For Ukraine military, far-right Russian volunteers make for worrisome allies

A group of fighters aligned with Ukraine, who had participated last week in the most intense fighting inside Russia's borders since the invasion, gathered the foreign and local press in an undisclosed location on Wednesday.

NEW YORK The aim was to celebrate, taunt the Kremlin and show off what they called "military trophies" from their incursion into their native land: Russia.

Their leader, Mr Denis Kapustin, was proud that his force of antiPutin Russians at one point controlled, he said, 42 sq km of Russian territory.

"I want to prove that it's possible to fight against a tyrant," he added. "That Putin's power is not unlimited, that the security services can beat, control and torture the unarmed. But as soon as they meet a full armed resistance, they flee." It was the rhetoric of a dissident freedom fighter, but there was a discordant note that emerged as clearly as the neo-Nazi Black Sun patch on the uniform of one of the soldiers: Mr Kapustin and prominent members of the armed group he leads, the Russian Volunteer Corps, openly espouse far-right views.

In fact, German officials and humanitarian groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, have identified Mr Kapustin as a neoNazi.