Two armed groups claimed responsibility for an attack in Russia in the Belgorod region on Monday, May 22. Here’s what we know about these forces that surprised Russia.
An attack that shook Russia. For more than 24 hours on Monday, May 22, two groups of Russian fighters attacked the Belgorod region. The next day, the local Russian authorities lifted the anti-terrorist operation they had ordered.
According to CNN, the Freedom Legion and the RDK claimed responsibility for the attack on Telegram. The groups announced that they “completely liberated the village of Kozinka in the Belgorod region.” For his part, the spokesman for the Ukrainian military intelligence service, Andriï Yusov, reiterated that no Ukrainian citizen was involved in the attack.
The two groups, which they say contain hundreds of men, want to seek the ouster of President Vladimir Putin. The RDK claims to conduct reconnaissance and sabotage operations on Russian territory.
The RDK, consisting of Russian volunteers
The Russian Volunteer Corps, RDK, consists of Russian citizens who have been living in Ukraine for several years. This is a unit of right-wing extremist activists. This group would have been officially formed in the summer of 2022 by Denis Nikitin, also known as Kasputin or “White Rex”. He is a well-known figure of the hooligan scene in Russia. In Ukraine he organized MMA fights and in 2008 founded a clothing brand with a black sun, a popular symbol of neo-Nazi groups.
Notably, this group of volunteers claimed responsibility for an attack in March in Russia’s Briansk region, on the border with Ukraine. This Monday they released three videos of nighttime infiltrations in Russian cities before claiming responsibility for the incursion into the Belgorod region. They claim to want to overthrow Vladimir Putin, as stated in their manifesto. The ribbon depicts the symbols of the Russian Liberation Army, which fought under Nazi command during World War II. In an interview with AFP in March, Alexander aka “Fortune” said that the corps coordinated with the Ukrainian army when it was on Ukrainian territory but conducted its operations alone in Russia.
The RDK defends the concept of “intransigence” and denounces the fact that “Vladimir Putin and his followers are destroying Russians as an ethnic group”. The RDK wants to establish a state based on territories predominantly populated by ethnic Russians and demands self-determination for other citizens of the federation.
THE LEGION OF LIBERTY
The other legion involved in the attack near Belgorod is called “Freedom of Russia” and also consists of Russian fighters. The Legion was formed in March 2022 and its emblem is a clenched fist with the words “Freedom” and “Russia”. Their leader is a former Russian MP, Ilia Ponomariov, who was the only one who voted against Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequently moved to Ukraine. This group would be part of the international volunteer corps within the Ukrainian army, which would include thousands of people from different countries to fight alongside the Ukrainians against Russian forces.
THE RUSSIAN RESPONSE
The Kremlin accuses Kiev of staging the attack to divert attention from Bachmout, the epicenter of fighting in eastern Ukraine that Russia claims it has been seizing since Saturday.
After the Belgorod attack, the leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigoyine, denounced a failure by the Russian state. “There is no government, no will, and no individuals willing to defend their country,” he said, scourging those who “play dumb” and instead “slurp money” “to ensure the security of the state.”