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Putin's Shock Forces: Young militants provide new muscle for the Kremlin |
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Published by Newsweek Magazine (US)
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Monday, 28 May 2007 |
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“the Kremlin has rolled out its newest weapon in the drive to reclaim Russia's bygone regional dominance: a shadowy youth movement known as Nashi (Russian for "ours"). Highly disciplined and lavishly bankrolled by the Kremlin, the militant young nationalists have developed a formidable organization to oppose alleged enemies at home and abroad and to glorify Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union…. Nazism is a recurring topic in Russia at the moment. The young militants call the Estonians fascists, and Russian dissidents (an endangered species) compare Nashi—and kindred groups such as Walking Together and the Young Guards—to the Hitler Youth of the '30s and '40s. New recruits to Nashi are given basic military training and can graduate to the black-uniformed street patrols of the Nashi Police or the fledgling Nashi Army, which earlier this month held military exercises 25 miles south of Moscow in Podolsk, marching, running obstacle courses, field-stripping firearms and practicing marksmanship…. Yet one of Nashi's principal aims is to prevent change. The group, which now claims 15,000 ranking members and 100,000 supporters, was launched by the Kremlin in response to the pro-democracy Orange Revolution that toppled a pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine in 2004. "The idea was to create an ideology based on a total devotion to the president and his course," says Sergei Markov, one of the Russian youth movement's architects. The Young Guards recently held a training exercise in which members defended a local TV station against a mob of "riot-ers" wearing orange bandannas. In April Nashi deployed thousands of volunteers across Moscow to hand out brochures and 10,000 specially made SIM cards for mobile phones. Recipients were told they would get special text messages in case of a Ukraine-style uprising. "Now people have a chance to receive precise instructions what to do to save their motherland if there is a pro-Western revolution," says Nashi activist Tatyana Matiash, 22…” (our comment: dial-a-mob)
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