Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations to pursue its specific interests. Ultranationalist entities have been associated with the engagement of political violence even during peacetime. The belief system has also been cited as the inspiration for acts of organized mass murder in the context of international conflicts, with the Cambodian genocide being cited as an example.
A milblog or warblog is a blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant. The term "milblog" implies that the author is a member of, or has some connection to the military; the more specific term "soldierblog" is sometimes used for the former.
Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu is a Russian politician and military officer who has served as Minister of Defence of Russia since 2012. Shoigu has served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012.
Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov is a Russian army general serving as the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence.
Opposition to the government of President Vladimir Putin in Russia, commonly referred to as the Russian opposition, can be divided between the parliamentary opposition parties in the State Duma and the various non-systemic opposition organizations. While the former are largely viewed as being more or less loyal to the government and Putin, the latter oppose the government and are mostly unrepresented in government bodies. According to Russian NGO Levada Center, about 15% of the Russian population disapproved of Putin in the beginning of 2023.
The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, also known as the SDN List, is a United States government sanctions/embargo measure targeting U.S.-designated terrorists, officials and beneficiaries of certain authoritarian regimes, and international criminals. The list is managed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). When individuals are added to the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN), their U.S. assets are blocked. Moreover, their names are added to automated screening systems used by banks in the United States and many foreign countries, making it difficult for them to open or hold accounts, transfer money, or transact properties internationally. Any individual or entity that provides support related to terrorism, drug trafficking or unauthorized military use to any person or entity appearing on the SDN list risks being penalized under the USA PATRIOT Act.
Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin, also known by the alias Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, is a Russian army veteran, political prisoner and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who played a key role in the Russian annexation of Crimea, and then in the Donbas War as an organizer of militant groups in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group private military company and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2020 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU".
The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.
During Ukraine's post-Soviet history, the far-right has remained on the political periphery and been largely excluded from national politics since independence in 1991. Unlike most Eastern European countries which saw far-right groups become permanent fixtures in their countries' politics during the decline and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the national electoral support for far-right parties in Ukraine only rarely exceeded 3% of the popular vote. Far-right parties usually enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election. Only once in the 1994–2014 period was a radical right-wing party elected to the parliament as an independent organization within the proportional part of the voting: Svoboda in 2012. Since then far-right parties have failed to gain enough votes to attain political representation, even at the height of nationalist sentiment during and after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and Articles 31 and 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation is a group of federal laws promulgated by the Russian government during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These laws establish administrative and criminal punishments for "discrediting" or dissemination of "unreliable information" about the Russian Armed Forces, other Russian state bodies and their operations, and the activity of volunteers aiding the Russian Armed Forces, and for calls to impose sanctions against Russia, Russian organizations and citizens. These laws are an extension of Russian fake news laws and are sometimes referred to as the fakes laws.
Since the beginning of 2022, multiple unusual deaths of Russian businesspeople or high officials, sometimes including their family members, have occurred under what some sources suggest were suspicious circumstances.
The battle of Bakhmut was a major battle in and around the city of Bakhmut between the Russian Armed Forces and Ukrainian defenders for capture of the city during the larger eastern Ukraine campaign. It was one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war so far.
On 5 January 2023, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on both sides of the war in Ukraine for an Eastern Orthodox Christmas truce. On the evening of the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to declare a 36-hour temporary ceasefire along the entire line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops from midday on 6 January to midnight on 7 to 8 January 2023.
On 2 April 2023, a bombing occurred in the Street Food Bar No.1 café on Universitetskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, real name Maxim Fomin, died as a result of the explosion and 42 people were injured, 24 of whom were hospitalized, including six in critical conditions.
The Club of Angry Patriots is a Russian hardline nationalist social movement founded on 1 April 2023 by Igor Strelkov, Pavel Gubarev and Maxim Kalashnikov. The club criticizes the current Russian government for perceived half-measures and inability to win the war against Ukraine.
On 23 June 2023, the Wagner Group, a Russian government-funded paramilitary and private military company, staged a rebellion after a period of increasing tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defence and the then-leader of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin. An agreement to settle this conflict was reached between the two sides the next day, 24 June 2023.
The rivalry between the then-head of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the leadership of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, headed by Sergei Shoigu, in the public sphere began in 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ultimately led to the Wagner Group rebellion on 23–24 June 2023. According to United States officials, Yevgeny Prigozhin had longstanding disputes with the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) "for years" prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, these tensions escalated and became more public during this stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. During the initial stages of the invasion, the Russian Ground Forces suffered significant casualties, but the announcement of mobilization for reservists was delayed by Russian president Vladimir Putin. As a result, authorities actively sought to enlist mercenaries for the invasion, which led to a heightened influence and power for Prigozhin and the Wagner Group. Prigozhin was allocated substantial resources, including his own aviation assets. Additionally, starting in the summer of 2022, he gained the authority to recruit inmates from Russian prisons into the Wagner Group in exchange for their freedom. Western intelligence estimated that the number of Wagner mercenaries increased from "several thousand" fighters around 2017–2018 to approximately 50,000 fighters by December 2022, with the majority comprising criminal convicts recruited from prisons.
On 23 August 2023, an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet crashed near Kuzhenkino in Tver Oblast, approximately 100 kilometres (60 mi) north of its departure point in Moscow. Among the ten victims were Yevgeny Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin, and Valery Chekalov, the key figures of the Wagner Group, a Russian state-funded private military company. The crash prompted speculation that the jet was destroyed on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin, after Prigozhin had led the Wagner Group rebellion exactly two months prior.
Andrey Kurshin is a Telegram based milblogger running the channel "Moscow Calling". Kurshin gained noteriaty for being arrested by Russian authorities for discrediting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
