While a wave of public outrage over the massive call-up for military service swept across Russia, with conscription stations being targeted in arson attacks, rallies unfolding across the country’s regions, and even draft officers being shot, a horrific massacre shocked Izhevsk, where a local youngster went on a shooting rampage at School 88.
The shooter, Artyom Kazantsev, who sported a T-shirt with a red swastika imprint, shot at least 13 people (half of them – students), according to tentative reports.
And immediately after the incident, federal media outlets are all over it, while turning a blind eye to the mobilization mishaps across the country. The main narrative they’re spinning is that “neo-fascism” is marching across Russia, posing a threat to a highly spiritual Russian society. Of course, this neo-fascism is generously sponsored by the West and Ukraine, they hint…
Could this tragedy be a coincidence? Well, I don’t think so!
For several years, I’ve regularly mentioned in my articles that Russia is a cozy home to one of the world’s mosty extensive networks of neo-Nazi groups. And it’s not just some fringe ring of neo-Nazi scum.
The thing is that, a paramilitary training camp “Partizan” has been operating just outside St. Petersburg for years, where members of Russian and foreign neo-Nazi and extremist movements underwent training. Among them are The Third Way and Young Nationalists were trained. The camp is run by the right-wing extremist “Russian Imperial Movement.”
It is noteworthy that among the “trainees” passing through the camp, being taught to handle weapons and explosives and engage in hand-to-hand combat, there are also Swedes and Finns who join Russian illegal paramilitary groups, while the location is closely supervised by the FSB security service.
It would seem paradoxical and in dissonance with Russia’s purported image of the Soviet Union’s heir, claiming top role in the world’s victory over Nazism, that their government today cultivates and exporting the ideas of this very Nazism.
Actually, it isn’t even that paradoxical if you think about it. Being a neo-Nazi state itself, Russia blamed Ukraine for being a cradle of Nazism before massively invading it in February 2022, thus justifying the hybrid occupation of the Crimean peninsula and parts of Donbas back in 2014.
It is also important to understand that by controlling almost all neo-Nazi organizations in Russia, the FSB has the required resource to employ when it’s necessary to shift public focus away from certain developments and create fictitious markers, to which the society is programmed to react.
How likely is it that the Izhevsk shooter had been under the complete psychological control of his, say, FSB handler, who eventually convinced the guy to go for a deadly stunt? It doesn’t matter, really, when this attack could ultimately take place. The main thing for the handler is to make sure it occurs precisely when the government needs to create the desired psychological effect. Also, just imagine how many problems this incident immediately solves for Russian propaganda masterminds…
I won’t be surprised at all if the inquiry into the attack finds a Ukrainian, European, or American trace in the attack and then the Russians will be urged to rally around the idea of fighting the Nazi threat. It’s just that it will be precisely those who pose this threat to the Russians who will be making such calls.