A neo-Nazi band with lyrics about “white power” and “Aryan destiny” shot a music video at a Russian army base, featuring masked soldiers from a unit of soldiers drawn from the far-right hooligan scene.
The incident underlines overt right-wing extremist sentiment within sections of the Russian military, further exposing the hypocrisy of the Kremlin’s propaganda claims about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. It’s also shone a spotlight on the 106th Airborne Reconnaissance Detachment “Moscow,” a Russian army unit based in the city of Tula, south of Moscow, which is distinctive for recruiting members specifically from the football hooligan and ultranationalist movements – themselves hotbeds of radical right-wing ideology.
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The band, Russkiy Styag, which translates as Russian Banner, released the video for its track “We” to its social media channels last month, with a statement that it was “filmed with the support of the commanders and fighters of the ‘Moscow’ [unit] of the 106th Airborne Division.”
The video features Russkiy Styag’s lead singer performing in what appears to be the “Moscow” unit’s base in Tula, flanked by masked soldiers and with a poster featuring a neo-Nazi black sun symbol displayed prominently in the background. In the video for the song, featuring the lyrics “We are children of one great country / Blood brothers, sons of great Russia,” scenes from Russkiy Styag’s performance at the base are interspersed with footage of troops firing guns, and carrying out manoeuvres on a snowy landscape.
The music video appears to have been shot during a visit by Russkiy Styag to the “Moscow” unit’s base in March, which a spokesperson for the unit, Dmitry Rumyantsev, confirmed to VICE News had taken place.
In an email exchange, Rumyantsev – who appears in photos on the unit’s social media wearing T-shirts featuring the logos of neo-Nazi bands like Skrewdriver – said that Russkiy Styag had visited during an “open day” at which “anyone could come and support the unit.”
As for whether it was appropriate to be linked to Russkiy Styag, given its associations with neo-Nazism, Rumyantsev said he saw no issues.
“We are not interested in who you associate Russian Banner with, we proceed from the legislation of the Russian Federation,” he said. “The Russian Banner band is not banned in Russia.”
Rumyantsev also said he saw no problem with himself publicly wearing neo-Nazi band apparel on social media. Alongside the pictures of Rumyantsev wearing a Skrewdriver T-shirt, VICE News found he had also shared posts calling for the release of Robert Rundo, an American neo-Nazi recently arrested in Romania while on the run from US authorities, or featuring the “sonnenrad,” a common neo-Nazi symbol.
“Russia is a free country, every person has the right to wear whatever he wants, if it does not contradict the laws,” said Rumyantsev, who is a prominent figure in the Moscow football hooligan scene, according to antifascist researchers spoken to by VICE News.
Rumyantsev would not elaborate on how the 106th’s “Moscow” unit had come into existence as a unit specifically for soldiers drawn from the football hooligan and ultranationalist scenes, given that Russian military units are typically not assembled along ideological lines in this way. VICE News viewed recruiting ads posted on the unit’s Telegram page, seeking soldiers aged 22 to 45 years old from the football “fans” movement and Russian nationalist scenes, promising to be able to provide them with a contract with an active unit of the Russian armed forces, training, and access to weapons and equipment.
“We are always glad to see new fighters in our ranks, especially those with correct views,” read the posting.
In response to VICE News questions about the unit and its apparently right-wing extremist ideological background, Rumyantsev said he would agree to a face-to-face, on-camera interview, but did not respond further after a recorded Skype interview was proposed.
Pictures from Russkiy Styag’s visit to to the unit, along with a livestreamed conversation between the band’s singer and Rumyantsev, were first posted on band and the unit’s respective social media pages in March, before being brought to wider attention by a Polish antifascist group, Dywizjon 161, which shared the images on Twitter.
The cosy relationship between the army unit and the neo-Nazi group is a vivid display of the apparent tolerance – or in this case, open embrace – of right-wing extremist ideology among Russian forces. Alongside the overt neo-Nazi orientation of paramilitaries fighting on the Russian side of the conflict, it cuts against the Kremlin’s already widely-dismissed efforts to paint its bloody invasion of its neighbour as a push to somehow eradicate “Nazism” in Ukraine.
“We can see time and time again that the narrative of ‘de-Nazification’ is completely false,” said “Nestor,” a member of Dywizjon 161.
“Far-right, often neo-Nazi, ideology is common amongst the invading Russian forces and is clearly accepted – whether it’s DNR and LNR units, private armies like Wagner or regular Russian army units,” he said. “Russkiy Styag playing gigs for Russian soldiers is just the latest example.”
“Nestor,” who did not want to be identified by his full name to avoid compromising his antifascist research, said that social media posts showed Russkiy Styag previously performing last year for other pro-Russian forces, including Rusich, a notorious neo-Nazi paramilitary affiliated with the Wagner Group, the private military company which has an estimated 50,000 mercenaries fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The US Treasury Department enacted sanctions against Rusich last year, noting the force had been “accused of, and filmed, committing atrocities against deceased and captured Ukrainian soldiers,” and that its co-founder, avowed neo-Nazi Alexey Milchakov, had “developed a reputation for extreme brutality.”
Russkiy Styag’s lead singer has been photographed with Rusich’s co-leader, Yan Igorevich Petrovskiy, who was expelled from Norway in 2016 after being declared a threat to national security, while German news outlet DW.com has reported that members of the band itself had fought for Rusich in Ukraine. Russkiy Styag did not respond to questions from VICE News about whether its members had fought for Rusich, but said in a recent online comment that two of the group’s “admins” had not left the front in over a year.
While Russkiy Styag may not be banned in Russia, the group is controversial enough inside Russia itself for its ultranationalist, white supremacist ideology, which even in Russia was considered extremist enough to provoke a minor scandal when the group was scheduled to perform at a concert in a Moscow park in 2015.
Many of the band’s songs are ultra-nationalistic, militaristic battlecries for Russian imperialism – “We will revive Great Russia! … The world will shudder from Russian wrath!” goes one track – and some are explicitly white supremacist.
“Fire up for white power in the white stone city! Glory to Russia! For white days,” are the lyrics to one track, while another features the lyrics: “The Russian family is white pride, white honour / Wake up, native land!”
Another song, “Sun Cross,” gives a clear snapshot of the band’s racist ideology. “Symbol of the coming war / The symbol of the greatness of our country / Symbol of the triumph of our ideas / Wellbeing of white people,” go the lyrics.
“Our honour is loyalty to Aryan destiny.”
In response to emailed questions from VICE News about the performance for the 106th’s “Moscow” unit and the band’s ideology, Russkiy Styag replied with a conspiracy-addled diatribe against the “left-wing neo-Marxists from transnational corporations who have usurped power in America and Europe,” railing against them for promoting causes like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, and having “terrorised the planet” with COVID-19.
“Their goal is to unleash a bloody war on the European continent,” read the email, adding that this “neo-Marxist” enemy was committed to the “destruction of mankind.”
“First, they will destroy the bulk of white Europeans and Americans, since this is the only force that can resist them, and then they will destroy other races.”
The statement said that the band, much like the Russian state, had faced frequent accusations of being “fascist-chauvinist”, but that these accusations were unwarranted.
“We are not fascists,” the email said. “We are much worse. We are normal men and women who want to live on our land and raise our children (boys and girls) according to our traditions.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to a VICE News request for comment on whether it approved of Russkiy Styag’s performance for the unit, and around the circumstances surrounding the formation of the 106th’s “Moscow” unit as, apparently, a fighting squad specifically for members of the hooligan and ultranationalist scenes. Nor did it respond to questions about whether the concert highlighted a problem with right-wing extremist ideology within the military, or undercut the government’s claims to be “de-Nazifying” Ukraine.
Kremlin propaganda has sought to portray the invasion of Ukraine as, in part, a push for the “de-Nazification” of the country, drawing on a longstanding narrative that Ukrainian-speaking elites in the west of the country are the ideological descendants of the far-right nationalist forces that battled the Soviets in World War II, and seizing on the right-wing extremist roots of powerful Ukrainian forces like Azov.
But experts say the Russian depiction of Ukraine as a hub of Nazis, in a bid to justify a war of imperialist aggression, is perverse, especially given the role of Russian neo-Nazi paramilitaries like Rusich and the Russian Imperial Legion, designated by the United States as a white supremacist terrorist organisation, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longstanding instrumentalisation of the ultranationalist far-right.
READ: How Vladimir Putin weaponised the Russian far-right
Kacper Rękawek, a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, has researched the flow of foreign fighters into the conflict, which has seen right-wing extremists from third countries drawn to both Russian and Ukrainian sides of the conflict since war broke out in 2014. He told VICE News that it was no surprise that right-wing extremist ideology was being openly embraced by factions of the Russian army, particularly in a unit heavily drawn from the country’s football hooligan scene.
“This is an indication of the social feeling, to some extent,” he said, referring to the violent, racist and ultranationalist ideology that was prevalent within the scene.
“You can imagine such feelings spilling into the armed forces [which is] the tip of the spear as far as nationalism, chauvinism and imperialism is concerned.”
