The British government has banned the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist organisation seeking to create a new Russian empire.

The British government announced in early July that a far-right group called the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) will be banned under terrorism legislation. This will make it a criminal offence in the UK to be a member of the group or to express support for it.

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The RIM is an ultra-nationalist, neo-nazi and white supremacist organisation based in Russia. It was created in 2002 by Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, a Russian national who is designated a terrorist by the US government.

The group seeks to create a new Russian empire, and uses the Russian imperial flag as its sign. The previous Russian empire (1721-1917) encompassed all of modern-day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic states, as well as parts of China.

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The movement does not recognise Ukrainian sovereignty. It sees Ukraine as part of what it calls a global Zionist conspiracy designed to undermine Russia and promote Jewish interests. The RIM has engaged in Holocaust denial and is formally outlawed in the US, Canada and now the UK.

It also has a paramilitary wing called the Imperial Legions, which operates at least two training facilities in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The US State Department believes these facilities are being used to train RIM members in woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat.

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Since 2014, when the conflict in eastern Ukraine began, the movement has trained and sent members as mercenaries to bolster the pro-Russian separatist groups fighting there. Its members have also actively supported the Russian armed forces in Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

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The movement also maintains strong ties with the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Imperial Legions fighters are believed to have operated alongside Wagner mercenaries in Syria, Libya and possibly the Central African Republic.

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The movement has been active in supporting far-right organisations in Europe. These include the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden and similar groups in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

It provides training to these groups through its so-called “Partizan” (Russian for guerrilla) programme. The training includes bombmaking, marksmanship, medical and survival skills, military topography and other tactics.

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Two Swedish nationals who took part in the programme later committed a series of bombings against refugee centres in Gothenburg, a city on Sweden’s west coast, in late 2016 and early 2017.

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The RIM has also provided specific paramilitary training to far-right groups in Finland. Some members of these groups have fought on Russia’s side in Ukraine, while others have attempted to establish a Finnish cell of the international neo-nazi Atomwaffen Division. Police raids in 2023 also unveiled plans to assassinate the then Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin.

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The movement has previously been critical of the Russian government. It initially believed the approach of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to Ukraine was too soft, while the group’s promotion of white supremacy and neo-nazism is at odds with Putin’s pragmatic nationalism within Russia.

In 2012, the RIM even took part in discussions with other far-right groups in Russia to form an opposition movement called New Force to challenge Putin’s rule. However, the crisis in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power has caused the Kremlin and RIM’s political objectives to converge.

Indeed, the group can now be viewed as one of the core Russian proxy paramilitaries operating in Ukraine at a time when Putin needs more recruits to continue the war. Western intelligence agencies now believe it has a relationship with officials from Russian state intelligence.

[…]

  • Havatra@lemmy.zipEnglish
    15·
    13 hours ago

    First time I hear of the group, but I find there to be such irony, how Kremlin reasoned that they entered Ukraine in order to de-nazify it, only for actualy neo-nazis to fight alongside the Russian military…

    • huppakee@feddit.nlEnglish
      7·
      12 hours ago

      If you accuse other of doing something that you’re doing yourself you can make what you’re doing sound less bad because ‘everybody else’ does it too. You can also confuse people because if only one of them is true, who should you trust? Maybe none of it is true.

      • Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.orgOPEnglish
        4·
        10 hours ago

        Yes, in a recent study “Manufacturing Impunity: Russian Information Operations In Ukraine” - (opens pdf), the authors call that an “information alibi”:

        Information alibis closely resemble “accusations in a mirror”. This is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one’s adversaries by attacking a civilian object like a marketplace, they would accuse the adversaries of plotting precisely the same act.

        @Havatra@lemmy.zip

        @huppakee@feddit.nl

        [Edit typo.]

        • huppakee@feddit.nlEnglish
          3·
          10 hours ago

          Thanks for sharing, i read someone earlier Russia did exactly this to a train station. Days before they accused Ukraine of having plans to bomb it (not sure why, but surely they made up something), then bombed it themselves. Though I forgot if they accused Ukraine of doing it or they switched their narrative. Point being, nice to have a word for things like that.

          Edit: I wrote the comment above before opening the pdf and learning that the event is also covered in the report. What I wrote above isn’t the best summary (check the pdf if you want to know the details), but what is more relevant is this (also quoted from the pdf linked above):

          Both Bellingcat and HRW have characterised the attack as a violation of the laws of war and an apparent war crime. Similarly, the Ukrainian NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights has classified the Kramatorsk attack as a war crime, emphasising that the targeting of a railway station with indiscriminate weapons during a civilian evacuation did not result in any discernible military advantage, but instead inflicted severe harm on the civilian population.