The foundations of the Rusich group were laid in 2009, when a military training base was founded by
Alexey Milchakov, a
neo-Nazi from
Saint Petersburg. He had the nickname "Fritz" before being sent to the
Donbas (there he changed to the call sign "Serb"). He took part in the Partizan paramilitary training program at the
Novorossiya Aid Coordination Center (KCPN) run by the Russian Imperial Legion, a paramilitary arm of the
Russian Imperial Movement. Both Milchakov and the nominal commander of the Wagner group
Dmitry Utkin served in the
76th Guards Air Assault Division of the
Airborne Forces.
Donbas war The group has been fighting on the side of
pro-Russian separatists in the
Donbas war since June 2014, conducting reconnaissance and sabotage operations behind Ukrainian lines, and also played a significant role in several key battles at the beginning of the war.
2014 In the summer of 2014, "Rusich" fought as part of the
Batman Rapid Response Group under the Russian separatist commander Lieutenant Colonel
Alexander "Batman" Bednov and participated in the battles for the
Luhansk Airport, near
Novosvitlivka after the
Armed Forces of Ukraine had cut the highway there, and placed
Luhansk under blockade. Andriy Khvedchak, coordinator of the Volyn Maidan Self-Defense, said that on 5 September 2014, a part of the company of the Aidar battalion was ambushed in the same place where
Nadiya Savchenko was taken prisoner. Detachments of "Rusich" and RRT "Batman" set up an ambush on the highway and attacked the retreating "Aidar". Part of the second company of "Aydar" (Volyn) was ambushed by Russian special forces. According to him, the ambushed fighters were killed. On 6 September,
Semen Semenchenko reported that 11 soldiers were killed in an ambush "arranged by Russian special forces". On the same day, information appeared that from 20 to 29 fighters of the battalion were killed in an ambush. Rusich published a video of an interrogation of Ivan Issyk, a member of the Aidar Battalion captured during the ambush. In the video, Issyk had a
kolovrat, a neo-Nazi symbol used by the Rusich Group, carved into his cheek. Five days later, Issyk, who by now had over 70% of his body covered in burns, was interviewed by the British pro-Russian propagandist
Graham Phillips in a hospital. Issyk's parents accused Phillips of violating journalist ethics. Several days later Issyk was abducted from the hospital and murdered. An autopsy showed that his internal organs were cut out and shuffled in his body, including fragments of his brain being put in his stomach. In the fall of 2014, Rusich took part in the battles at the
Donetsk International Airport along with the
Sparta and
Somali battalions.
2015 The most famous losses are the death of
Alexander Bednov's personal guards in an ambush on January 1, 2015. A lesser-known story is about DShRG getting into the counter-base, during which the former Kyiv anti-fascist "Whiskas" died. In February 2015 Milchakov was included in the
EU sanctions list. In 2015, together with the commanders of other groups, Milchakov and Petrovsky received a certificate of membership of the Union of Donbass Volunteers. Upon returning to Ukraine, the group was transferred to the
Prizrak Brigade of
Aleksey Mozgovoy.
From 2015 to 2022 Upon his return from the Donbass, Milchakov engaged in combat training of teenagers in special camps in Russia. This was done in conjunction with
right-wing radicals from the
E.N.O.T. Corp. private military company. The online edition "Belarusian Partizan" calls the "raccoons" a group of Russian militants who took part in the war in Donbass from its very beginning, and that they are close friends with Milchakov. As the publication notes, since 2015, raccoon began its legalization in Russia. They received the status of a public organization and the full support of the state, regularly holding military-patriotic games-gatherings. The chief instructor of the organization, Roman Telenkevich, simultaneously headed the Union of Donbass Volunteers. In 2016, Milchakov, as a member of the "Union of Volunteers of Donbass", may have been presented with an award by the
head of the
Republic of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov in the presence of the then assistant to the President of the Russian Federation
Vladislav Surkov. Milchakov himself, however, was not shy in terms, criticizing the leadership of the LPR for this ostentatious “
anti-fascism” on his
VK page. Milchakov's deputy, Jan Petrovsky, is a former resident of Norway, where he lived and worked with a Norwegian associated with the far-right groups
Soldiers of Odin and
Nordic Resistance Movement. The group was one of the most mentioned in the negative connotation among the Ukrainian media and bloggers because of the photos of the killed soldiers of Ukraine and the stories that the group does not take prisoners. In 2017, the military prosecutor's office of Ukraine accused Milchakov of involvement in the murder of 40 Ukrainian soldiers. An investigation by
Bellingcat analyzed a 2017 photograph depicting a man in military uniform holding a severed human head near Palmyra. The investigation concluded the uniform was likely worn by
Alexey Milchakov. Bellingcat found that on 17 October 2017, Rusich member Nikitin Alexander Vladimirovich (AKA “The Livonian”) was killed in Syria. At the end of 2020, Alexey Milchakov said in an interview that the number of Rusich DShRG at that time was several dozen people, but “a lot of people come and they have to be weeded out”. Rusich's fighters were transferred to the
Kharkiv Oblast of Ukraine, where they were photographed near the village of . In 2022, the detachment and its commanders Alexey Milchakov and
Yan Petrovsky were included in the US sanctions list for their "special cruelty" in the battles in the
Kharkiv Oblast. Rusich is affiliated with a coalition of neo-Nazi military groups taking part in the
Russian invasion of Ukraine made up of
Russian Imperial Movement,
AWD Russland and
Russian ONA, with some overlap. In April 2023, the Rusich Group posted a video on their Telegram channel showing
a captured Ukrainian soldier being beheaded with a knife, together with a caption stating that many more are to come. In May 2023 Rusich posted on their Telegram channel how they had used drones to drop the banned poison gas
chloropicrin on Ukrainian positions. In August 2023
Yan Petrovsky was detained in Finland and Ukraine requested his extradition. The Rusich Group issued an ultimatum to the Russian government that they will not participate in any combat in Ukraine until Russia secured the release of Petrovsky. The group had been fighting on the Robotyne-Verbove line, defending the sector from the
2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, with their absence likely exacerbating Russian tactical losses in the region. In August 2024 Rusich posted on its Telegram channel a video of a severed head of a Ukrainian soldier mounted on a spike. Ukrainska Pravda claimed that a Russian soldier "was ordered to cut off the heads of four dead Ukrainian soldiers". On August 19, 2024 Rusich asked for a Ukrainian prisoner to be surrendered to them for a human sacrifice for "autumnal equinox to encourage and strengthen the spirit of the new personnel of the unit". Rusich is affiliated with neo-pagan groups and the satanist
Order of Nine Angles that practices human sacrifice and its affiliated groups like Atomwaffen. Later it emerged that Rusich members had sacrificed a
Chechen Akhmat fighter in a ritual and recorded themselves mutilating him. Rusich Group stated in September 2024 that it has entered an official agreement with Border Service under the FSB to strengthen the border and conduct intelligence activities on the Finnish border in the northwestern district of
Karelia and posted pictures of their soldiers at
Rättijärvi. The newspaper "Contando Estrelas" pointed out that "last year, the Russian newspaper Izvestia linked the ONA to murders committed in the Karelia region", location of the Russian central nexion, and now the region where Rusich is deployed. In December 2025, Rusich members voiced their support for the perpetrator of the
2025 Odintsovo school attack who stabbed several children, killing a 10-year-old Tajik boy. == Ideology and symbols ==