadership of Gariev, the RID's "Imperial Legion" club became the core of the "Imperial Legion" volunteer unit that took part in the Russian-Ukrainian war. A basic training course for a volunteer costs 250 Euros. Then qualified volunteers are sent to the Russian city of Rostov from which they illegally travel to Eastern Ukraine and join Russia's war on Ukraine. In July 2014, the RIDclaimed that they had sent over 300 volunteers from Russia to Eastern Ukraine.

Fighters of the "Imperial Legion" in Eastern Ukraine

Stanislav Vorobyov (centre) decorates the fighters of the "Imperial Legion" who returned from Eastern Ukraine, St. Petersburg, Russia, 25 April 2015

The second key player, is Alexander Zhuchkovsky, a member of the RID who became a coordinator of the "humanitarian help" sent from Russia to East Ukrainian territories occupied by the pro-Russian extremists and Russian troops. Zhuchkovsky collects money, acquires military equipment and accessories, and sends them to Ukraine. As he claimed, by autumn 2014 the RID managed to collect 30 million Russian rubles (€630.000).

Alexander Zhuchkovsky (right) and his "humanitarian help"

It is important to note that the RID positions themselves as opponents of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, but according their interviews and other materials, they have no problem with either holding military training courses in Russia, nor sending military equipment or volunteers to Eastern Ukraine to kill Ukrainians. There seems to be a tacit agreement between the RID and the authorities. The fact that the RID seems to have cooperated with the former commander of the pro-Russian extremists Igor Strelkov-Girkin (whose activities were sponsored by the Russian "Orthodox oligarch"Konstantin Malofeev), the movement likely has an understanding with the Russian authorities.

Igor Strelkov-Girkin (centre), Alexander Zhuchkovsky (right) in Eastern Ukraine

And it is these people who are now providing money to the Swedish fascist organisation "Nordic Resistance". Would the Russian fascists have anything in return?

My article on the Crimean blockade in English and Russian:

"The Crimean blockade: how Ukraine is losing Crimea for the third time" (openDemocracy)
"Догнать и перекрыть" (Грани.Ру)

A number of Ukrainian far right organisations, in particular, the All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" (Svoboda) and Right Sector, took part in the "March of Heroes" held in Ukraine's capital Kyiv on 14 October. The march was dominated by harsh anti-government and nationalist rhetoric.

Far right activists and their supporters rally on the Mykhailivska Square for a meeting before starting the march

White supremacists spotted

"Our country - our rules", a banner of Svoboda's youth wing "Sokil" (Falcon) featuring the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel

Activists of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists with traditional nationalist red-black flags

Starting the march, activists of the Right Sector with their red-black flags

The leadership of Svoboda (Oleh Tyahnybok, Andriy Illenko) and Right Sector accompanied by a priest

"Freedom to the Defenders of the Constitution!!!", the banner refers to a number of members of Svoboda arrested by the Ukrainian authorities

Activists of the Right Sector, most likely the participants of the Right Sector volunteer battalion

Far right activists carrying the pictures of their arrested associates

"Autonomous nationalists"

Former MP Andriy Mokhnyk, a prominent member of Svoboda

A bizarre racist activist

The far right rally by the detention center where some of their associates are held

Jean-Yves Camus, Nicolas Lebourg, Les Droites extrêmes en Europe (Paris: Seuil, 2015), 320 pages.


La fin du XXe siècle a vu, à la droite de l’échiquier politique, l’émergence de partis extrêmes ou radicaux, en rupture avec les traditions nazie ou fasciste, et dont l’objectif est bien la conquête du pouvoir par la voie électorale et démocratique. Ces mouvements postmodernes permettent de penser les mutations de l'extrême droite et son adaptation aux temps présents.

Ce livre définit et décrit les différentes sous-familles de cette partie du spectre idéologique, avec une attention particulière portée aux 28 pays membres de l’UE, sans négliger la Russie. Il revient ainsi sur l’histoire récente de ces partis ou mouvances, leur programme idéologique et, au-delà, leur vision du monde. Leurs résultats électoraux et la sociologie de leur électorat y sont exposés de façon à faire émerger le « minimum commun » qui les rassemble, même si leur hétérogénéité et le poids des spécificités nationales ne permettent pas de parler d’une« internationale de l’extrême droite ».

Contrairement aux idées les plus paresseuses Jean-Yves Camus et Nicolas Lebourg montrent qu’on fait fausse route en expliquant la montée des partis nationalistes, populistes et xénophobes, par la seule variable de la crise économique. Leur audience croissante est plutôt le symptôme d’un très profond questionnement des cadres traditionnels de l’identité européenne, de la représentation politique et des références libérales ou conservatrices des droites de gouvernement.

Jean-Yves Camus, dirige depuis 2014 l’Observatoire des radicalités politiques de la Fondation Jean-Jaurès et est chercheur associé à l’IRIS.
Nicolas Lebourg est chercheur à l'Obervatoire des radicalités polititiques et chercheur associé au CEPEL (CNRS-Université de Montpellier).
Ils sont tous deux membres du programme European Fascim de l’Université George Washington.

Table des matières

Comment naissent les extrêmes droites
Réaction et contre-révolution
Nationalisme et socialisme
Fascismes
Diversité des radicalités
Le Nouvel ordre européen du IIIe Reich
Nouvelles vagues
Le temps présent

Que faire après le fascisme ?
Réévaluer le nazisme
Le laboratoire italien
Le nationalisme-européen
Du nazisme au néo-racisme
Le moment Jeune Europe
Un contre-Mai rampant

White Power
Un sectarisme transatlantique
Les skinheads d'extrême droite
Violences, radicalités, populismes

Les Nouvelles droites
Plasticité du phénomène
Nouvelle droite et nationalisme-européen
Euro-régionalisme
Subculture(s)
Quelle est l'identité des identitaires ?

Les intégrismes religieux
Une foi, des voies
Les intégristes dans le contexte du Front National
Les chemins partisans

Les partis populistes
Insiders et outsiders
Une critique national-libérale
La mutation néo-populiste
Pourquoi le populisme ?

A l'Est, quoi de nouveau ?
Du national-bolchevisme au néo-eurasisme
L'ère Poutine
Le voisinage avec la Russie
Recompositions et permanences en Europe centrale et orientale

Comment peuvent mourir les extrêmes droites

Buy the book via Seuil or Amazon: France| UK | Germany | Canada | US

The crash of the Metrojet Flight 9268 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia has presented Moscow with a dilemma: what explanation of the crash would be most useful for the Kremlin's positioning both domestically and internationally?

Essentially, there have been two options:

1. A mechanical failure. The Russian media reported that Flight 9268 experienced technical problems and the pilot asked for a landing in a nearest airport. The Russian media also quoted various people in Russia - family members of the crew, technicians, and other third parties - saying that, in the past, there had been oral reports of the technical problems that the pilots and crew had with the aircraft. Explaining the crash of Flight 9268 with a reference to the mechanical failure was apparently the safest option for Moscow. Since Russia is engaged in the erratic campaign of saving the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria by bombing civilian population, anti-Assad rebels, and, occasionally, ISIS terrorists, the technical explanation presents a picture of a dramatic casualty in no way related to Putin's Syrian campaign. Naturally, this explanation also points to the corrupt practices in Russia (an aircraft experiencing technical problems should never have been used by the Kogalymavia airline), but all the Russians are aware of the devastating corruption in their country, so "it's fine".

2. A terrorist attack. Almost immediately after the crash, ISIS terrorists claimed responsibility for the incident. This directly linked the crash to Moscow's Syrian campaign, and implied that ordinary Russians paid a costly price for Putin's adventures. Hence, admitting that the terrorist attack was the cause of the crash of Flight 9268 could be a blow to Putin's image domestically: for the Russian audience, he presents the Syrian campaign as something distant and, at the same time, beneficial for Russia's international standing, but the terrorist attack brings the war back home. A similar situation in Spain (an al-Qaeda cell claimed responsibility for the 2004 Madrid train bombings) resulted in the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from Iraq. If Putin admits that an Egyptian cell of ISIS has been behind the crash and continues his Syrian campaign, his popularity in Russia my decrease. On the other hand, acknowledging the terrorist attack could still be useful for Moscow in terms of its international image: "the Russians are fighting the war on international terrorism, and Russia and the West are in this together, hence Russia is no longer a pariah state, so do lift the sanctions and accept us to the club of the global powers".

Nevertheless, Moscow sees the first option as the most useful. After all, even the prospect of Russia's heightened international standing can only be used by the Kremlin for the purposes of consolidating Putin's regime, but Moscow's cost-benefit analysis shows that the threats to Putin's domestic image in the case of accepting the second option are more significant than the potential benefits.

Moscow's current problem with the first option, however, is that British and US intelligence services increasingly point to the terrorist attack as the cause of the crash, thus narrowing Moscow's maneuvering space. And the recent reports in the Russian and international fringe media hint that Moscow may have come up with a third option.

On 6 November, Russia's international Sputnik website published Finian Cunningham's article that bluntly asked: "was it really terrorists, or was it British MI6 agents palming the deed off as terrorists?". The same day, a conspiracy website published an article by Sorcha Faal arguing that the Russian intelligence service had allegedly captured and arrested "two CIA assets for masterminding the Sinai plane crash of Flight 9268". The same argument was reproduced by Sean Adl-Tabatabai, a long time follower of David Icke who believes that a secret group of reptilian humanoids controls humanity. On 8 November, Russia's chief propagandist Dmitry Kiselev, published an article implicating that an explosion on Flight 9268 could be a result of the agreement between the "Western coalition" and ISIS.

Thus, Russia's third option is admitting that the terrorist attack was the cause of the crash, but this terrorist attack itself was a Western plot against Russia.

This version may seem absurd to everyone who is not prone to conspiracy theories, but it is also extremely dangerous. It means that, indeed, the consolidation of Putin's criminal regime at home is far more important for the Kremlin than the international cooperation, and that Moscow is ready to escalate its war on the West. The Kremlin keeps on instilling anti-Western hatred into the Russian society by feeding it with conspiracy theories, and this hatred may lead to psychological acceptance of even more aggressive approach towards the West. As Voltaire wrote, "those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities".

The recent resignation of Dmytro Yarosh from the leadership of the Right Sector may be a sign of the forthcoming changes in the strategies of both the Right Sector and the Ukrainian state.

In order to understand the significance of Yarosh’s resignation statement, one needs to consider two important points related to Ukraine’s domestic situation and international relations.
First, the Right Sector has evidently radicalised its rhetoric and actions after the signing of the Minsk II agreement in February 2015. Many fighters of the Right Sector battalion and its affiliated Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (also known by the Ukrainian acronym DUK) were unhappy about the “hybrid ceasefire” implied by the Minsk II agreement, as they preferred to continue fighting against the Russian invaders and their separatist proxies in Eastern Ukraine. Some members of the Right Sector were also unhappy about Ukraine’s new government and, especially, President Petro Poroshenko, who appeared, for some ultranationalists, as traitors of the Ukrainian revolution.

It would be too easy to explain the unhappiness of some members of the Right Sector about the “hybrid ceasefire” by their alleged bloodthirst. The war opens up many opportunities to those engaged in it. Of course, war, in a sense, is a desired state for many ultranationalists; they have “genetic inclination” for war. However, this argument has a limited explanation power with respect to the unwillingness of some members of the Right Sector/DUK to end the fighting. Some fighters have used the war as a way to avoid persecution for the actions that the state would consider not entirely legal. They thought that their military feats would buy them a “legal” way out of Ukraine’s legal framework. In a few cases, that did happen, but in general several members of the Right Sector/DUK were held accountable for their illegal actions.

While there are many other explanations why the Right Sector is unsatisfied with the Minsk II agreement, the crucial point is that the Right Sector has become the most radical opposition to Poroshenko and the government. They still crave a national revolution, as they believe that the revolution that started with the Euromaidan protests was an unfinished revolution, or was not a revolution at all. Thus, the Right Sector is a direct threat to the constitutional order in Ukraine, especially given the fact that the Right Sector/DUK fighters have arms that can be used against state officials. Not that the Right Sector can stage a coup d’état– they have neither sufficient human resources nor ample public support for this – but their actions may lead to further destabilisation of the weak Ukrainian state, and the Russian invaders can use this destabilisation to their avail. This is something that Yarosh, being a relatively moderate and balanced politician, understands well. And this is why Yarosh acted as a mediator between the state and the extremists in the Right Sector. However, the frustration among the Right Sector’s fighters grew stronger, and they started asking the leadership of the organisation “to give them the order”.

Second, the Western powers have consistently demanded from the Ukrainian authorities to put all volunteer military units under the army or police control. The Ukrainian authorities clearly see the point: not only do the autonomous military units constitute a threat to the state, their existence sour Ukraine’s relations with the West too. On 3 November this year, Council of Europe published CoE Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks's report that, in particular, said:

The Commissioner also raised issues related to the volunteer battalions’ integration into the regular army and the police. His interlocutors in the Ministry of the Interior reiterated that the process had been completed with regard to those volunteer battalions integrated in the police force. The prosecutorial authorities informed the Commissioner about a verification procedure launched by them into the activities of all members of volunteer battalions.

But a more important part of the report is this one:

The Commissioner has not yet had a possibility to discuss these issues with the authorities at the Ministry of Defense and other relevant security structures. However, he is aware of credible reports implicating the existence of armed groups which continue to enjoy a high degree of independence and do not appear to be fully incorporated in the regular chain of command. Most frequent references are made in this context to the groups affiliated with the Right Sector (Pravyi Sector). This issue should be addressed without further delay.

What does Yarosh’s resignation mean? It means that he will no longer be a mediator between the state and the Right Sector’s extreme wing, and will no longer cover up for the violent and aggressive actions of particular members of the Right Sector. What it also means is that the state may have become serious about the threats that the Right Sector pose.

What will the state do?

1. The state may deliver an ultimatum to the Right Sector: either they integrate into the army or the police, or they will be crushed as an illegal armed group. This ultimatum will most likely lead to a split within the Right Sector: some fighters will prefer to join the army/police, some will choose the underground activities. A split into more than two groups is also possible.

2. Those who will choose the underground activities will most likely be destroyed. As the destruction of the stubborn fighters of the Right Sector/DUK may lead to a larger revolt against the authorities (dissatisfied fighters of other military units may join this revolt too), the state will:

2.1. wait until the extremists make an obvious mistake that will be perceived by the general public as a legitimate reason for the state to crush them – this can be either a direct attack on the state authorities or a blatant violation of the Minsk II agreement;

2.2. or it will use the security service agents within the extreme wing of the Right Sector to provoke that mistake.