Folk music and raids: How to target migrant extremists in Russia The far right star-news.press/wp

A group of men wearing the uniform, at least one of them masked, heading to a pair of watermelon sellers on a street in the suburbs of the Siberian city of Novosibirk. Black men wearing tactical jackets with bouncher -bearing spots – a legendary of Slavic folklore – riding on horseback.

They inform the merchants, who believe that they are foreigners, that they are trading without permission, and men who wear black clothes help load their goods in a truck confiscated by the authorities.

But these men in lions do not have an official law enforcement.

A video of this online process was downloaded on Monday morning by Russian society, or Russkaya Obshchina (RO), which boasted about the closure of the “eastern bazaar”.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, RO has become the largest and most influential organization in Russia, with 1.2 million subscribers on its official page on YouTube and more than 660,000 readers on the main Telegram channel, in addition to its own application, and they enjoy support from strong allies within the services of clerics and security.

“This is a classic movement of Russian ethnic nationalists,” says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, who monitors hate movements in Russia.

“There was (the slogan)” Russia for the Russians “, but now it is now very radical. But in its essence, this is what is going on around it,” he says.

RO also claims that it supports conservative moral and religious values, and supports the Kremlin, including in its conquest of Ukraine.

“These points define their entire ideology … There were always nationalists, but the fact that the largest and most prominent Russian national organization is completely sincere to the government – this is an extraordinary situation.”

Popular singing and a flow of anti -immigrant messages

RO was founded five years ago by Omsk Andrey Tkachuk politician, a Youvgeny Chesnokov and Andrey Afanasyev, adding at SPAS TV channel, owned by the Russian Orthodox Church.

One of the BBC members told the idea that the idea is to create solidarity among the Russians themselves, as other ethnic societies tightly accumulated in Russia are already looking for each other, for example, Chechnya or Armenian.

As such, many community activities are benign: helping each other with flat tires, or organizing celebrations of Orthodox holidays such as Maslenitsa (butter Week), with popular singing and dance shows in the period before Easter.

But the examination of the various Telegram groups from RO reveals a narrow concentration on Russian ethnic interests, to exclude other non-fake groups in Russia-despite the presence of a handful of minority members-and flow of anti-migrant content.

“Black will devour everything on their way if the Slavs do not unite to defend their borders and values in one way or another,” said young followers of the Saratov branch in society, which cannot be called for fear of the repercussions, told the island, used

Observers say other activities of the group include vigilance, and often open or implicit support for authorities.

According to Verkovsky, there are a number of tactics to target immigrants and other minorities. One of them submits official complaints and condemning the authorities against what they see immoral, such as homosexuality, abortion, or “Russian behavior”. There are none of the previously illegal technically in Russia, but there are laws against “propaganda” related to LGBTQ and “Childfree” topics.

Another tactic is raids, such as floating sellers in Novosibersk. “In the case of immigrants, these are places where immigrants live or work,” explains Verkhovsky.

For example, members of Russian society or similar groups of groups appear, where immigrants usually work and find a kind of “violation” – in the case of Novosibirsk booth, watermelon, unlicensed trading. Then they detained the alleged violators and handed them over to the police.

“In principle, any citizen can somewhat complain of Russian society and say that he was insulted by some bad people,” says Verkhovsky.

“Ideally, these” bad “people are not Russian, and the person who complains is the Russian. Then the Russian community will go to protect it.

Sometimes, the group accompanies the police on joint operations as “volunteers”, although this is rare. Verkhovsky pointed out that the attitudes towards RO by the various police stations differ, and while some seem to welcomes the group, in other cases, the officers have been charged against members of society – only for prosecutors to drop them.

Standing to the “crime wave”?

Vigilance claims that they are standing for the “wave of migrant crime”.

There is a crime among foreigners in Russia: for example, the Georgians constitute more than half of the “thieves in the law”, which is the elite brotherhood in the criminal world. A quarrel and strikes often include gangs of young immigrants often headlines.

However, these incidents and individuals who have been well -classified contribute only a small part of the total crime statistics in Russia. According to Sergey Shoigu, Minister of Security in Russia, foreigners committed only 2 percent of all the reported crime throughout the country last year, while it includes about 4 percent of the population.

Moreover, Valentina Chopik, a lawyer who provides free legal assistance to immigrants, told Al -Jazeera that a large part of these crimes is related to incorrect paper work, rather than the victim of the Russians.

“These crimes (lost papers) are the inevitable result of regulating illegal immigration, which are committed by homeowners who rent apartments for migrants, but they do not benefit from the commitment that the law has placed by registering them there.”

In addition to the immigrants, RO is campaigning against alleged immorality and “Fifth Scholars” in Russian society. As an advocate of human rights, Chupik is one of these fifth doctors and has become accustomed to receiving threats and harms, including RO supporters.

“They are regularizing me regularly,” she says.

“Sergeants are also threatened, as well as volunteers. They sometimes have posts in their telegram groups. They remind me. Then, they write to me and call me.”

The messages witnessed by the island tells Chupik, “There is a special spot for you in hell” and “Wait for the bottle”, referring to sexual assault.

Al -Jazeera called multiple actors from RO to comment, but she did not receive any response.

Since the deadly attack on a place for music in Moscow last year by ISIS militants, there was a rise in foreigners. The police have increased arrests and other restrictions imposed on immigrants, especially those in Central Asia. Verkhovsky says it is difficult to know what the audience is hostile to immigrants, but the polls indicate that concerns about immigration have escalated sharply.

Support war acquisition of acceptance

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Russia suffered a scourge of right -wing extremist violence, and reached its climax in 2008 when heads of heads carried out 110 racist murders worldwide. In one of the horrific episodes in particular, a dead Tajik and a bangle and his head were shot and beheaded on the camera in a forest near Moscow. In 2022, two men were finally convicted of a dual murder after a third suspect, actually imprisoned, criminalized them in his suicide note.

For some time, the outlets available for somewhat dried foreign feelings dried up.

“In 2010, the authorities have greatly suppressed this movement, and almost all of these organizations stopped their activities or simply eliminated,” Verkhovsky explained.

“And the people who wanted to share these ideas and wanted to participate are either afraid or did not know where to go at all.”

Some extremist right -wing activists moved to Ukraine, where they found a common issue with the similar local population.

But Ru is a new phenomenon. He prefers to work alongside the authorities, and it abandons a large extent from the old robbery. Its commercial brand is compatible with the Kremlin, supporting the invasion of Ukraine and collecting donations actively for soldiers and their families. In the interviews, the founder André Takchuk denied the existence of the national identity of Ukraine.

“The state’s tolerance of any groups that support (the war) has grown a lot,” says Verkhovsky. “In general, the authorities do not like any initiatives at the level of al -Qaeda, but here they have been noticeably tolerated with them. This is only possible during the war.”

While Russian society remains relatively within the limits of the law – and it is more than informal assistance to enforce the law more than proper heads in the past, who have impatiently photographed their fictitious attacks – and the leadership cannot always be back away from them.

In May, for example, it was claimed that the activists armed with spraying pepper and the Taser urgency stormed an apartment near Saint Petersburg, where two men and a woman were drinking and taking illegal drugs. A fire broke out in the fight, and one of the men, of Armenian origin, died in the fire, while the woman suffered from serious injuries after jumping from a seventh -class window.

“Let him burn,” and according to what was reported, the activists told the witnesses, accusing the man of “a supporter.”

Last week, a mass fight erupted between dozens of RO members, Chechnya workers and Ingosh workers at the construction site northeast of Moscow, after a security guard in Ingosh expelled a man drunk from the building.

On Sunday, the group revealed that it was described as an “undesirable organization” by the local authorities in the Chelepinsk region in western central Russia on the basis of “extremism”.

But RO has friends in high places: According to reports in the Russian media, Alexander Bastin, Chairman of the Investigation Committee of Russia, on behalf of the members, interferes several times, including charges against police officers who arrested them on a different charge. In June, the sources in security services told reporters from the independent Russian news site, Meduza, to use RO as a tool to manage “disputes between races”.

Mubarak by a deputy

Another difference from ancient racist gangs is the effect of the Orthodox Church. The group carried out a campaign against mosques, and requires its members to announce the Orthodoxy, and blessed by a deputy on behalf of the Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, himself.

“In the first place, Russian society, but also other organizations of the same type, have a very good relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church,” says Verxovsky.

“I mean not only the priests who sympathize with them, but at the level of high -level officials. This is very unusual. To what extent will it go, it’s difficult to say, but it is very noticeable.”