Media: Russia is creating paramilitary youth groups in the US
Employees of Russian consulates are engaged in the creation of a network of pro-Russian youth paramilitary detachments in the USA, reported SlavicSac.com.
The article’s author writes that ahead of Russia’s invasion of the Donbas and the Crimea, representatives of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, Rosmolodyozh, an organization that is one of the Kremlin's main tools for patriotic influence on the minds of young Russians, had become frequent guests in American cities. They began to massively organize youth cells and patriotic camps following the example of Soviet pioneer camps.
So-called children's pro-Russian paramilitary "boot camps" began to be organized in California. One of the local Orthodox parishes in Sacramento announced that they would take in those wishing to undergo a kind of "young fighter's course" that includes handling small arms, a sports bow and throwing knives, as well as drills and patriotic training.
Similar youth training camps under clearly Russian names like "Scythian" or "Rusichi" have spread widely throughout the United States.
Militarized musters are regularly held in the states of Washington and Oregon. In neighboring California, a "sports-patriotic camp dedicated to the Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday" had been organized from 2012 to 2015.
In some California schools, Russian Cossacks conduct patriotic morning performances, organize something like "Zarnitsa games," demonstration battles and performances of Cossack circles.
One of the main organizers of the Cossack movement on the West Coast of the United States is the ataman Stanislav Kholodkov. He served in the Soviet Special Forces in Afghanistan and was the first commander of the Scorpion Squad, the elite formation of the Armed Forces of Kyrgyzstan.
The journalist notes that even though the goal of teaching American children and teenagers is presented as exclusively "sports-patriotic", many representatives of the diaspora, as well as Native Americans suspect that a widely-ramified network of Kremlin agents lies behind such fighting squads in the United States.
After the annexation of the Crimea and the imposition of sanctions against Russia, the activity of such institutions has significantly slowed down.
Similar trends have also been observed throughout Europe, where the Kremlin has organized secret paramilitary squads founded with the help of the Systema Russian Martial Arts Schools. German magazine Bild reported on a whole network of select paramilitary groups of the Kremlin based in Europe that could act on Moscow’s orders at any time. They have been organizing campaigns to disseminate false information among Russian Germans.
There is a similar trend in Spain. Employees of the Russian embassy are trying to put all the public activities of compatriots under their control.