The Telegraph meets members of the RDK, who have sacrificed civilian life to fight their compatriots and stand up to their dictator
Ximena Borrazas Kyiv
For “White”, going home to Russia after the war is not an option. If he does, he wants it to be in a tank to take down Vladimir Putin.
The 26-year-old Russian volunteer has spent the past two years fighting for Ukraine – battling against his own countrymen on the front lines. His unit, under cover of darkness, has infiltrated Russia and carried out sabotage operations there.
White, who hails from the city of Samara in Russia’s south, is one of hundreds of defectors fighting in the armed group Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).
“I have always wanted to live according to my ideals,” he told The Telegraph at a training camp outside Kyiv. “When the war ends, I will continue fighting until Putin falls.”
RDK members range in age and background. Many are former Wagner Group fighters – like White. Some are ex-FSB agents and most of them are just civilians, but they share a singular commitment. “We fight to change something in Russia,” White said.
Putin is facing a rise in disillusionment in his military’s meat-grinder war tactics, where soldiers are sent like cannon fodder to the front lines without the correct training or equipment.
For White, he joined the RDK to exact revenge against Putin.
When the full-scale invasion began, the former machine operator was in a high-security prison in Russia where he was serving a three-year sentence for assault.
He was plucked from jail and given the opportunity to serve as a mercenary for Yevgeny Prigozhin’s notorious Wagner Group in exchange for having his criminal record expunged.
But his taste of freedom was short-lived – White was soon captured by Ukraine and held captive as a prisoner of war.
After nine months, he was offered up in a prisoner-exchange programme and given the chance to live as a free man in Russia.
But he refused. This time, he chose to fight for Ukraine and joined RDK in June 2023.
Now White commands the RDK’s assault unit, leading missions where they fight on the front lines against Russian soldiers. Three weeks ago, the group returned from the front line where they captured 16 Russian prisoners of war.
The paramilitary group, founded by far-Right extremist Denis Nikitin and deemed a terrorist organisation by Russia, was also part of the biggest cross-border incursion of the war in March 2024.
Russian volunteers had driven tanks and armoured vehicles into Russia in a three-pronged raid, clashing with Moscow security services. The RDK, alongside two other anti-Kremlin separatist groups, had entered the frontier regions of Belgorod and Kursk as part of the operation.
Since then, White’s unit has carried out further operations inside Russia.
“We carry out the tasks we’re given. Sometimes we enter Russia, carry out sabotage operations and leave. Mostly, we fight against Putin’s regime and the elite. We fight to change something in Russia,” he said.
Credit: María Ximena Borrazás Cataldo
While waiting for instructions for new missions, they train relentlessly. There is no time to waste in war.
For Ney, a 21-year-old volunteer from Moscow, he’ll never stop fighting nor return to Russia.
“I will definitely not return to Russia while Putin is in power. Within RDK we have a saying: if any of us return to Russia, it will be in a tank or an armoured vehicle, but never as civilians.
“If the war ends, I will remain in Ukraine, defending it to the end. And if a larger war breaks out in Europe, I will be there, fighting for freedom.”
Ney spent much of his childhood in the Ukrainian city of Odesa in a family of renowned artists before moving back to Russia to study philosophy in Saint Petersburg.
He quickly became frustrated that Russians would be critical of Putin but do nothing about it.
“I’ve always been connected to intellectual circles,” he said. “I realised that despite disapproving of Putin, they did nothing.
Growing up in Ukraine, I absorbed the mentality of fighting for freedom and justice. That is why I left a stable life in Russia to join the battlefield, because philosophy was born there.”
Many of the soldiers, as they train for their next mission at a camp in the forests near Kyiv, refuse to show their faces in any photographs to protect loved ones from retribution.
Kir, 23, a former marketing professional from Moscow and now a member of a drones unit, left a comfortable life in autumn 2023 to join the RDK. His family believe he is working in Europe; for security reasons, he has no contact with them.
“Fortuna”, the RDK’s chief of staff, moved to Ukraine in 2017 after becoming disillusioned with Russia’s oppressive regime, but he never expected to take up arms against his compatriots.
He was living in Irpin when Russian troops invaded and when he saw the horrors unfold, he joined the RDK.
“Putin’s regime is built on war. He cannot end it without losing power. Under his rule, Russia has sunk into poverty and lawlessness. Life there is unbearable. People have nothing and will never have anything, yet they cling to the illusion of greatness through missiles and a powerful army.”
Jhon, 40, another of the assault-unit members, had already fought for Ukraine in 2014 with the Azov Battalion. For him, nationality is secondary to the cause. “Now Russia is fighting Ukraine, which is why I am here. But if Russia were to fight Spain, I would join the Spanish side. This war was started by Russia. Their policies are inhumane.”
“If Nato invaded Russia, I would join Russia, because Nato would be the aggressor. But I could also side with the invaders if it meant liberating the Russian people, protecting neighbouring countries and ensuring global security,” he said.
Kremlin: Ukraine peace talks now ‘on pause’
The RDK volunteers do not believe Putin wants peace. The Kremlin is said to be demanding that Ukraine cede territory in the Donbas region that Russia has not conquered in exchange for freezing the rest of the front line to achieve peace. Jhon described those demands as “ridiculous”.
For Kir and his comrades, Putin himself is not the only problem. “Not everything will end with Putin,” he said. “The entire system must be rebuilt from scratch. Whether we can do it or not is another matter. But first, we have to defend Ukraine.”
Comment from :
Matthew Matic
‘Not everything will end with Putin. The entire system must be rebuilt from scratch.’
He nailed it there.
The transformation of Russia into a normal society, not one run by a perpetual self-appoiinted fascist crime syndicate, is long overdue.
Philip Phillips
It seems somewhat irresponsible to publish photographs of “White” when facial recognition is widely used in Russia. If he has any family or friends there, they will be rounded up and sent to the salt mines.
Springheeled Jack
Looking forward to the desperate attempts by our Krembot friends to deny reality and discredit the Russian guys fighting against Putin’s dictatorship.
Read on, 🤣
William Haslam
Very courageous to do this. The truth is that across all of Ukraine are ‘ex’ Russians and Russian-speakers who hate what Putin has done and either fully support Ukraine or who are Ukrainian. They oppose the mass slaughter Putin has unleashed on both Russians and Ukrainians. I recently saw a picture of a family of Ukrainian Russian speakers where one of the family is now dead, fighting against Putin’s evil.
This truth is a very different reality to the misinformation posted on these comments so often by malicious individuals who parrot the false Kremlin claim that Ukraine ‘persecuted’ Russians, while ignoring the actual persecution of Ukrainians by Russia, the Tsars and the Soviets over centuries, leading to the death of millions of Ukrainians. In occupied Ukraine there have been around 68 pastors alone killed by Putin’s Russia.
Dario O’Grady
I really see Ukrainian forces march into Moscow to demolish the kremlin one day in the future and hang all the FSB.
Gordon Ritchie
Prigozhin would have done better to join Ukraine. It’s great to see people’s sense of justice winning out over fear of gulags or death. I mean it is heart warming. The light is shining in the darkness. But the darkness has not overpowered it.
Commenter Springheeled Jack was right : the comments pages have been trolled to fuck.
Kremtrolls outnumber normal posters.