Ukrainian Right-Wing Extremists: Exploring Their Involvement in the Ongoing War and Outlining Potential Threats for Post-War Ukraine

Abstract

As the Russia-Ukraine war constitutes the most severe security challenge Europe has faced since the Cold War's end, many states have realized the fragility of statehood, which an aggressor can destroy overnight. Although this concern is valid, it should not overshadow other security threats. Unlike other authors addressing the phenomenon of foreign fighters in the war, the present article investigates the involvement of Ukrainian right-wing extremists regarding the pre-2022 development, during which the growing sociocultural nationalism, militarism, and tolerance of ultranationalist and ethnonational groups helped shrink their isolation. While they might have played an important role in Ukraine's territorial defence, heavily armed and combat-skilled right-wing extremists might pose a severe threat to Ukraine's post-war restoration. Initially, whereas a literature review indicates the hitherto research and positions the article's inquiry within it, existing theoretical approaches define the observed actors. Based on the open-source intelligence data collection from Telegram and content analysis, the article identified several Ukrainian and also foreign right-wing extremists involved in the war despite its focus on the former. It concludes that the predecessor authors' debated threats associated with the latter, i.e., physical threats, organizational challenges, and wider societal consequences, should be primarily applied to Ukraine

Keywords

• russia-ukraine war; right-wing extremism; ukraine; foreign fighters; security threats