2022 - Page 2

In early 2022 the story of the foreign fighters in Ukraine seemed largely over: most of the original combatants from 2014 came back to their host countries, retired or settled. This changed in late February 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This rejuvenated the old foreign fighter networks and also produced - allegedly - thousands of new recruits for the Ukrainian military’s internationally oriented International Legion.

The involvement of military and law enforcement personnel in extreme right activity has become a major concern since the 2021 Capitol insurrection. But the distribution of extremism cases is not even, with homogenous communities and elite warrior subcultures playing key roles.