Putin’s childhood friends in Russia are forming their own private armies of soccer hooligans along the lines of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, a local investigative site reported.
Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, close allies of the Russian president, were allegedly introduced to a paramilitary group of fanatics called the Española battalion by their sponsor, Viktor Shendrik, as the oligarchs prepare for a power vacuum and civil war if Russia loses in Ukraine.
Football hooligans have already been chosen to enlist in the armed forces, but it would be the first time fans were reclassified as a separate private military company with designs to expand recruitment.
“Española was created by fans, mostly from Spartak (of the Russian top flight),” a source told Russian independent publication Importante Stories. “Then the Rotenbergs arrived with the idea of taking a PMC (private military company) under their own control.”
“Many major companies are creating their own private armies at the moment, and the brothers wanted to create their own private army on the basis of Española.”
CSKA Spanish Battalion supporter Stanislav ‘Spaniard’ Orlov, photographed with a Shinnik Yaroslavl FC flag and an RPK light machine gun, reportedly in occupied Donetsk Oblast
Russian billionaires and businessmen Arkady Rotenberg (R) and Boris Rotenberg (L) seen during the awards ceremony at the 2017 Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with billionaire and businessman Arkady Rotenberg (R), while his brother, Boris Rotenberg (L), looks on
Russians in military uniforms hold Española signs in the barracks, undated
The Spanish battalion, mostly ultra followers of the Russian Spartak Moscow, was reported to have 550 troops in March 2023.
Among them were 100 operators of deadly Kamikaze drones, unmanned devices that crash into their targets with devastating effects like a guided missile.
Española commander Stanislav Orlov, call sign ‘Spaniard’, previously said the volunteer group joined forces with Russian operators in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, regions of eastern Ukraine inhabited by Russian-backed paramilitary groups since 2014.
‘We recently managed to obtain separate status, so now we do not belong to any battalion or division.
“They have given us approval to create a separate battalion, Española.”
According to the latest reports, the group was recruiting “stormtroopers”, saboteurs, snipers, drone operators, electronic warfare and air defense operators, portable reconnaissance station operators, anti-tank guided missile operators, anti-aircraft specialists, communications specialists , mechanics. drivers and doctors to join their heterogeneous group of ultras.
Their inter-club rivalries aside, fans of clubs such as CSKA, Zenit, Spartak, Torpedo and Lokomotiv are among those already fighting against the Ukrainians.
“Disputes between fans of different clubs are prohibited,” Orlov told local media. “All this has to be left somewhere, far away, like alcohol.”
The groups’ apparent acceptance of fighting in Ukraine is a surprising change of heart for Putin, who publicly condemned soccer hooligans before the 2018 World Cup. threatening high fines and prison sentences for repeat offenders.
Española’s supposed new sponsors, the Rotenberg brothers, are the Russian billionaires behind the StroyGazMontazh group, the largest construction company of gas pipelines and electricity supply lines in Russia.
Boris Rotenberg, a former judo teacher, trained alongside Vladimir Putin in his youth before making sudden leaps as a businessman with the collapse of the USSR.
Arkady Rotenberg, also a close confidant and childhood friend of the Russian president, trained with Putin at a sambo club when he was 12 years old.
Like his brother, he became a judo teacher before his club was created. award-winning a $180 million state-funded facility that includes a yacht club.
The couple received sanctions after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. forcing to sell their private planes after the intervention of their Swiss bank.
“After the sanctions were imposed, the bank unilaterally stopped accepting payments… and then sold the plane without notifying the borrower,” Boris Rotenberg’s spokesman said.
If the brothers provided aid to Española, it would not be the first time that Russian companies and state-affiliated groups have financed paramilitary groups to join the war effort in Ukraine.
Top Stories previously reported that Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration, and Yuri Trutnev, the first deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, had given their backing to a combat unit called Soyuz to support the war . effort in Ukraine.
Trutnev said the group was made up of elite martial artists, “masters of sports of international class”, trained for the Ukrainian front.
Between 2021 and 2023, his donations were reported to have increased to 600 million rubles (around £5.23 million).
Among the major donors were major companies such as Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy company, formerly headed by Kirienko.
Sberbank also contributed 50 million rubles (about £435,000) and RusHydro, the owner of hydroelectric power plants, around 60 million (£523,000).
A volunteer from Española wearing military pants holds a scarf that reads ‘With you until death/ultra/Brigadas/Spain’
Russian President Vladimir Putin looks on during a meeting on agricultural development March 5, 2024 in Solnechnodolsk, Russia.
Just six years ago, during the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals, Putin publicly condemned the actions of ‘The Football Hooligans’ and vowed to banish the notorious group.
A drone operator, photographed with a Española badge on his arm, shows off his equipment
In June last year, the Financial Times reported that Roscosmos – the Russian state space agency and NASA partner – was partnering with the military to “raise, finance and equip a militia to fight in Ukraine”.
It was not yet clear whether the Uran volunteer battalion had been deployed to Ukraine.
Gazprom, a state energy corporation, formed the voluntary military formations Fakel, Plamya and Potok in 2023 as a more loyal alternative to the Wagner Group, before its coup attempt in June.
Fakel and Plamya are reportedly subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Gazprom, which in the United Kingdom was renamed SEFE Energy after the start of the war, supplied gas to 20 percent of UK businesses by August 2022.