Foreign Fighters, Volunteers, and Mercenaries: Non-State Actors and Narratives in Ukraine

When Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine was launched to pursue the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, it evoked a level of “gaslighting”—attempting to make others question their own reality—that has come to define the Kremlin’s approach to geopolitics. Just as Russia bombed hospitals in Aleppo and casually blamed the atrocities on “terrorists,” Moscow now seeks to stoke the flames of transnational far-right extremism and violence in support of the atrocities it is committing in Mariupol and elsewhere throughout Ukraine. Rather than fighting against neo-Nazis, Putin has been supporting far-right extremists, including white supremacists, for years. Russia has nurtured neo-Nazis and used mercenaries and other extremists to wage a separatist war in Ukraine, while also seeking to execute Russian foreign policy abroad, and has deployed disinformation and misinformation tools to manipulate the narratives. 

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