In the dim basement of a crumbling building, Alexei Selivanov, a Russian Cossack with a thick black mustache, keeps his gaze fixed on the monitors before him. They stream live drone footage of enemy positions in Chasiv Yar, a town in eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have kept under siege for about a year. The moment he detects movement, he gives an order: “Send the drones.”
The most dangerous part of Selivanov’s daily routine comes when he steps outside to escort his fighters entering or leaving the front line, exposing himself to the risks of enemy artillery and drone strikes. “The enemy is watching us through the monitors as well,” he says in a phone interview with New Lines.
Like others in his battalion, the 44-year-old Selivanov checks the news during breaks in combat operations, closely following the negotiations between the Kremlin and the White House over ending the conflict in Ukraine. “I hope that [President Vladimir] Putin will not opt for a ceasefire and will not end the military operation,” he says, echoing sentiments shared by the far-right Russian nationalist movement to which he belongs. Staunchly territorial and anti-Western, it has been engaged in the war against Ukraine since the conflict’s early days over a decade ago.
While such factions have been instrumental in Russia’s war effort since 2014, they have also maintained a tense relationship with the state. They now fear the Kremlin could be duped by the West, particularly under the influence of President Donald Trump. Many of them worry that any negotiated settlement could freeze the conflict without achieving their maximalist goal of dismantling Ukraine as a sovereign state.
A former official in the Ukrainian government, Selivanov joined the separatist rebellion that erupted in the east of the country following the pro-Western Maidan Revolution in 2014, which ousted the pro-Russian president. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Selivanov has fought in the Russian army and now serves as deputy commander of the Yenisei Cossack Volunteer Battalion, made up mostly of men who identify as Cossacks, paramilitary forces who serve the Russian state, promoting nationalism, Orthodox Christianity and traditional values.
In 2014, Russian nationalists criticized the Kremlin for hesitating to intervene directly in the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, and later for allowing it to stagnate under the 2015 Minsk Agreements. With ceasefire negotiations now underway, many nationalists fear history could repeat itself.
For Selivanov, a settlement that would freeze the contact line as it is now is unthinkable, since Ukraine still holds territories that Russia illegally annexed in 2022. “Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — both under Ukrainian control — are Russian territory. For Russia to renounce them would mean violating its own constitution,” he says.
Selivanov is concerned that a part of the Russian elite is interested in reestablishing economic relations with the West, disregarding what he sees as the country’s national interest. “They’re interested in their villas abroad, bank accounts, businesses and laundering the money they have accumulated in Russia. And these people, who still hold influence in the Russian leadership, are naturally interested in ending the war.” As reported by the Russian opposition media outlet Meduza at the start of the year, a slew of Russia’s political elite have expressed their disappointment at the war dragging on, and are worried about the long-term impact of Western sanctions.
For the past year and a half, the Russian army has been on the offensive in Ukraine, advancing slowly but steadily, though at a great cost to human life. In recent weeks, U.S. officials have been conducting bilateral summits with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire and the path to peace in Ukraine. While Ukrainian officials have accepted the U.S. proposal of a 30-day full ceasefire, Putin has rebuffed it, agreeing instead to a halt on attacks on energy facilities and talks about a cessation of hostilities in the Black Sea.
“I don’t see any interest in a ceasefire for Russia at all. We’re winning, we’re moving forward. Maybe not very fast, but there’s no need to hurry — we must save and protect lives,” Selivanov says.
Despite mounting losses, he thinks Russia can sustain the war effort by increasingly relying on drones, which he estimates now account for the vast majority of battlefield casualties. “If we widely robotize the front line — use electronic intelligence, electronic warfare systems, drones, unmanned aerial vehicles — then losses will be minimized.”
In March 2014, when Russian troops had just taken control of Crimea and were preparing to annex the peninsula in a referendum, a group of men in military fatigues showed up at a Russian military base in Simferopol with a bold proposal: “Give us weapons and some armored vehicles, and we’ll take Kherson,” recalls Stanislav Vorobyev, who was one of the men who made the demand. They claimed that hundreds of people in the southern Ukrainian city were ready to side with Russia and take up arms against the Ukrainian government while security forces would offer no resistance.
Their offer was swiftly declined, and the group was dismissed by Russian commanders at the base as a bunch of lunatics. The Kremlin’s orders were clear: Crimea was the only target — there were no plans to seize additional Ukrainian territory at that time.
For Vorobyev, this rejection was the first of many Kremlin betrayals of what he describes as Russia’s national interests. Eleven years later, the city of Kherson remains under Ukrainian control, despite Russia now claiming it as part of its territory and relentlessly shelling it. “If you listen to the war propaganda, everything seems to be going great; we are moving forward,” Vorobyev says. “But what we’re seeing right now is not war, it’s … well, there’s a concept called ‘masturbation,’” he adds, smirking.
Vorobyev, 64, sits in his office in a historic building in St. Petersburg. Bearded and with a stern gaze, he is the founder of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), a white supremacist monarchist group advocating for the restoration of the Russian Empire, including reinstating the monarchy.
He refers to Ukrainians as “separatists” and calls Ukraine “Okraina,” the Russian term for “periphery,” reflecting his belief that the country is merely a lost province of the old Russian Empire. “Ukrainians never existed,” he says matter-of-factly.
The RIM is fiercely critical of the Kremlin’s foreign policy in Ukraine, accusing it of lacking the resolve needed for a decisive victory. “There’s not enough soldiers, not enough equipment, not enough high-tech things. If there were political will, it would be done,” he complains.
Because of its extremist and xenophobic views, the RIM’s political activities have been heavily restricted in Russia, with authorities repeatedly denying them permission to hold public demonstrations. The organization’s website is included in the list of extremist material compiled by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
“The government doesn’t allow us to operate within the country,” Vorobyev complains. That is why, he adds, the RIM’s activities are now largely limited to its military wing, the Imperial Legion, which is currently fighting in Ukraine as part of the regular Russian armed forces.
The Imperial Legion conducts recruitment and training in St. Petersburg, accepting only men who say they are ethnically Russian and Orthodox Christian. The group has also provided military training to members of far-right organizations in Europe and the U.S. For that reason, in 2020 it became the first white supremacist organization to be officially designated as a terrorist entity by Washington. Vorobyev suspects that once its contribution to the war effort is not needed any longer, the Russian authorities may crack down on the Imperial Legion. “For now it benefits them. But when it no longer does …” he trailed off.
In the early years of the Donbas conflict, Moscow relied on nationalist and patriotic organizations like the RIM to funnel fighters into Ukraine, allowing the Kremlin to maintain plausible deniability. Between 2014 and 2015, the Russian Imperial Movement sent about 300 volunteers to the front line.
In August 2014, the war seemed to be turning in favor of pro-Russian forces, which dealt heavy defeats to Ukraine in the battles of Ilovaisk and, in February 2015, Debaltseve. But soon after, the Kremlin struck a ceasefire deal with Ukraine and the West — the Minsk Agreements — which froze the conflict for the next eight years, until Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
For Vorobyev and his allies, the Minsk Agreements were a missed opportunity to inflict a devastating defeat on Ukraine while it was still unprepared for a large-scale Russian offensive. “The comrade sitting in the Kremlin betrayed us,” Vorobyev says bitterly.
Now, with peace talks underway between the Kremlin and the White House, he is concerned that Putin will again choose the path of compromise. He believes Putin might ultimately agree to cede annexed territory in exchange for a peace settlement. “The war could end right now with a shameful peace,” he warns.
“We need to stop killing each other, enough blood was poured,” says Pavel Gubarev, 42, a nationalist politician and former leader of the pro-Russian uprising in Donbas. After a year of fighting in Ukraine on multiple fronts, Gubarev has been back in Moscow since December, addressing health issues and reuniting with his family. But his outlook on the war remains grim. “Everyone is tired. Three years, we’re stuck in one place, and there’s no end to it,” he says, voicing frustration over what he sees as a military stalemate.
A key figure in the early days of the Donbas conflict, Gubarev led pro-Russian protesters in seizing the Donetsk Regional Administration in the spring of 2014, declaring a referendum that led to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
His organization helped Igor Girkin — a Russian nationalist leader and former colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSB) — enter Ukraine with an armed group, which quickly took control of the city of Slovyansk. Days later, Kyiv responded by launching a military operation against the insurgents. Girkin would later claim he had “pulled the trigger” on the war in Donbas.
With the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Girkin became one of the Kremlin’s harshest critics within Russia, accusing its military leadership of incompetence and half measures. Two years ago, he and Gubarev co-founded the Club of Angry Patriots, a nationalist movement openly denouncing Russia’s handling of the war, calling for total mobilization and an uncompromising push for victory.
In July 2023, Girkin was arrested on extremist charges and later sentenced to four years behind bars. Gubarev himself was briefly detained for protesting his ally’s arrest. This was a clear signal that the Russian state would not tolerate opposition — not only from the Western-oriented liberal camp but also from nationalist hard-liners.
Disillusioned with Russian politics, Gubarev now has little hope that nationalists might challenge the government effectively. “There is no politics in our country,” he says with a sarcastic laugh. “Putinism is an authoritarian dictatorship.” He gives a fatalistic shrug.
He thinks that Russian nationalists will judge any peace based on what concessions Russia makes. “If the truce parameters don’t involve things like territorial giveaways or swaps, then it will be received more or less calmly,” he predicts.
Gubarev believes the conflict is being deliberately prolonged by oligarchic elites who are preventing a decisive Russian victory because they do not work in the interest of ethnic Russians. “The goal is to eliminate as many Slavic people as possible, to resettle these lands with migrants and replace the native population — just like what happened in the U.S. and Europe,” he says, echoing the racist conspiracy theory that claims white European populations are being replaced by Muslim foreigners.
According to Gubarev, Russian nationalists like him are now shifting their focus to a “second front” inside the country — opposing the mass influx of migrants from Central Asia, which he blames on the Kremlin’s lax immigration policies.
As reported by the Nazi Video Monitoring Project, a channel on the Telegram messaging service where data and videos of attacks by far-right groups inside Russia are collected, assaults on migrants have increased significantly since the start of the war in Ukraine, especially following the deadly Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow in March 2024, which was carried out by citizens of Tajikistan.
“A tense situation involving migrants could very well turn into an internal civil strife,” Gubarev warns.
“We are ready to support whatever the state decides — peace or continued military action — but without surrendering any territory,” says Alexei Milchakov, 33, the leader of the Sabotage and Assault Reconnaissance Group, also known as Rusich, a Russian far-right militia.
Notorious for its neo-Nazi ideology, Rusich has been active in Ukraine since 2014 and later fought in Syria and Africa as part of the Wagner Group, the private military company founded by the late Kremlin-linked business owner Yevgeny Prigozhin. The group is currently on the Zaporizhzhia front in southern Ukraine, where Russian forces have launched a renewed offensive after months of positional warfare.
Milchakov doesn’t hide the toll that three years of continuous fighting have taken on him and his men. “Of course, we would like to rest, fix health issues and reorganize personnel,” he admits. “But, if needed, we’ll keep on fighting.”
Rusich has often had a conflicted relationship with the Russian state, due to its extremist views and brutality. On its popular Telegram channel, the unit has openly glorified war crimes, including the execution of prisoners of war. Its former deputy commander, Yan Petrovsky, was recently sentenced to life in prison in Finland for executing and mutilating Ukrainian soldiers in 2014.
Last year, State Duma Deputy Mikhail Sheremet called for law enforcement to investigate Rusich after a Telegram post in which the group asked for a “smoked Crimean Tatar or something similar” for a human sacrifice. “I have no guarantee that I won’t be jailed for extremism or other fabricated crimes,” Milchakov admits.
The Russian state has so far tolerated Rusich, which last year collaborated with FSB border guards to patrol Russia’s border with Finland. Despite this, Rusich has been vocal in its criticism of Russia’s military leadership, believing the war effort has been hindered by incompetence and corruption, preventing Russia from achieving a decisive victory.
“They allowed the Ukrainian army to get stronger, conduct multiple mobilizations and train young cadres,” Milchakov argues. He believes Russia missed the opportunity to take Kyiv in 2014. “Back then, it was possible to do it quickly and with minimal losses.”
Like many hard-line nationalists, Milchakov publicly supported the Wagner Group’s short-lived mutiny in June 2023, when Prigozhin led his forces in an armed rebellion against the Russian military command. He viewed Wagner as a model of effectiveness and discipline — qualities he believes the regular army lacks. “If Wagner’s experience was integrated into the whole army, there would have been much bigger progress,” he says.
Despite ongoing peace negotiations, a full ceasefire in Ukraine remains elusive. Independent estimates from Meduza and Mediazona suggest that over 160,000 Russians have died in the war, with hundreds reportedly killed every day. On the Ukrainian side, over 130,000 soldiers killed in action have been identified through public sources. However, the actual number is believed to be much higher, and the Ukrainian army has been facing a severe manpower shortage. Selivanov believes Russia should continue the offensive, weakening Ukraine until it collapses internally. “The front may collapse not because of external strikes, but due to internal instability,” he says.
Selivanov is convinced that Russia’s peaceful existence is incompatible with an independent Ukraine. “The ideology of Ukrainian statehood is built on rejecting the Russian identity of these lands and of the people themselves. As long as the Ukrainian state and its ideology exist, it will be hostile to Russia.” For the Cossack, there is just one possible solution to the “Ukrainian problem.” “Whether the Russian leadership wants it or not, this problem must be solved — which means liquidating Ukraine’s statehood as it exists now.”
According to Vorobyev, Russia should take control of all Ukrainian territory up to the border with Poland. “This entire territory is historically part of Russia,” he says. However, he acknowledges that such an outcome is unlikely under the current Russian leadership. “As long as Putin is in power, it won’t happen,” he adds.
Other nationalists who accept a truce as an inevitability remain skeptical that a negotiated peace would last. “There will be some freezing before the next big war that is being prepared for us,” Gubarev predicts.
“Our motherland doesn’t live without war,” Milchakov agrees. “This will just be the starting point for the next actions that will define our century.”
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