A Neo-Nazi organization founded in the United States in 2018, known as "The Base" has claimed responsibility for the assassination of Ivan Voronych, a Ukrainian colonel who served in the Secret Service of Ukraine (SBU), a military intelligence unit responsible for internal state security. Voronych was believed to have been an orchestrator in Ukraine's summer 2024 Kursk incursion as well as sabotage and assassination operations in the Russian occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Voronych was walking in a parking lot in central Kyiv during broad daylight when he was rushed by a masked man who fired five shots. The shooter and one accomplice were killed in Kyiv shortly after the shooting after resisting arrest by police. Ukrainian media claimed that the two were either given the silenced handgun used in the killing or were "remotely" supported by Russian intelligence, showing a continuing pattern of collaboration between the Russian state and far-right organizations.

The Base: Ideology and Affiliations

The Base was established in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro, who goes by the online monikers "Roman Wolf" and "Norman Spear". Nazzaro, a 52 year old New Jersey native, worked for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2004-2006 and reportedly briefed US special operations units on counter-terrorism in the Middle East, which provided him top-secret security clearance. Since 2012, Nazzaro has lived in Russia with his Russian wife and children. The Base is an neo-nazi organization, that wishes to create a race-war, which it would then capitalize on to establish a white-ethnostate. The group draws inspiration from the notorious Nazi James Mason and his book "Siege" which outlines why and how the Neo-Nazi movement should shift from large open organizations like the "National Socialist Movement" to cell based and lone-wolf terror attacks, a trend that has increased within the last decade due to the use of the internet and more specifically the use of telegram, X, and Gab to recruit and radicalize teens.

The group mainly uses telegram to communicate, establish training camps, and disseminate propaganda similar to other accelerationist groups such as the Atomwaffen division and the Order of nine Angles (O9A). Through these channels Base cells have been established outside of the United States including Canada, South Africa, Western Europe, and now Ukraine and Russia. Nazzaro is believed to own a plot of land in Washington where the group has attempted to hold "hate camps", providing paramilitary training to its members. Members of the group have planned dozens of attacks including attacks on religious sites, electrical infrastructure, contamination of water supplies, destruction of railroads, murders, and mass-shootings - including a "false-flag" attack at a pro-gun rights rally in Virginia intended to start a civil war. Most of these attacks were quickly foiled by the FBI and local authorities such as a series of raids in 2020 that led to six members being arrested on various charges. Three of those arrested were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, as they had threatened and planned to kill a couple affiliated with Antifa in Georgia.

Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Underground

Ukraine has a history of far-right organizations especially in the early 20th century. The largest of these groups was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and collaborated with the Nazi army in both Poland and Ukraine taking part in multiple atrocities and pogroms, such as the Lviv pogrom and the killing of Poles in Galicia. One faction of the OUN, the OUN(b), was led by Stepan Bandera and was much closer to the ideological routes of Nazism compared to the other factions of the OUN. In 1941 after Nazi Germany had seized Lviv from the Soviet Union, Bandera proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state which has led to Bandera being seen as a national hero by some and a vile Nazi by others. This led to the Nazi authorities turning on the OUN(b) although the group continued to fight the Soviet Union into the 1950s. In 1959 Bandera was poisoned by the KGB in West Germany where he moved with his family. Today, Ukraine still has dozens of monuments and plaques commemorating Bandera despite his many war crimes.

Born out of this ultra-nationalist orientation, several groups in Ukraine openly profess ultra-nationalist or Neo-Nazi beliefs. The most prevalent and infamous of these was the Azov battalion, now the 3rd separate assault brigade and Azov regiment after it was controversially integrated into the Ukrainian military. The group was formed in 2014 as a voluntary militia between two neo-Nazi organizations - the Patriots of Ukraine and the Social National Assembly (SNA) and used Nazi iconography, especially the black sun and the wolfsangel.