On 27 December 2025, multiple reports claimed that Denis Kapustin, a.k.a. Denis Nikitin or White Rex, had been killed in action in Ukraine. Kapustin is the commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), which fights on Ukraine’s side against Russia. However, on 1 January 2026, Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR) stated that Kapustin is alive and that the reported killing was part of a counterintelligence operation to thwart a Russian assassination plot against him. This episode matters for European security even if Kapustin did not die: He remains a high-visibility transnational key actor linking war-fighting capacity with violent extreme-right combat sports, hooligan subcultures, and cross-border networking. The most acute risks for Europe remain (1) combat-experienced violent extremist returnees and (2) heightened opportunities for military weapons trafficking from the war theater to extreme-right networks. 

Recent Events: What Is Known So Far

In late December 2025, the RVC and several right-wing extremist Telegram channels reported that Kapustin had been killed during a combat mission in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. These reports were amplified by Telegram channels in and around violent extreme-right milieus. On January 1, 2026, Ukraine’s GUR said that Kapustin is alive and that Russian security services had ordered his assassination, allocating $500,000 for the job. According to GUR, they conducted a counterintelligence operation to thwart the plot. Ukraine’s intelligence chief appeared in a video call with Kapustin, and the RVC later confirmed that Kapustin was still alive.

The RVC is an “awkward ally” for the GUR: It has propaganda and battlefield utility, while creating reputational and political liabilities due to its leadership’s extreme-right ideology. 

Who Is the Self-Declared “White King”? 

Kapustin is a Moscow-born right-wing extremist who grew up in Germany and moved to Kyiv in 2017. He founded the RVC at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Kapustin and the RVC claim to want to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin and create an ethnic white Russian state. Russia’s government placed Kapustin on its federal registry of “terrorists and extremists” in March 2023 following the RVC’s incursion into the Russian Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine. Previously, Kapustin was a key figure in Europe’s transnational violent extreme-right. 

From a counterextremism and counterterrorism perspective, the operational details of Kapustin’s faked death matter less than the strategic implications: A high-visibility, transnationally networked violent extremist key actor, who was being celebrated as a “fallen hero” by different segments of the transnational violent extreme-right, remains active. 

Kapustin Before Russia Invaded Ukraine: A Transnational “Scene Engineer” for Violent Extreme-Right Milieus

Years before he became a wartime militia commander, Kapustin established his relevance for the wider transnational movement by building and scaling violent extreme-right networks.

1) White Rex as a platform (brand, merch, events, identity)

Kapustin was a driving force behind modern transnational right-wing extremist combat sports ecosystems, anchored in his White Rex brand and its associated scene infrastructure. This included event promotion, merchandising, and the cultivation of a “fighter identity” that blended lifestyle aesthetics with ideological signaling.

2) Linking European combat sports and extremist mobilization

Kapustin acted as a strategist connecting European combat sports, music events, and militant subcultures, including sustained linkages to German violent right-wing extremist fight event ecosystems over many years. This matters because combat sports spaces can function as low-threshold recruitment environments. They provide repeated in-person contact, status hierarchies, and “legitimate” reasons for travel, training, and gathering, while normalizing adversarial narratives and readiness for violence.

3) Mentoring the Active Club model

Kapustin also played a key role in shaping and inspiring the transnational diffusion of the Active Club (AC) model. Robert Rundo, the face of the transnational right-wing extremist AC network, has called Kapustin a “big brother and mentor.” The “wolf in sheep’s clothing” AC strategy aims to make violent extreme-right milieus appear more mainstream and less threating by promoting fitness, masculinity, and lifestyle branding, while fostering a hyper-violent core. 

Kapustin Since Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Militarization and Recruitment

Once Kapustin assumed command of the RVC, his earlier “scene engineer” role gained a new asset: wartime credibility. In extremist milieus, combat experience can powerfully legitimize actors, turning strategists and organizers into soldiers and leaders.

In addition to the RVC, Kapustin appears to have created the German Volunteer Corps (GVC) in Ukraine. The CVC leader claims that he was recruited by Dennis Kapustin. A similar group for Polish Volunteers, which features Kapustin in their propaganda, was also created. “Der III. Weg,”, a small German neo-Nazi party, has been transporting material, including bulletproof vests and medical supplies, to the RVC and GVC repeatedly since March 2022.

Security Implications for the European Union

The main operational risk these events pose to the EU is the return of combat-experienced violent extremists to EU Member States. Even small absolute numbers can have disproportionate effects, whether as capable attackers, experienced trainers, “war heroes,” or credible recruiters. CEP has warned repeatedly that violence-oriented extremist volunteers in Ukraine and Russia would likely obtain combat experience and could have a greater impact on European extremist milieus upon return. 

Additionally, long-tail effects of a high-intensity war include the growth of illicit weapons markets and the possible militarization of extreme-right groups and individuals in the EU. Their capability to plan and execute mass casualty attacks can increase significantly. 

Policy Recommendations 

1) Address converging risks: violent extremists, organized crime, and “dual-use” ecosystems

Treat the violent extreme-right threat as a convergence risk in threat assessments and tasking. Such an approach requires linking the workstreams on counterterrorism, firearms trafficking, and organized crime in this context by design, not ad hoc.

This could be augmented by aligning sanctions / export control, financial intelligence, and firearms trafficking analysis with counterextremism priorities, where legally feasible. 

2) Use the full travel-security toolchain for risk-based targeting

Identify and track all “travel-connected” violent extremist individuals, not only those that fight on the frontline in the war in Ukraine. To this end, the deployment of Joint Investigation Teams (JITs) via Eurojust could be expanded, especially when investigations involve cross-border networks. To augment this, passenger data (API/PNR) provided by commercial airlines could be used, where proportionate and grounded in law, to establish suspect travel patterns. Similar API/PNR analytics utilized to identify drug trafficking patterns and to identify foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) could serve as an example. Finally, already existing watchlists of known violence-oriented extremists could be combined and streamlined, especially now as the new EU Entry/Exit System becomes operational.

3) Strengthen intelligence-to-investigation pipelines 

Russia’s war against Ukraine likely will significantly impact the trafficking and availability of firearms, ammunition and explosive materials in the EU. Therefore, it could be beneficial to establish a “special project” within Europol to track the relevant travel to and from the war zone. This could augment existing EU efforts in this regard.

These efforts could feed into the building of an “intel-to-evidence” protocol that anticipates violent extremist returnees and facilitators. CEP has flagged the need to document possible international-law violations and to apply “battlefield evidence” lessons learned from the ISIS foreign fighter context. 

Finally, similar to Islamist terrorism, propaganda efforts of violent right-wing extremist networks have security relevance: martyrdom narratives and algorithmic amplification can accelerate mobilization and polarization dynamics.

More recommendations can be found here.