Russia said preparing terrorists to act in Europe – but is unlikely to call them that

Swedish prosecutors say that two of the three suspects in the case of a bombing in Gothenburg (Göteborg) had received training in a camp operated by the ultra-right group Russian Imperial Movement near St. Petersburg and presented photographic evidence of their presence and training in the use of weapons while there. This charge and the evidence for it has been detailed in articles in the Swedish press (dn.se/nyheter/sverige/bombmisstankta-nazister-utbildades-i-ryssland/ and gp.se/nyheter/g%C3%B6teborg/innan-d%C3%A5den-nazister-fick-milit%C3%A4rutbildning-i-ryssland-1.4354216). It is summarized in Russian by blogger Andrey Malgin who also points out that the Russian Imperial Movement trained militants who went to Kyiv, Crimea and the Donbas in support of Moscow’s policies there, an indication at a minimum of coordination between the Imperial Movement and the Russian government and quite possibly much more. Vladimir Putin has cultivated close links between the extreme right in Russia and the extreme right in various European countries over the last several years, links that have typically been ignored by many in the West but that have been documented among others by Anton Shekhovtsov in a series of important books and articles. Today, in a Facebook post, Shekhovtsov comments on a Youtube clip of Aleksandr Shein, Moscow’s ambassador to Israel, discussing who is a terrorist and who isn’t, a distinction likely to shape how the Russian government will respond to the events in Sweden, a country it has threatened with reprisals if it joins NATO. Shein says, Shekhovtsov reports, that “if apparent terrorist attacks are not aimed against Russia’s interests, then we do not consider the perpetrators as terrorists.” Such “logic,” the researcher says, recalls “Moscow’s understanding of fascism: if fascists are pro-Russian, then they are not fascists.”

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