• Military
• WMD

• Intelligence Menu               

• Systems
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Imagery
• Links

• Homeland Security
• Space

Rusich

The Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group (DShRG) "Rusich" meaning "Rus person" [Diversionno-shturmovaya razvedyvatel'naya gruppa «Rusich»] is a small Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group. The Rusich group was formally founded as the Sabotage and Assault Reconnaissance Group Rusich in St. Petersburg in 2014. The Rusich performance group first came into the public eye in 2014 when it was deployed in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine during the height of fighting between Russian separatist forces and the Ukrainian army. Their deployment, which was also their first, caused terror and fear in the population, according to witnesses.

On November 21, 2016, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine announced suspicion to the leaders of the Rusich armed group , citizens of the Russian Federation MILCHAKOV, Alexey Yurevich (a.k.a. MILCHAKOV, Aleksey Yuryevich; a.k.a. MILCHAKOV, Alexei; a.k.a. "Fritz"; a.k.a. "Gimler"; a.k.a. "Serb"; a.k.a. "Serbian"), and PETROVSKIY, Yan Igorevich (a.k.a. PETROVSKY, Jan; a.k.a. PETROVSKY, Yan; a.k.a. "Veliki Slavian"; a.k.a. "Velikyi Slavyan"), . They were suspected of participating in a terrorist organization.

Milchakov, a former paratrooper, has been identified by experts as the co-leader of Rusich, along with another Russian named Yan Petrovsky. Both Milchakov and Petrovsky fought against Ukraine as volunteers in the Donbas in 2014 and 2015 and have openly displayed patches awarded to them as part of the "Union of Donbas Volunteers.” At the time, however, Russia repeatedly denied its forces were fighting in the Donbas, asserting, while often straining credulity, that the local forces battling Ukrainian troops were merely local partisans.

In September 2014, near the Luhansk Oblast village of Shchastya, Rusich militants battled a Ukrainian paramilitary group called Aidar. Ukrainian news reports said dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Afterward, images of mutilated and burnt bodies circulated online, and Milchakov later openly bragged about photographing the bodies.

Milchakov also gained notoriety that same year when bloggers and reporters discovered a series of photos and videos from two years earlier in which he was shown killing a puppy, cutting off its head and allegedly eating it.

In July 2017, the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine completed a pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings on charges against the leader of the Rusich armed group, Russian citizen Aleksey Milchakov, of committing crimes on the territory of Ukraine, for which he faces life imprisonment. "The pre-trial investigation established that from June 2014 to August 2015, Milchakov, as part of the illegal armed formation he created, the so-called sabotage and assault reconnaissance group "Rusich" of the "Batman" rapid reaction group, took part in the terrorist organization "LPR", contributed waging an aggressive war against Ukraine and changing its borders in violation of the order established by the Constitution of Ukraine," the prosecutor's office noted.

In addition, military prosecutors stated that as a result of the criminal actions of Milchakov, who organized an ambush on the Ukrainian military, on September 5, 2014, near the village of Privetnoe, Slavyanoserbsky district, Lugansk region, about 40 servicemen of the Aidar battalion and the 80th separate air assault brigade were killed.

A video, published in December 2020, showed two nattily dressed Russian men -- waistcoats, pocket squares, silk ties – sipping American whiskey in brandy snifters and discussing killing Ukrainians. "I'm a Nazi. I’m a Nazi,” said one of the men, Aleksei Milchakov, who was the main focus of the video published on a Russian nationalist YouTube channel. “I'm not going to go deep and say, I’m a nationalist, a patriot, an imperialist, and so forth. I’ll say it outright: I’m a Nazi.”

“You have to understand that when you kill a person, you feel the excitement of the hunt. If you’ve never been hunting, you should try it. It’s interesting,” he said. Aside from being a notorious, avowed Nazi known for killing a puppy and posting bragging photographs about it on social media, Milchakov is the head of a Russian paramilitary group known as Rusich, which openly embraces Nazi symbolism and radical racist ideologies. The group, and Milchakov himself, have been credibly linked to atrocities in Ukraine and in Syria.

According to a confidential report by Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, which was obtained by Der Spiegel and excerpted on 22 May 2022, numerous Russian right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis are fighting in Ukraine. German analysts wrote that the fact that Russian military and political leaders have welcomed neo-Nazi groups undermines the claim by Putin and his government that one of the principal motives behind the invasion is the desire to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Spiegel said.

Much of the extremist content, posted on Telegram and the Russian social media platform VKontakte (VK), relates to "Rusic", which links to other pro-Kremlin online communities, some of which bear the Wagner name and logo. One VK account is dedicated to the Rusich "sabotage and assault reconnaissance group" operating in Ukraine, according to a March 17 post. The Rusic logo depicts the Slavic swastika known as the Kolovrat. Another post on VK lists Rusic as part of a coalition of separatist groups and militias, including the far-right group Russian National Unity,

Fighters from Rusich, stationed at Robotyne’s front line, had threatened to lay down their arms – a move that may have contributed to Russia’s stinging loss there. The official reason for the threat to lay down arms, Rusich explained in an August 25 statement on Telegram, was that one of the group’s top commanders and founding members, Yan Petrovsky, had been detained in Finland and faced extradition to Ukraine – and the Russian government was not doing much about it.

Petrovsky, a dual Russian-Norwegian national, co-founded Rusich back in 2014 to take part in the Russian occupation of Donbas and is believed to have been a contractor for the Wagner Group at one point. He faces various terrorism-related charges in Ukraine and risks being sentenced to between 15 and 20 years in prison if he is extradited.

In a series of messages screen-grabbed by the research project Antifascist Europe, Rusich members expressed frustration with their treatment by the Russian authorities. “If the country cannot protect its citizens, why should the citizens protect the country?” asked one.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the group did indeed seem to be operating near Robotyne in western Zaporizhia Oblast, describing it as “a critical area of the front line where the Russian military command likely cannot afford for any units to rebel and refuse to conduct combat missions”. Soon after ISW issued its analysis, Robotyne fell to Ukraine.

There has been no official confirmation – either from Rusich or the Russian defence ministry – that the group’s fighters did stop fighting. According to Jeff Hawn, a non-resident fellow at the Washington, DC-based think-tank New Lines Institute and an expert in Russian military matters, it would have been a credible scenario. "There's a very strong possibility" that the mercenaries laid down arms, which would likely have contributed to the fall of Robotyne, he said. Russia is so short of fighters it cannot replace units that give up, he said, adding that we likely won't know "for years" what really happened.

Hawn said the reason for a revolt would likely have less to do with the detention of the group’s leader than with a loss of motivation among Russian mercenary fighters in general, coupled with Moscow’s increasing inability to keep them under control. “These guys are likely just looking for an excuse to get out,” he said. “They’re realising that Ukraine isn’t just going to break and give up.”

The situation for paramilitary groups has been further complicated by Wagner’s attempted mutiny back in June and the death of the mercenary group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, late last month. Under Prigozhin’s leadership, Hawn explained, Wagner had long served as an organising tool for other Russian militia groups operating in Ukraine. Prigozhin had also established a culture of paying his mercenaries well, and in dollars – a culture that spread to the other militias fighting in Ukraine.

“Even though he had a reputation of being a tough guy, a thug, Prigozhin was known to take good care of his people, paying them more, and in hard currency.” Following the group’s botched mutiny, however – and Moscow’s subsequent attempts to try to dissolve the group – the working conditions for Prigozhin’s “militia collective” in Ukraine worsened. “They’re probably getting paid in rubles now – if they’re getting paid at all,” Hawn said.

“They’re also probably not getting supplied, because militia groups are at the very lowest end of the totem pole when it comes to Russian logistics, which are completely overstretched already.”