Russia’s Largest State-Backed Supremacist Movement Is Thriving Above the Law

Three members of the ultra-right organization "Russian Community" were arrested for kidnapping, beating, and torturing. Their victim was taken to a forest on May 25, 2025, “beaten with fists, feet and various objects, they used a plastic bag and a stun gun to inflict violence, and they also threatened him with a knife,” the reports say. The Russian Community also threatened him with rape with a rubber truncheon and murder.

Ilya, the 18-year-old victim, was left alone in the forest but managed to free himself and contact the police. Two of the detainees have been sent to pretrial detention, while the court still deliberates on measures for the third. Whether the attackers will face meaningful justice remains uncertain, given the Russian Community’s established links with police and security services.

The Russian Community (RC) is currently the “undisputed leader” of all ultra-nationalist groups in Russia. The group officially formed in 2020, but has grown exponentially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. RC is a fusion of faith, violence, and nationalism.

Working with Russia’s security agencies, the RC is actively involved in instigating and carrying out raids against migrants, attacking marginalized communities, the LGBTQ+ community, abortion doctors, and anyone who challenges their worldview. 

The Russian Orthodox Church plays a central role in the group's activities. Its leader, Patriarch Kirill—one of the most powerful religious figures in the country—has supported the group, mirroring his endorsement of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Under the guise of church gatherings and community spirit, RC conducts vigilante raids and attacks, sells merchandise online, raises money for Russian forces invading Ukraine, and offers men and boys hand-to-hand combat and weapons training. 

What do we know about the Russian Community?

The RC was mostly under the radar from the West until gaining notoriety in 2023 during a campaign known as “Nelegal-2023”, meaning “Illegal Alien-2023”. The campaign involved harassment and the deportations of migrant workers. During its first week alone, they deported more than 7000 migrants. RC actively worked with police across the North Caucasus to suppress ethnic protests and carry out violent attacks. 

RC was found to regularly publicise events and addresses of places where those perceived to be migrants were gathering, alerting Russian enforcement, Bellingcat  investigators found. RC was at the scene of many raids and detentions, recording the incidents to share with their followers. 

“We, nationalists, have lost a lot of time fighting the system and the security forces. Although we often have similar tasks and views on problems,” Alexander Bosykh, a former member of the Congress of Russian Communities, said. “Now you (Russian Community) don’t need to be underground, hide somewhere, disguise yourself.”

RC has around 150 branches across Russia, and its online following has quadrupled over the last year, with over one million subscribers on YouTube and over 650,000 followers on Telegram. 

“There are many representatives of the Russian Community in the ranks of Espanola”, they wrote on Telegram on May 12. Espanola is one of Russia’s newest private military groups (PMC), officially formed in 2024, and acquired and financed by Putin’s “United Russia” party. 

Espanola actively recruits sympathizers of Nazi-ideology, football ultras, and civilians from Russia to fight in its illegal war in Ukraine. Its commander, Mikhail "Pitbull" Turkanov, covered in swastika tattoos, is on the US sanctions list.

Espanola is sponsored by Viktor Shendrik, who previously served in the Vympel unit, one of Russia’s most secretive FSB special forces, and is part of the “Redut / Redoubt system,” overseen by Deputy Chief of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU), Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev. 

The Community exists to help "Russian guys who have found themselves in difficult situations," one anonymous member told the BBC. Civilians who need personal matters “handled” turn to the group, who dress in all black, to intimidate and threaten individuals. 

RC even has an app with an “SOS” button for contacting the group’s self-styled “people’s militia.” Sometimes, as seen in a case this month, their operations result in death, which is exactly what happened on May 4, 2025, in St. Petersburg. When a group of men wearing Russian Community symbols forcibly entered an apartment with a stun gun and pepper spray, a fire broke out, killing an Armenian man inside. A woman, another apartment dweller, jumped out the window and survived.

Who is behind the Russian Community?

Yevgeny Chesnokov, one of the group’s founders, previously coordinated the “For Life” movement, which campaigns for a total abortion ban in Russia. Andrei Tkachuk, a co-founder, is a former vice-speaker of the Omsk City Council and worked as a journalist at SPAS TV—a religious television channel owned by Patriarch Kirill and affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Another co-founder, Andrei Afanasyev, was formerly employed at Tsargrad TV, a pro-Kremlin, Orthodox nationalist media outlet owned by Konstantin Malofeev. The EU has sanctioned both SPAS and Tsargrad for disseminating disinformation in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine and for circumventing sanctions.

Malofeev—often referred to as the “Orthodox Oligarch”—has been under US, EU, and Canadian sanctions since 2014 and is currently on Ukraine’s international wanted list for his alleged role in financing Russia’s illegal so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) in Donbass.

Afanasyev has previously led several far-right organizations financially backed by Malofeev, including the Russian Youth Organization  and the Double-Headed Eagle  movement. It’s unclear whether Malofeev financially supports RC, but the ideological alignment is evident.

Hate crimes are soaring as immigrants and alternative lifestyles are blamed for Russia’s ills — and the Orthodox Church is leading the charge.

Center for European Policy Analysis

The Russian Orthodox Church and nationalist organizations, specifically the RC, are deeply intertwined. Earlier this year, Archbishop Savva of Zelenograd, according to reports, spoke at the Russian Community convention and delivered Patriarch Kirill's personal blessing. 

Xenophobic attacks by the Russian Community

When the BBC asked Pavel Omelnitsky, coordinator of the Yaroslavl RC branch, why the group chose to unite specifically on the basis of nationality, “the question smacks of Russophobia,” Omelnitsky replied. 

“In 2020, xenophobic anti-migrant discourse began to revive, and the Russian Community made a significant contribution to making it very loud in today’s Russia,” the administrator of "Antifa.ru" told the BBC. 

On social media, the RC emphasizes nationality while often using derogatory terms when writing about an incident or a supposed crime. It refers to foreign residents as “uninvited visitors” who are "multiplying" all over the country, and that in "tolerant Europe,” they are “free to do whatever they want.” 

The RC claimed in July 2024 that “40 Kurds” assaulted six locals and organised a march against them through the Krasnodar Krai town of Korenovsk. “Russians, forward!”, “Glory to Russia!”, “One for all and all for one!” and “No retreat and no surrender!” the protestors shouted, as they were accompanied by police throughout their march. 

Dressed in balaclavas, the RC raided Yekaterinburg’s migrant-run fruit and vegetable market in August 2024. The police detained the sellers, while passersby were encouraged to steal fruit and vegetables with the police present, who did not intervene, according to reports. 

A 40-year-old taxi driver, Yelena Manzhsova from Korkino, was killed in October 2024 in an argument with two Roma boys, apparently over a taxi fare. The next day, a week of pogrom-style violence, including arson, erupted in the area, until most of the Roma inhabitants had fled. 

“Residents of Korkino, tired of ethno crime, have gathered en masse in the city center,”  RC wrote on Telegram. “According to them, it is because of the dark-skinned that drug trafficking, theft, robbery, and hooliganism flourish in their area. Citizens have repeatedly called on local security forces to put an end to all this, but to no avail.”

The pogrom is one case from a steadily rising trend of hate crimes across Russia, which according to CEPA , throughout 2024 was on course to be greater than at any point since 2011.

The Russian Community’s crackdown on abortion

“The Russian Orthodox Church has proposed to enshrine in law the child's right to life before birth,” the RC posted on Telegram in May 2025. 

The post stated that the head of the legal department of the Moscow Patriarchate, Abbess Ksenia, called for a change in the law and to ultimately ban abortions. A stance in which the RC stands by. 

In November 2024, Russia adopted a new law, approved by Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, “prohibiting the distribution of information in the media, the internet, films and advertising that promotes the childfree ideology.”

The Orthodox church viewed the bill positively, and Ksenia said that it "will help clear the information space of propaganda of abortions and destructive reproductive behavior."

Marina, a 39-year-old Russian national from Nizhnevartovsk, was being stalked and harassed by her ex-boyfriend. Marina applied to the RC in December 2023 for help and to speak with her ex-partner with dual nationality, and the RC quickly agreed. They met her to speak with her in person, she told them that he used to beat her, and she fell pregnant and had an abortion without his knowledge.

Later, Marina saw in a video published by the RC, telling her story but without naming her, and said that they understood his violent attack due to the abortion. “The Russian Community will not help this girl,” the man said in the video. “She had an abortion. Our Russian Community is against infanticide. Against abortions. We believe that no matter what the man is like, no matter what the situation with him, it should never lead to you killing your child out of anger towards your ex-man.”

They started writing nasty things about me in the comments. That I had an abortion, that I should almost be burned for it, that there was no need to help me. They started posting some pictures about the murders of children.

Marina

“For the Russian Community, having an abortion was a greater sin than anything my ex did. According to them, it’s my own fault. What a strange way to help,” Marina told the BBC. 

The Russian Community attacks on LGBTQ+ 

On May 24, 2025, RC posted about a raid that they, along with law enforcement, had conducted that weekend in Kamensk-Uralsky. The “perverts tried to organise an LGBT party under the guise of a ‘90s-style evening’, the organisers invited travesty artists and various freaks for a fascinating journey into the past,” RC wrote on Telegram.  

The RC called for those who attended the party to be investigated under “Organising the activities of an extremist organisation,” which could mean they could face up to 8 years in prison. 

Global analysts and experts, such as Jamestown Foundation, are alarmed by the increasing violence by the Russian Community and the “impending disaster if the Russian Community is not stopped.”

“Today’s Russian Community could trigger a civil war. A group that has attracted little attention so far in the West deserves the closest possible security and condemnation, lest policymakers miss the potential core to a future violent uprising,” Jamestown warned.