Night wolves

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The night wolves

Nachtwolfe MC ( Russian Ночные Волки , transcribed Notschnyje Wolki ), formerly Night Wolves , later Russified to Nocnie Volki , is the name of the largest Russian motorcycle and rocker club founded in 1989 , whose founder and president is Alexander Sergejewitsch Saldostanow . The members of the club represent nationalist and Christian Orthodox views.

history

The Night Wolves were founded in the Soviet Union in the 1980s during perestroika as an anti-Soviet group and took over a lot from Western biker clubs. Until the 1990s there was contact with the Danish section of the Hells Angels . In 1991 Saldostanov supported the Russian President Boris Yeltsin , and only since the 2000s has a reorientation towards state-oriented patriotism taken place.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the night wolves were still pro-Western and had contacts with like-minded people there. The turn to the Orthodox faith and nationalism is said to be due to an encounter between Saldostanov and an Orthodox priest, who suggested that he had to save Russia. Former members, on the other hand, described him as a despot who violated the code of honor that a leader could also be replaced. The basic rule of all motorcycle clubs “no politics” would be disregarded and the internal democracy adopted by Western clubs such as the Hells Angels would be violated. Instead of an annual re-election of the club president, a “one-man dictatorship” prevailed. It was also criticized that former club property had been appropriated.

After the so-called “punk prayer” by Pussy Riot in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow on February 21, 2012, the club positioned members in front of the Christian Orthodox churches across Russia. On April 21, 2012, the Night Wolves organized a motorcycle parade in Moscow to “support Patriarch Kyrill of the Russian Orthodox Church and the traditional values ​​of Russian civilization”. On the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad in 2013, the night wolves in Volgograd organized a nationalist event that was glorified as a “bike show”. 200,000 spectators followed the speeches by Josef Stalin from loudspeakers and club boss Saldostanov, who added on stage: “Stalingrad is just as sacred to humanity as Jerusalem, Mecca and Bethlehem. Stalingrad is a flaming, fiery icon, hidden under a meaningless pseudonym. A mythical victory was won before Stalingrad. ”Russian television broadcast the show live .

During the Euromaidan events in Ukraine in 2014, the night wolves sided with the Russian government. At the end of January, they supported pro-Russian demonstrators in eastern Ukrainian cities such as Kharkiv and Luhansk by patrolling the streets and holding “vigils” in front of administrative buildings, and during the Crimean crisis they brought humanitarian aid to the peninsula on their motorcycles and set up checkpoints at which Passers-by had to be checked for weapons and patrolled the streets. Saldostanov possibly received the number 1 medal for the return of the Crimea , with which those involved in the annexation of the Crimea had been honored. According to CNN , three members died in Ukraine by May 2015.

On August 9, 2014, the Night Wolves put on another (music) show, this time in Sevastopol , which was attended by around 100,000 spectators. They celebrated the Russian "recovery" of Crimea and presented Ukraine as a country controlled by " fascists ". This event was also broadcast live on Russian state television.

In December 2015, the attorney general declared the transfer of 270 hectares of land near Sevastopol to the night wolves illegal.

Views and political positions

The club is currently considered nationalist, anti-western, Christian-Orthodox and homophobic .

According to an interview with Saldostanov in the Russian state news magazine Sputnik, the club rejects any “ satanic ” symbols and provocations against Orthodox Christianity and wants this movement to develop further in accordance with traditions and be perceived as something Russian. Former members describe the founder and club president Saldostanov as despotic . In an interview with the Rheinische Post , he describes the West as Satan and named Stalin as an idol and "unsurpassed leader" for whom the fathers of Russia, like Jesus Christ , died.

Putin and Zaldostanov at a meeting in 2012

According to Aljoscha Ilg in the German news portal n-tv .de , the night wolves, in contrast to some western counterparts such as the Hells Angels, would attract attention less through organized crime than through their church and social engagement. They are seen as suspicious of the state and reject statutory provisions in their association statutes (see Outlaws ) , but are close to Putin . Saldostanov himself sees Putin as a person who has the same outlook on life as he does. He sees “the atheism imposed on us” as one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Saldostanov and Putin have had a good relationship since 2009. The night wolves had been organizing mass rallies in the Crimea for years, and in July 2012 Putin made the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych wait four hours to drive the night wolves across the streets of Crimea. In February 2013, Putin awarded Saldostanov a Medal of Honor for his “patriotic service” to Russia. In return, Saldostanov publicly praised Putin for his efforts to restore Russia's old greatness. In May 2015, Alexei Navalny named a sum of 56 million rubles, which the night wolves are said to have received from taxpayers' money within 18 months. The official state charitable foundation gave 12.5 million rubles to New Year's shows that the Night Wolves put on for children for the past two years. These shows traditionally show fairytale stories about love and friendship, but in recent years they have repeatedly represented “anti-Western” ideas. The state foundation had distributed a total of 60 million rubles to the night wolves from 2012 to 2016.

As part of the club's support for the Russian forces during the Crimean crisis , Zaldostanov said in an interview in February 2014: “We are here to defend our country, or at least the parts of it that remain. We will defend it from the fascists who came to power. So let them all know. Wherever we are, wherever the night wolves are, that should be considered Russia. ”In another newspaper interview in April 2015, Saldostanov, the Ukrainian-born son of a Ukrainian, stated that Ukraine belongs to Russia. In the same interview, Saldostanov said that there was “a superhuman mysticism at work in our relationship with Stalin . On the one hand the Stalin of repression, on the other hand the Stalin of victory in the Great Patriotic War . […] Although our fathers cursed Stalin, they worshiped him and went to death for him as they did for Jesus Christ. There has to be an end to littering Stalin with dirt. Although brainwashed for generations, he remains an idol in Russian history and an unsurpassed leader. ”Saldostanov fought for freedom. “It's just that the devil often leads those seeking freedom astray. After communism we fight for freedom again, this time we defend ourselves against Satan, the world government and the democratic system ”(the West). For his services, Putin presented Zaldostanov with another award, the medal for the return of the Crimea .

Saldostanov has been on a sanctions list of the US Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control since December 2014 (as of April 2015) because of his actions in the Ukraine conflict and in the war in Ukraine since 2014 . The United States prohibits people on the list from traveling to the United States and certain economic activities. Canada imposed sanctions on Saldostanov in mid-February 2015.

structure

There are three stages a new member must go through before they are awarded a vest with the club's full coat of arms. The last level can only be reached through membership of the club for several years. Women are not allowed.

The club has over 5000 members (as of 2014) and many branches in countries such as Romania , Serbia , Macedonia and Estonia .

Trip to Berlin for “Victory Day” 2015

one stop on the journey, the Slavín Memorial in Bratislava
The end of the motorcycle ride, the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin-Treptow, here on May 9, 2015

For years the club has been commemorating victims of the Second World War with trips and wreath-laying ceremonies, without this having attracted much media attention. In the past, the night wolves and Polish motorcyclists repeatedly laid flowers in Katyn , where Polish victims of Stalinist murders are also buried. Among other things, a delegation of night wolves also took part in official commemorations in 2015 in Braniewo, Poland, in honor of the fallen Red Army soldiers buried there.

On the 70th anniversary of the war's end the club in 2015 planned a trip along the march route of Soviet troops in World War II of Moscow via Minsk , Brest , Wrocław , Brno , Bratislava , Vienna , Munich , Prague and Torgau to Berlin should lead to "the To honor the memory of those who died fighting fascism ”. The anniversary was to be celebrated in Berlin on May 9, 2015. The trip, in which about 20 motorcyclists wanted to take part, should also lead through Poland. The Polish government denied entry to the night wolves in the run-up to the trip. This was justified by the fact that insufficient information on the travel route and the planned accommodation was provided. Saldostanov spoke of "anti-Russian hysteria" in Poland in view of the Polish decision.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Office declared in a joint declaration that the planned trip would not promote German-Russian relations. They banned leading members of the club from entering Germany with the reference to "dangers to public safety and order in Germany". The government of Slovakia was asked by a group of 75 Slovak intellectuals to refuse entry to the night wolves because their message was "not the overthrow of fascism, freedom and peace, but the expansion of Russia". In view of the bans, the night wolves said that they had different alternative routes without going into details. Now that the "evil" that was defeated earlier would return to the Russian world, one had to be united.

On April 25, 2015, around 20 Night Wolf motorcyclists set out for Berlin. The following day they laid flowers in honor of the victims of Stalinist murders in the Polish and Russian sections of the Katyn Memorial .

On April 27, a group of around 20 night wolves motorcyclists at the Belarusian-Polish border crossing in Terespol were refused entry to Poland. Because the Russian motorcyclists had valid Schengen visas, the Russian Foreign Ministry reprimanded the entry ban. On the Polish side of the border, dozens of members of a Polish motorcycle club waited in vain for the Russian motorcyclists, whom they wanted to offer protection and accompaniment. The Polish motorcyclists then intended to light candles on behalf of the Russians in Warsaw and Wroclaw. Members of the Night Wolves who had entered the EU by car or plane visited the Auschwitz concentration camp on May 29th together with Polish bikers and continued the tour on motorbikes that were lent them by solidarity Polish bikers.

The entry of three members of the Night Wolves was prevented on May 1st at Schönefeld Airport by the German authorities because the visas that had already been issued were revoked. The Russian Foreign Ministry then protested to the German government against their refusal to enter. The Berlin administrative court annulled the outspoken refusal of entry on the grounds on 6 May 2015 by the federal police pleas were not sustainable. This decision was confirmed on May 7, 2015 by the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court .

On May 2, 2015, a small group of “night wolves” accompanied by Czech and Slovak motorcyclists arrived in Bratislava, where they were welcomed by 700 people at the Slavín memorial, some of them cheering . After being observed by the police, a group of “roughly ten people” crossed the Austrian-German border near Bad Reichenhall on May 3, 2015, after having previously been in Vienna. After a visit to the Dachau memorial , the journey continued to Prague. When entering Germany via the A17 , the night wolves and their companions were held up by the police for about four hours before they could travel on to Torgau . On May 8th, around 30 members and sympathizers reached the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst . Among the 10,000 people who visited the Soviet Memorial in Berlin-Treptow on the occasion of Victory Day on May 9th , there were also eight to ten members of the Night Wolves, who laid flowers and wreaths to the applause of the crowd.

Receptions for the trip

Julian Hans sees the night wolves in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as “disgusting types: nationalists with Great Russian dreams, enemies of the free society, supporters of the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass”, who “are part of the right-wing collective movement“ Antimaidan ”, which is sponsored by the Kremlin Have called for violence against those who think differently and mocked the disabled ", and calls on civil society to resist the reception of the" right-wing extremists "in Berlin.

The US-based analyst Ulson Gunnar takes a different point of view in the New Eastern Outlook , an online magazine of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences . For him, the night wolves affair shows the increasing hypocrisy of the West, which defames its enemies as dictatorships, but suspends the freedom it cherishes if it is to be claimed by people who contradict its interests. In this context, he points out that American motorcycle clubs regularly held commemorative trips for fallen comrades. American bikers were even allowed to take such a commemorative trip in Vietnam, a country that the West describes as unfree.

Web links

Commons : Night Wolves  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Berlin bouncer who became Russia's most powerful rocker . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 22, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Putin's biker buddy - The night wolves howl in the Crimea . n-tv.de, March 6, 2014; Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b The rocker entrepreneur . In: Neues Deutschland , May 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Where we are is Russia" . In: taz , April 17, 2015.
  5. ↑ The bouncer returns . In: General-Anzeiger , April 16, 2015.
  6. ↑ Anna-Lena Mösken: The Berlin doorman who became Russia's most powerful rocker . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 22, 2015.
  7. ↑ «Ночные волки» за Патриарха. auto.mail.ru, April 19, 2012; Retrieved September 3, 2014.
  8. ↑ Benjamin Bidder: Russian bikers “Night Wolves”: Putin's pack. In: Spiegel Online . April 14, 2014, accessed April 28, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Why Kadyrov and Tkachev got the medal “For the Liberation of Crimea” , Echo Moskwy, June 8, 2014
  10. ↑ Putin's night wolves also howl in Switzerland . In: Der Bund , May 8, 2015
  11. ↑ Sevastopol's Olympic-Sized Take On Ukraine: Bikers, Ballet, And Swastikas . Radio Free Europe , August 11, 2014; aRetrieved September 3, 2014.
  12. ↑ His soul couldn't take it. In: Novaya Gaseta , December 30, 2015
  13. ↑ Tom Parfitt: Patriotic group formed to defend Russia against pro-democracy protesters. In: The Guardian . March 17, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Tom Parfitt: Crimea, one year on: the Night Wolves howl for Putin. In: The Daily Telegraph . March 17, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015 .
  15. ^ Mario Stäuble: Putin's night wolves also howl in Switzerland. In: Tages-Anzeiger , May 8, 2015.
  16. ↑ Klaus-Helge Donath: We defend ourselves against Satan, the West. RP, April 28, 2015.
  17. ↑ a b Klaus-Helge Donath: We defend ourselves against Satan. In: The daily newspaper . April 24, 2015, accessed April 30, 2015 .
  18. ↑ Timothy Snyder : The way into the bondage: Russia, Europe, America . Verlag CHBeck, 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-74141-8 , Chapter 4 “Innovation or Eternity”, p. 147 ff.
  19. ↑ Pro-Putin bikers get state funds to stage anti-western children's shows - report. In: The Guardian , May 8, 2015, accessed May 8, 2015.
  20. ↑ Patriots will work for the ideas . In: Novaya Gazeta , August 4, 2017
  21. ↑ Russia Ups the Ante in Crimea by Sending in the 'Night Wolves'. In: Time , February 28, 2014. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  22. ↑ Order for Putin's thugs . In: NZZ , July 3, 2014
  23. ↑ Issuance of a new Ukraine-related Executive Order and General License; Ukraine-related designations (December 19, 2014)
  24. ↑ Press release ( Treasury Targets Additional Ukrainian Separatists and Russian Individuals and Entities )
  25. ↑ a b c Poland’s stance is 'anti-Russian hysteria', says Night Wolves leader . In: The Guardian , April 25, 2015; Retrieved April 26, 2015.
  26. ↑ Expanded sanctions list. Government of Canada, February 17, 2015. Regulations Amending the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.international.gc.ca
  27. ↑ “Only no women” - “Night Wolves” biker club: This is how Putin's rocker brothers tick . Focus .de, November 5, 2014; accessed on May 4, 2015.
  28. ↑ Harry Alsop: Meet the Night Wolves. Putin's Hell's Angels . telegraph.co.uk, March 2, 2014; accessed on August 24, 2016
  29. ↑ a b Nationalist “victory drive” with obstacles . ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. WDR5 , April 30, 2015; Retrieved May 5, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wdr5.de
  30. ↑ krone.at
  31. ^ "Night wolves" before entry ban on Tagesschau , April 25, 2015; Retrieved April 26, 2015.
  32. ↑ Poland refuses to pass through for controversial biker club . Zeit Online , April 25, 2015; Retrieved April 28, 2015.
  33. ↑ Moscow demands an explanation from Poland. n-tv , April 27, 2015; accessed on May 2, 2015.
  34. ^ Controversial motorcycle tour: Night wolves visit Auschwitz . Euronews , April 29, 2015; accessed on May 2, 2015.
  35. ↑ Three night wolves were not allowed to enter Berlin Heise online, May 1, 2015; accessed on May 2, 2015.
  36. ↑ Moscow criticizes Berlin for being banned from entering the country for “night wolves” FAZ , May 1, 2015; accessed on May 2, 2015.
  37. ↑ Administrative Court Berlin: "Night Wolves": Russian citizens are allowed to enter Germany to commemorate the end of the war. In: gratis-urteile.de. May 6, 2015, accessed May 7, 2015 .
  38. ↑ Administrative Court Berlin: Members of the "Night Wolves" are allowed to enter the Federal Republic. In: gratis-urteile.de. May 7, 2015, accessed May 11, 2015 .
  39. ↑ "Night Wolves" -Biker arrived in Vienna . Der Standard , May 2, 2015; Retrieved May 3, 2015.
  40. ↑ "Night Wolves" want to visit Dachau. ( Memento from May 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Tagesschau, May 4, 2015; accessed on May 4, 2015.
  41. ^ Night wolves in Torgau. ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. MDR Saxony, May 8, 2015, accessed on May 11, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de
  42. ↑ "Night Wolves" arrived in Karlshorst . In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 8, 2015.
  43. ↑ Highlight of the "Victory Tour": With the Night Wolves in Berlin . n-tv, May 9, 2015.
  44. ↑ "Night Wolves" commemorate the war dead with thousands . Welt Online , May 9, 2015.
  45. ↑ How Berlin should receive the “night wolves” . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 30, 2015; Retrieved April 30, 2015.
  46. ↑ Ulson Gunnar: Burying The Greatest Victory in Spite. In: New Eastern Outlook , April 29, 2015. ournal-neo.org