A US neo-Nazi terrorist group with a Russia-based leader is calling for targeted assassinations and attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine in an effort to destabilize the country as it carries out ceasefire negotiations with the Kremlin.
The Base, which has a web of cells all over the world, was founded in 2018 and became the subject of a relentless FBI counter-terrorism investigation that led to several arrests and world governments officially designating it as a terrorist organization.
Now, with the Trump administration pulling the FBI from pursuing the far right, the Base, left unchecked, is trying to export its violence abroad.
This is the first time the Base has openly allied itself with the Kremlin’s broader geopolitical goals, a sudden change experts say signals its likely involvement in Russian sabotage and propaganda operations now being carried out across Europe.
The Base founder and leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a semi-defected American who worked with US special forces during the war on terror and now lives in Saint Petersburg, has for years garnered suspicions of being a Russian intelligence asset. Even members of the Base mused that he was a spy and grew weary of the source of his cash flow.
In posts on Telegram, the Base is offering cash for volunteer operatives and recruits to carry out attacks on, “electric power stations, military & police vehicles, military & police personnel, government buildings, [Ukrainian] politicians”, specifically in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine.
The plan was unveiled online last week and is in support of a wider bid to carve out a white nationalist enclave in the Zakarpattia region of Ukraine, something the Base describes as having “rugged mountainous terrain which is a force multiplier for an unconventional paramilitary force”.
The Base’s Ukrainian ambitions fall in line with a major Kremlin talking point since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: casting aspersions on the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a Jewish man, as a sort of new Third Reich. While Russia has long sought to portray Ukraine as a bastion for the far right – even though it harbors Nazzaro, uses a neo-Nazi militia alongside its military and makes alliances with European fascists.
How real the Base’s actual presence in Ukraine currently is, remains unclear and is unlikely to be significant. In 2019, Ukrainian security services deported one of the Base’s members for his neo-Nazi activities and trying to enlist in their military. Though they have tried and failed, it is rare for stateside far-right groups to export any real influence into Ukraine.
This isn’t the first time the Base, which has made recent strides in rebuilding its American membership, started appearing in Europe. Last year, members were arrested in Belgium, the Netherlands, and in Italy where authorities cracked down on a Base cell that it said had ties to a network of Russian far-right terrorists recruiting from Telegram.