Legion "Freedom of Russia" and RDCs return home: all that is known about Russian volunteers

There are no documents confirming the existence of the Legion in the Armed Forces, and they are known only from the Telegram of the same name. But after the events in the Belgorod region on May 22 and the capture of several settlements, volunteer fighters in their existence are no longer doubted.

On March 11, 2022, the formation of a unit from Russian prisoners of war on social networks and the Ukrainian press was announced, and on April 5, 2022, a briefing of three servicemen from the Legion "Freedom of Russia" with the participation of foreign correspondents was held. As it became known, the unit formed more than 100 people from the army of the Russian Federation, who voluntarily switched to the Ukrainian side.

According to the company commander, on February 27, 2022, with the help of SBU staff, they switched to the Ukrainian side to "protect Ukrainians from true Nazis. " The countrymen - the Putin Army - he urged to join the ranion of "Freedom of Russia" in order to save their own people and the country "from humiliation and ruins.

" On the official Telegram channel of the Legion, videos with captives of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were published, who expressed a desire to join the unit, as well as their written requests for admission. One of the first to the Legion was joined by former servicemen of the 70th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, the 4th Guards Military Base, the 1st Guards Mixed Aviation Division, the 14th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, the 127th Motorial Brigade.

In early April last year, after the departure of Russian troops from Kiev and the spread of information about horrific military crimes in Bucha and other occupied cities, there was a sharp, mass influx of Russians who want to fight on the side of Ukraine, joining the Legion "Freedom of Russia" . Then Alexei Arestovich said this - today the former freelance adviser to the Presidential Office of Ukraine. "We have a great influx of" Freedom of Russia ", a jumping inflow.

Just a jump happened somewhere 250 people during these few days. Suddenly yes - click and all. These are Russians who get through third countries from Russia. Literally a few days yes The boy is and the mass inflow, "Arestovich said in a conversation with a Russian lawyer, human rights activist Mark Feigin. According to him, the number of Russians who wanted to join the Legion has increased sharply because they saw what crimes the Putin regime was committing in Ukraine, and wanted to stop it.

In June 2022, it became known that the former Vice president of Gazprombank, Igor Volobuyev, a native of Sumy region, joined the Legion of Russia. During April - May last year, Russian cities were burning military enlistment offices.

Then Arestovich suggested that it was also a matter of the hands of supporters of the Legion and later on the places of arson began to appear symbols of formation: white-blue-white flag-"peaceful" version of the Russian flag, as well as the Legion uses a symbol in the form of a dark green shield with A white edging, inside which shows a white fist and inscriptions "Freedom" in white and "Russia" blue.

In addition, the symbol of the formation was the Latin letter L, which means "legion" and "liberty". In the fall, the Legion began to participate in the defense of Bakhmut, which the fighters stated in their Telegram channel: "The work of our mortar calculation on the positions of the racists in the Bakhmut direction. The composition of the BC and at the platoon of the enemy was destroyed," the message said.

From the beginning of 2023, the existence of the Legion began to call into question again, the argument sounded like this: for almost a year of the war in the Legion "Freedom of Russia", no loss was reported, unlike other foreign volunteer formations, such as the Belarusian Regiment. Kalinovsky or Georgian Legion.

Of course, this rhetoric sounded only "because of the best", and immediately found the answer: the Legion retains the confidentiality of the dead soldiers for the safety of their relatives in Russia. On May 15, 2023, Rosfinmonitoring introduced the Legion "Freedom of Russia" to the list of terrorists and extremists. All participants of this organization, regardless of the commission of other crimes, in Russia threaten criminal liability under Article 205. 4 of the Criminal Code.

The sanction of the article for ordinary participants is up to 10 years in prison, for the organizers - from 15 to 20 years. The military formation of the Russian Volunteer Corps ("Russian Volunteer Corps") was founded later in August 2022, consists of the far -right Russian nationalists who have been fighting on the side of Ukraine since 2014. One of the RDC volunteers told reporters last year: "Yes, I'm right, but now it is not too important.

You see, in Russia, a burned field, there can be neither left nor right. There you can be either a mint or a victim of a mint. We went from this unusual Gulag to Ukraine, but Gulag follows us by heels. He wants Ukraine to turn into a camp barrack, as it has already transformed Russia. that live mainly in Ukraine. Since the beginning of a full -scale Russian invasion in Ukraine, future Corps soldiers or small groups fought in various units of Ukrainian territorial defense.

However, it was not without confusion, in which the fighters got through their Russian passports - sometimes They had to sit in the police for hours, proving that they were fighting for Ukraine. It was because of these situations that the warriors decided to create a separate formation of the "Russian Volunteer Corps".

One of the most important principles of the unit is the principle of "irreconcilability", that is, the rejection of any forms of cooperation with the successor of the Soviet regime-"Putin authorities and its representatives and Holuj abroad.

" "It is important to remember that it is Putin and his associates who destroy the Russians as an ethnic group, replacing them with an artificial concept of a" political nation ", and now they have decided to destroy the Ukrainian ethnic group, fully fulfilled in their own fear of freedom and truth," the Telegram reads Corps channels. The corps emblem is a stylized "adhesive" of a paramilitary youth organization "White Idea", created in the mid-1930s by Bilo emigrant Viktor Larionov.

In February 2023, an interview with Polskie Radio was published by the Chief of Staff of RDC Alexander Fortuna. According to him, the fighters of the corps traveled almost the entire front. "Kiev region, then was Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk direction, then there was again Zaporizhzhya. The trip to the island of Snake. At the junction of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions there was a lot of" work. " In which we participated is an operation in Kakhovka.