Anna Nemtsova writes:

Far-right activists from Russia’s largest nationalist movement, Russkaya Obshchina, donned black camouflage and patrolled multiple cities last month hunting for “ethnic criminals.” They raided dormitories, parks, and construction sites in search of migrants from Central Asia, nabbing six on November 24. On social media, the activists celebrated their “joint raid with law-enforcement officials,” posting a video of themselves leading migrants in chains on their way to deportation.

Russkaya Obshchina is working in concert with the Russian state to carry out a radical new campaign against immigrants. In August, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill allowing migrants to be expelled without a court decision. Three months later, he amended the criminal code, introducing draconian sentencing guidelines for “countering illegal migration.” Deportations have skyrocketed. According to the Russian state news agency TASS, the government deported more than 60,000 immigrants this year as of November 1—twice more than in the first nine months of 2023. On November 8, the Russian interior ministry announced its decision to deport an additional 20,000 people.

Perhaps more striking than the campaign itself is the well of ethnic hatred it seems to have tapped. In rallies this fall, thousands of far-right and ultranationalist activists marched through Russian cities in support of Putin’s policies. They have the blessing, too, of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church. In September, priests in flowing gowns led a crowd of 75,000 people on a religious procession in St. Petersburg, where members of Russkaya Obshchina chanted “Russians, forward! We are Russians, God is with us!” Some carried the black flag of the mercenary Wagner Group, notorious for its brutality in Ukraine and Africa. Last month, more than 2,000 members of the nationalist “Double-Headed Eagle” and Tsargrad movements marched in Nizhny Novgorod bearing Russian imperial flags. Their founder, the Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, marched too.

In 2014, the United States sanctioned Malofeyev for sponsoring Russian separatist movements in Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas regions. He does not believe Ukraine has a right to exist; it belongs to the Russian empire he hopes to revive. In an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month, Malofeyev seemed to speak on Putin’s behalf when he denounced Donald Trump’s Ukraine-Russia peace offer—before negotiations had even started. “For the talks to be constructive,” he said, “we need to talk not about the future of Ukraine but the future of Europe and the world.”

How did radical nationalists so fully infiltrate Russia’s police and politics? Putin’s Kremlin has a long history of aiding far-right hate groups involved in violence against immigrants. In 2014, he effectively took over the nationalist agenda when he annexed Crimea and supported a militarized separatist movement in the Donbas. These maneuvers were meant to serve what Putin called the “Russian World”: anyone, he says, “who feels a spiritual connection with our Motherland, the bearers of Russian language, history, and culture.” [Continue reading…]