Vigilante Russian. The rise of far‑right “Russian Community”, with anti‑migrant and anti‑gay raids, assaults, and at least one death

On May 28, the Investigative Committee announced the detention of three men from Kovrov, a city in Vladimir region east of Moscow, on kidnapping charges. The men are members of the “Russian Community’, and two were remanded in custody. The Telegram news channel “Potok” reported that the victim, named Ilya, was also a local resident.

The prosecution alleges the nationalists drove the 18-year-old into a forest, bound him with tape, and put a bag over his head. For three hours, they are said to have beaten him and tortured him with electric shocks, while threatening to rape him with a truncheon and murder him. The group then abandoned him in the woods. He managed to free himself and walk home. The attack was apparently prompted by an insult aimed at one of the group’s members.

The local chapter of the “Russian Community” confirmed its members were involved. In a statement, it claimed the victim was a former activist who had fallen out with two “newcomers”. However, the nationalists also insisted the alleged kidnappers had “not passed their probationary period” and so could not be considered full members.

For Vera Alperovich, an expert at the Sova Center, which monitors extremism in Russia, the incident shows the “Russian Community” increasingly resembles a paramilitary force that attracts violent people. “It’s unlikely the leadership can ensure the purity of its ranks, despite their promises,” she adds. “If they are even trying to do that at all.”

The Fire on Leningradskaya

Late on the evening of May 3, a fire broke out in a flat on Leningradskaya Street in Vsevolozhsk, a town near St Petersburg. Gor Ovakimyan, 37, had died in the blaze. His 24-year-old acquaintance, a woman named Elizaveta, had survived by jumping from the seventh-floor window. Both were guests of 46-year-old Evgeny Frantsuzov, who was reportedly drinking and taking drugs with them. According to Fontanka, Frantsuzov later confirmed this to police.

About half an hour before the fire, a group of men with face coverings entered the building. They were activists from the “Russian Community”. These druzhinniki, or self-styled vigilantes, went to Frantsuzov’s flat and began hammering on his door.

Frantsuzov recalled that they claimed to be police officers before they eventually broke the door down. The apartment’s owner was pepper-sprayed, hit with an electric shock device, and locked in his own toilet. “I’m not trying to defend my son,” his mother, Lyudmila, said later, “but the neighbours say he was screaming in a voice that wasn’t his own.”

Inside, Ovakimyan and Elizaveta had barricaded themselves in a room. When the activists tried to force their way in, Ovakimyan, according to Fontanka, set fire to an armchair, apparently to ward them off. After the intruders fled, Frantsuzov managed to get out of the toilet and tried to put out the flames, but it was too late.

Elizaveta was taken to intensive care with a ruptured lung and multiple other injuries. Her current condition is unknown. A local woman told Mediazona she overheard hospital staff on May 5 saying Elizaveta was alive and had received a visitor. The hospital declined to comment.

Gor Ovakimyan is thought to have died of smoke inhalation. The St Petersburg chapter of the “Russian Community” later posted a video of an unconscious Ovakimyan receiving CPR, but paramedics were unable to save him.

His final screams were heard by a crowd gathered below. “The man in the flat was screaming in pain,” one eyewitness recalled. “I said, ‘God, he’s burning alive, it’s so awful, can’t anything be done to save him?’” Standing near her were the activists, whom she had mistaken for police. One of them replied: “That’s the local pusher, Gor. No pity for him. Let him burn.”

“Civic Activism” and High-Level Patrons

The Vsevolozhsk incident is the first known case where an attack by the “Russian Community” has ended in a death. Local media reported a criminal investigation had been opened into causing death by negligence and unlawful entry. Five nationalists were questioned, but all were released.

It is unclear if they will ever face punishment. Past attacks have almost always gone unpunished, a fact analysts attribute to the group’s close relationship with Russia’s law enforcement. The group makes no secret of these ties, often acting as muscle for the police during anti-migrant raids. The police, suffering from staff shortages, appear to welcome the help.

“It’s possible a decision was made behind the scenes that these guys could help, so to speak,” says Alperovich. “They are excellent at simulating civic activism and they support the authorities in general.”

Asmik Novikova, an expert at the “Public Verdict” human rights group, says the “Russian Community” has used violence from its inception. “This violence is escalating, becoming more demonstrative, more cynical, and now, fatal,” she explains. The group’s members, she notes, are a clear example of an ideology combining vigilantism with ultranationalist ideas.

With chapters across Russia, the “Russian Community” is now the country’s largest far-right organisation. The BBC’s Russian Service reported it was founded in 2020 by figures from Russia’s nationalist scene, including an anti-abortion activist and a host from Spas, a TV channel run by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The group’s targets are often migrants or Russian citizens from southern North Caucasus regions. In March 2025, a security guard in St Petersburg from Dagestan, a republic in the Caucasus, reported that members of the group had hit his head and pepper-sprayed him. The man, claiming to be a veteran of the war in Ukraine, appealed to Vladimir Putin for an investigation. The activists claimed he had insulted a Russian woman and threatened her. They boasted of having “neutralised” him after he drew a pistol. The police did not investigate.

According to Alperovich, the group is good at controlling the narrative. “Their versions are always very neat,” she says: it’s easier for the police to believe a dozen vigilantes than a single migrant. “In 99% of cases, we only ever hear their side of the story.”

In a rare instance of repercussions, 12 activists were given administrative arrests in St Petersburg in summer 2024. They had descended on a neighbourhood to confront “private hire drivers from the south” who were allegedly menacing “Russian taxi drivers”. Police said the dispute was between two rival firms, and one driver had called the “Russian Community” for backup.

The case took a turn when Alexander Bastrykin intervened. The head of the Investigative Committee personally ordered a case opened against the arresting police officers for abuse of office, arguing the nationalists were detained “without grounds”. Although prosecutors twice closed the case, Bastrykin persisted, demanding they reopen it.

This public patronage from one of Russia’s most powerful men appears to have emboldened the group.

The Church’s Blessing and Digital Muscle

Support for the ‘Russian Community’ also comes from neoconservative celebrities and the Russian Orthodox Church. The rapper Roma Zhigan recently urged the group to raid nightclubs to combat the “corruption of women”. At one of the group’s congresses, a vicar of Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Church, delivered a blessing on his behalf.

The group’s rise has coincided with a surge in official anti-migrant rhetoric, which intensified after the Crocus City Hall terror attack in March 2024. Its social media presence is formidable: over 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube and nearly 650,000 on Telegram. The content is a stream of reports about fighting “ethnic gangs” from the Caucasus, shutting down migrant-run market stalls, and attacking “gay parties”.

The “Russian Community” also runs “cyber forces” to scour the internet for content deemed un-Orthodox or unpatriotic, filing complaints to disrupt everything from comic books to music festivals. Its activists raise funds for the Russian army in Ukraine and run training camps teaching men building-assault tactics with firearms. Its female members knit socks for soldiers and weave camouflage nets.

This is interspersed with more benign activities: community clean-ups, maintaining war memorials, and decorating churches for religious holidays. The group insists it is not ultraright but is simply fighting crime and helping Russians.

Yet the violence continues. In late May, after an amateur football match in the Moscow region, players from the “Russian Community” team, wearing shirts with the Russian imperial flag, attacked an opponent. A criminal case for hooliganism was opened, but no arrests have been reported.

“So cases are being opened,” notes Novikova. “But we know nothing about the investigations.” She believes that if the group’s violence becomes too extreme, the state will be forced to rein it in. “If their ‘civic’ work starts leaving behind burnt corpses, the system will have to react and show them the line,” she says. “Either they will be co-opted, perhaps made members of public councils. Or they will be told that raids are fine, but maiming and torturing people is not. Otherwise, you become just another organised crime group.”

Editor: Maria Klimova