On October 13, photographs started circulating across social media showing a man resembling Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk on stage at the “Veterans Strong” concert event in Kyiv. This was, however, no ordinary concert — it was organized by a far-right figure accused of murder, and headlined by a neo-Nazi band. As later posts throughout…
Written by Michael Colborne with contributions from Oleksiy Kuzmenko They’re devoted to a brand of neo-Nazism so blatant, including openly glorifying Hitler, that even its leader admits is too “hardcore” for the public space. Wotanjugend, which its founder described in 2016 as an online “mini-university for supporters of right-wing ideology,” has praised far-right terrorists like…
In a previous joint investigation with BuzzFeed News and the Insider, Bellingcat disclosed the inordinately frequent travel of two Italian politicians from the close circle of the head of Italy’s far-right party Lega Nord, and self-styled “Italian Trump” Matteo Salvini. As previously reported by Italian media and BuzzFeed, one of the frequent travelers and advisers…
Ukraine’s Education Assembly (Освітня асамблея) is officially registered (archived copy) as a “community organization” in Ukraine. On its face, nothing about how they describe themselves sounds particularly worrisome, as seen in the group’s description of itself on their website: “Education Assembly is a project whose goal is comprehensive youth development (…) The project takes the…
On August 3, 2019, at around 11am local time, initial police reports indicated that a gunman had walked into an El Paso Wal-Mart and opened fire. As of the publication of this article, at least eighteen people have died and several others have been injured. One victim was a four-month old infant. As we’ve seen…
UPDATE: In an article published in Estonian media on August 2, 2019, ICDS chief executive Dmitri Teperik told news website Delfi: “At one point [Yevhen] Karas came to the event, and he stayed there for maybe three hours. We asked a local man whom he was dealing with and he explained who he was…when we…
Authored and researched by Oleksiy Kuzmenko, Michael Colborne Ahead of Ukrainian parliamentary elections on July 21, it is clear from polling data that Ukraine’s far-right groups and their ideas enjoy little popular support among its citizens. Despite this, Ukraine’s government continues to provide funds to notorious far-right extremist groups and their affiliates — including two…
Sunday, the day of the annual KyivPride March of Equality, was a bit of a crappy day for many anti-LGBT extremists in Ukraine. KyivPride Recap After a week of homophobic messages, violent threats, and even physical attacks on more than a dozen KyivPride participants, anti-LGBT forces in Ukraine were unable to slow down the March…
Yaroslav Kulyk is a fixture at anti-LGBT protests in Kyiv, and has called for “patriots” to “fight”, “crush” participants of Kyiv Pride. Kulyk addressed crowds next to far-right figures, calling one far-right organizer his “leader”. Kulyk is also a priest in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), regularly conducting services in some of Ukraine’s most…
The peak of the migration crisis in Europe might be over, but it has provided lasting excuses for paramilitary proto-militias to continue to mobilize support in Bulgaria. Via their “defense of the European fortress” from a new “Islamic conquest,” they provide a platform for both overt and covert international cooperation between leading figures of the…
