This blog entry is the third in a three-part series focusing on foreign fighters from Italy fighting for Russia in the war against Ukraine. The first entry describes a network of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist extremists in Italy who fought on the side of Russia in occupied Ukraine and recruited foreign fighters from Italy. The second installment focused on the Russian links of the right-wing extremist networks in Italy, and the political networks they associated with. This final part analyses the wider European political and martial arts networks these fighters belonged to. These networks have also functioned as bases for Russian recruitment as well as centres for radicalization into violent extremism.

The pro-Russian mercenary and recruitment network arrested in Italy in 2018 and convicted in 2019 featured organizers with links to Russian intelligence who were operating within local and international groups that included both the far left (neo-Soviets) and the far right (neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists). This blog post describes the three main groups that were connected with mercenary recruitment in Italy and how they came together across significant ideological differences in support of the pro-Russian separatist movement in occupied Ukraine.

Russian tradecraft in an Italian martial arts group

Olsi Krutaini, an Albanian immigrant to Italy, was convicted in Italy in 2019 as a member of the network who recruited mercenaries to fight for Russia in Donbas, for which he served two years and eight months in Italian prison. In his autobiographical accounts Krutani has stated he is a retired paratrooper for the Russian Armed Forces who served in Chechnya. He owns several gyms in Italy where he teaches martial arts and he tours to give martial arts workshops throughout Italy. In his 2019 trial prosecutors stated that his martial arts workshops were fronts for his promotion of the Russian political and social movement Essence of Time (Суть времени) (EoT). In an intercepted phone conversation in August 2015, Orazio Gnerre indicated that he had arranged with Krutani to direct proceeds to Donbas from Systema (GRU-linked Russian martial arts) courses they had planned together in Italy.

This follows a broad pattern in Russian tradecraft that stretches back to the Cold War era. In his 1988 book Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces, GRU defector Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) described how special forces personnel could be disguised as airborne forces in the Soviet army and would operate in the West undercover as professional athletes. Russian intelligence continues to follow a similar pattern, with one recent studynoting, for example, that the Russian GRU and FSB intelligence services are using Russian martial arts clubs in the EU as recruitment hubs with “coaches and officials in Western Europe including former agents, paratroopers and civilian combatants.”

Pro-Russian Militants Bridged Left-Right Boundaries

One of the notable features of this case is that it involved coordination between left-wing extremist and right-wing extremist groups in Europe who came together in opposition to the EU and NATO and in support for Russia. The leftist groups included Essence of Time and Millennium, while the right-wing extremist groups included neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups with close ties to far right political parties in Northern Italy. 

EoT is a communist organization based in Russia that aims for the re-establishment of the USSR. Mercenary recruiter Olsi Krutani was a member of EoT, as were a number of European and American mercenaries, including Spanish mercenary Sergio Becerra, American mercenary Russell Bonner Bentley, and Italian mercenary Gabriele Carugati. EoT was able to appeal to Italian and Spanish fighters by drawing parallels with the experience of those countries in World War II, portraying the Ukrainians as Nazis and Fascists and aligning the Russia with the Anti-Fascists who fought against the villains of WWII in Italy and Spain.

Millennium (a.k.a. Millennivm, Millennium-PCE) was an Italian political group co-founded by university students Orazio Gnerre and Luca Pintaudi.  The group’s philosophy blended anti-liberal philosophies with Aleksandr Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, which aims to move beyond left-right distinctions. Pintaudi had been a member of the Italian left party Sinistra Ecologia Libertà and was a member of a leftist student group. When Gnerre and Pintaudi travelled to the Donbas in June 2014, they appeared in photos holding an Italian Communist Party flag alongside Pavel Gubarev, then the self-proclaimed leader of the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. In associated communications they identified as Anti-Fascists, by which they likely meant anti-Ukrainian and anti-EU.

How pro-Russians from the left and right came together in Italy

While many details of the case remain unknown, it appears that the parties on the left and right were initially in contact with Russians in Moscow and the Donbas separately before they came into contact with each other. 

As a member of EoT and self-described Russian paratrooper who served in Chechnya, Olsi Krutani presumably had his own line of contact with Russian intelligence.

Orazio Gnerre, co-founder of Millennium, by his own account had been in contact with sanctioned Russian propagandist Aleksandr Dugin for “at least five years” before the annexation of Crimea in February 2014, the event which mobilized the pro-Russian networks in Italy. After the annexation of Crimea, Gnerre and Millennium co-founder Luca Pintaudi traveled to the Donbas, where they met separatist leader Pavel Gubarev as well as GRU officer Igor Girkin. Up to this point, they do not appear to have been in touch with members of EoT or political groups from the Italian right-wing extremist milieu.

During the same time period, members of far-right political and right wing extremist networks in Northern Italy were in contact with Russia through their own independent channels. In February 2014 one of the leaders of the mercenary network, Andrea Palmeri, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the violent assault on left wing activist Stefano Benassi and ordered to remain under house arrest while his appeal was pending. Palmeri fled from house arrest in Northern Italy to Donbas in late February 2014, and appears to have travelled from there to Russia before returning to Ukraine to fight for Russia in fall 2014. He operated as one of the main recruiters of Italian mercenaries, largely through his Facebook page, which was handled by Antony Cataldo, an Italian veteran of the French Foreign Legion who received military training in Russia.

Following this first stage of activity in February 2014, when the various parties in Italy contacted or renewed contact with handlers in Donbas and Moscow, they each established sham charities for raising money for the pro-Russian opposition in Donbas, which prosecutors identified as fronts for mercenary recruitment. 

Phone records presented during his trial also showed that Palmeri was in contact from Donbas with members of Millennium and Olsi Krutani by October 2014.

Gnerre organized a conference which took place on 29 November, 2014 in Lavagna, Genoa, in the Liguria region of northern Italy. The ostensible purpose was to raise funds for medical aid in Donbas, but prosecutors prosecutors in the trial against Palmeri and the other mercenaries and mercenary recruiters argued that the conference was the first venue that brought together the members of Millennium and the far left university network, Krutani and his left-wing extremist group EoT, with right-wing extremist skinhead and neo-fascist groups based in northern Italy. 

Intercepted phone calls, presented during his trial, indicated that Olsi Krutani received instructions from an unknown superior to “merge the groups.” In this way the associated right-wing and left-wing extremist groups in Italy involved in this case apparently succeeded in joining, not by overcoming their ideological differences but through their shared opposition to the EU and Ukraine and support of Russia.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS 

• Domestic intelligence monitoring of foreign state-linked civil society organizations' online activity. EU member states should task domestic security services with monitoring the online activity including social media posts and fundraising activities of civil political groups and martial arts clubs for links to foreign state intelligence networks.

• Develop an EU-level counterintelligence mechanism. The EU should explicitly include foreign state use of civil society organizations such as martial arts networks, cultural associations, and charitable fronts, as a named threat category within the forthcoming Europol mandate reform legislation announced under ProtectEU. This should include a specific mandate for cross-border intelligence coordination on such networks distinct from the existing terrorism and FIMI frameworks.