The Russian Freedom Legion is planning a new attack on Moscow.
The breakaway group fights against the homeland on the side of Ukraine – and wants to take advantage of the unstable situation in the Kremlin.
– There will soon be a surprise, says Caesar, the group’s spokesperson, in an interview with The Observer.
It has been two weeks since Yevgeny Prigozhin led the Wagner Group’s rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now another Russian group is planning an attack on Moscow.
It is the Russian Legion of Freedom, made up of volunteer Russians fighting on the side of Ukraine, which says it wants to take advantage of the instability in the Kremlin caused by Prigozhin’s short-lived military coup.
– There will be another surprise in a month or so, says Caesar, a spokesman for the Putin-critical military group, in an interview with The Guardians Sunday newspaper The Observer.
– It will be our third operation. After that there will be a fourth and a fifth. We have ambitious plans. We want to liberate our entire territory.
Captured border towns
The Russian volunteer group, which consists of about 200 people, carried out attacks in May and early June. Then it took over border towns near the Russian city of Belgorod and took ten Russian soldiers as prisoners. Two members of the anti-Kremlin group died, Caesar told The Observer.
Caesar’s real identity is Maximillian Andronnikov, 49, who previously worked as a fitness coach in Sochi and Saint Petersburg. Russian state media have called him an extremist and a Nazi. Prosecutors have charged him with several crimes, including treason.
He admits in the interview that his group could not function without the support of the Ukrainian military – but said that they made their own decisions when they were on Russian territory. Their military vehicles consist mainly of those seized by the Russian military in Ukraine, says Caesar. He believes that Kremlin reports of high death tolls in the Freedom Legion have been exaggerated.
– They dressed up dead bodies in Ukrainian uniforms and showed them on TV. It was all a stupid lie, he says.
Nazi past
Many of the soldiers in the two Russian groups in exile, the Freedom Legion and the Volunteer Corps, are Nazis. Above all in the Russian volunteer corps, which Aftonbladet has written about before. Caesar was formerly a member of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), a Putin-critical far-right group that is on the US terror list – but has also had members fighting on Putin’s side since 2014.
According to Caesar, the Russian Freedom Legion has members who were both left and right politically, as well as supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He likens the group to “a small Finnish army” during the Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, which stood up against the Soviet Union.
– We represent the best, bravest and smartest part of Russia, he says.
Caesar says he does not respect Prigozhin, who he says “has the same values as Putin”. Caesar is sure that the weakening of the Wagner Group benefits Ukraine.
– Wagner was Russia’s most competent military man. I fought them in Bachmut and they almost succeeded in taking the city. Their retreat lowers the morale of the Russian army, says Caesar.
– I am one hundred percent sure that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will succeed.