Azov, beyond. The story of Denis Nikitin, a Russian-born Nazi fighting with the Ukrainians (A. Puccio)

A group of vandals crossed the border into Ukraine on Thursday and raided the Russian province of Bryansk, killing two people and injuring a 10-year-old boy.

The unit responsible for the incursion, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called an “act of terrorism”, is the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) which includes in its ranks Russian soldiers fighting on the side of Ukraine.

The DPRK released a video on its networks showing Denis Nikitin, a neo-Nazi with a wide range of international contacts. In the recording, the extremist urged the Russians to join the ranks of the Kiev army, while ensuring that they would not attack civilians, but only Russian soldiers.

The British newspaper “Financial Times” interviewed the extremist, who admitted that the incursion was carried out with the consent of Kiev, because – he claims – if this were not the case, he and other saboteurs would have been “killed”.

“Yes, of course, the procedure was agreed upon, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. How do you imagine I could get through the darkness of the night there?” There are mined bridges, cameras, heat-detecting drones and hidden open observation posts, Nikitin noted.

His remarks contradict the account of an adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Mikhail Podolyak, who described the raid as Moscow’s “classic deliberate provocation”.
On the other hand, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday that the agency is “unable to verify” the accounts given by Russia and Ukraine regarding the incident.

But who is Denis Nikitin?
Nikitin, 39, whose real surname is Kapustin, was born in Russia, but his family moved to the German city of Cologne in 2001, presumably as refugees in a Jewish quota, according to German broadcaster NTV. In Germany, Nikitin became interested in martial arts and introduced himself in the circles of ultras football fans.
A few years later, the radical returned to Russia, where he called the ultras of the famous Moscow club CSKA and took part in street fights for the fans, which often flared up at that time. However, it was not sport that attracted Nikitin.

“I don’t like football, I like hitting. I can’t name any player, I don’t know the history of the club, I can hardly find the field, ”he said in an interview with the Ukrainian ultras portal TroubleMakers in 2017. The material was removed almost immediately after publication. , but the archived copy is still preserved.

After his return to Russia, Nikitin maintained contacts with German ultras. When he visited Germany, he fought alongside the FC Köln fans. In 2014, the local police opened a criminal case against the radical, who was among the suspects in the beating of a follower of FC Schalke 04. The trial lasted until 2017, but the verdict is unknown to Nikitin, who claims “white supremacy.” Racing on monkeys [come chiama gli individui di altre razze]”, reports the Ukrainian portal Zaborona.
Kommersant reported that Nikitin had various jobs, from cleaning to guarding.
However, in 2008 he managed to create his own brand of clothing, White Rex, which was distributed mainly among radical football fans and Nazi sports icons. The central element of the emblem was used in Nazi Germany and today it is also worn by adherents of neo-Nazism.
In 2011, Nikitin expanded his business and began organizing mixed martial arts (MMA) tournaments. Only representatives of the “white race” were invited to the competitions organized by the White Rex, and among them there were almost no professionals. “I wanted to recruit new athletes and draw them into our ideological orbit,” said Nikitin. Moreover, he asserted that his events attracted the attention of agents of the Russian Police’s Anti-Extremism Unit who follow his activities closely. Nikitin stressed that his company “didn’t do anything illegal” and dismissed reports of his radicalization.

Subsequently, Nikitin expanded the tournaments to the Soviet republics. In Ukraine, for example, it was a success, but in Belarus it was almost caught. However, he continued to expand his sports empire in the West.
The neo-Nazis developed many contacts in Europe and befriended members of CasaPound, an Italian neo-fascist group that counts dictator Benito Mussolini as its ideological leader. With the help of CasaPound, Nikitin organized MMA tournaments in Rome.

On the other hand, Nikitin organized the “Kampf der Nibelungen” (Fight of the Nibelungen) courses, while maintaining contact with the neo-Nazi-leaning National Democratic Party and its youth wing. Among other countries, White Rex has held similar events in Finland, the Czech Republic, Romania, France and Greece. Likewise, Nikitin has conducted mixed martial arts workshops for nationalist groups in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

Some anti-fascist groups claim that in addition to organizing sports tournaments, Nikitin funded neo-Nazis, especially their music festivals. All of these activities made Nikitin “a key figure among far-right extremists in Europe,” Robert Klaus notes in his book.

It was in October 2017, when Nikitin moved to Ukraine after being declared persona non grata, both in Russia and in most of Europe, for his participation in fights between Russian and English fans in the French city of Marseille during Euro 2016. At that time, Reconquista Club was inaugurated, which takes its name from the movement of the same name seeking to “restore” Ukraine’s influence in Europe. The club functioned as a restaurant, but on Fridays it hosted all kinds of mixed martial arts fights, which Nikitin dealt with.

In May 2018, Robert Rondo, founder of the American Radical Movement Levántate (RAM), fought at Reconquista. Three months later, Rondo – who was so infatuated with Nikiten that he got his trademark tattoo. He was arrested in the United States for participating in a white rally in Charlottesville. The FBI described the group as “extremists” and revealed that Rondo met with members of the Azov Battalion, which the US agency described as a “neo-Nazi paramilitary group”.
A member of the Corpo Nazionale, a Ukrainian nationalist party, admitted that Nikitin helped him establish contacts with Italian and German neo-Nazis. After hosting the sport’s last tournament in late 2019 in Kiev, Nikitin disappeared from the radar, although there have been unconfirmed reports of legal troubles in the country.

In the aftermath of the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the extremist was “resurrected” in the ranks of the Russian Volunteer Corps. In an interview, Nikitin spoke about his motives for participating in the conflict on the side of Kiev. If for Russians Russia is reduced to the size of Moscow, to the province [di Mosca] Or even the European part, that sounds fine to me. Here our interests coincide with the interests of the Ukrainian nationalists.
“Here our interests coincide with the interests of the Ukrainians,” he said.

Andrea Puccio – www.occhisulmondo.info

Source: RT