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Posted on 02/22/2015 3:30:41 PM PST by WhiskeyX
Last spring, when hostilities broke out in eastern Ukraine, Starodubov felt an itch to go fight. The United States was backing a war against his ethnic Russian kin -- "You don't need a fortune-teller to know that," he asserts, offering no details -- and he was desperate to put his military skills to use.
[....]
'Normal Nationalists'
In St. Petersburg -- where Starodubov is currently recovering from a frontline injury, under the watchful eye of his new wife, Larisa, a Donbas native -- recruitment and training organizations have mushroomed since the start of the war.
They include Imperial Legion, the Russian nationalist organization that counts among its members Starodubov -- whose field name, “Pastor,” harkens back to a past life as a military priest.
Starodubov says the Orthodox faith is a constant in the Legion ranks, but defends the group -- which he says includes Germans, Tatars, and Karelians -- as ethnically and philosophically diverse.
“Our ideology isn’t that Slavs are a supernation and everyone else is scum to be destroyed,” he says. “We aren’t Nazis. We’re normal nationalists. We love our people, and we love our homeland. ... The main thing [for membership] is that you’re Orthodox and that you speak and think in Russian.”
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
As I posted on your other article, there are several recruitment networks operating to supply the rebels with men and money, from high-profile ops like the Spetnaz Veterans org run by ex-Spetz officer Vladimir Yefimov, or Zhirinovsky, to lower profile (and likely much more effective) ones like the one set up by Oleg Tsarov, that the Russian “Wolverines”, (their version of our “Outlaws” motorcycle gang”) seem to be involved with.
We would do well to remember that for them, this is a real “caue-celeb”, or “Russians helping Russians”.
While our celebs are having fund-raisers for Eco-Nazi’s, or Gay Marriage lawsuits, theirs are raising money for “the Russians of Donbas”, from dinners, to concerts, etc...
A lot of it is driven by the fact people in the Donbass speak Russian and actually care about the Orthodox faith and Russian culture... more than they identify with Ukraine.
So helping them is seen as the brotherly thing to do.
Just one of the reasons we shouldn’t get involved.
Actually Russians in general have no hatred to Ukrainians because of it is hard to find an Russian family without Ukrainian relatives or friends. Sometimes family members have very serious discord but still they are relatives.
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