A U.S. intelligence community assessment obtained by Yahoo News concluded that the Russian government is providing “indirect and passive support” to neofascist groups operating in the U.S. and elsewhere, but stops short of accusing the Kremlin of supplying financial or material assistance to Western extremist groups. The Kremlin “probably tolerates some private Russian entities’ support” for U.S. and European white nationalist groups “because it aligns with Kremlin efforts to aggravate societal fissures in the West,” states the report. Russian neofascist groups have attempted to recruit and provide paramilitary training to North American and European extremists in order to “expand their reach into the West, increase membership, and raise money,” according to the unclassified July 2021 intelligence report. The support of Western neofascists by Russian extremists “poses a potential threat to Western security by encouraging and enabling attacks on ethnic minorities and government facilities,” states the report, which is titled “Russian Federation Support of Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists.” (…) Russian extremist groups are actively training foreign white nationalists, the report states. One Russian neofascist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, has overseen paramilitary instruction for European extremists at its Russia-based camps, and has tried to recruit Americans to train there, according to the report. The State Department designated the Russian Imperial Movement as a terrorist group in April 2020. The organization “actively supplies paramilitary training to foreign nationals for possible future attacks in their respective home countries or on the battlefields of Ukraine,” according to a May 2021 Customs and Border Patrol bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. Another Russian extremist group with foreign connections, the neo-Nazi Rusich Reconnaissance and Sabotage Group, sent members to fight in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, according to the intelligence community assessment. (…) Over the past several years, foreign fighters have flocked to join both sides of the Ukraine conflict. Since 2014, over 17,000 fighters from more than 50 countries have traveled to Ukraine, including far-right extremists, according to a 2019 report by the Soufan Group. (…) Leaders of two American white supremacist groups, the Rise Above Movement and the Atomwaffen Division, as well as other known or suspected American white supremacists traveled to Ukraine to train with the group, according to the bulletin.
via yahoo: U.S. intelligence report details ‘indirect’ Russian government support for Western neofascist groups