The founder and leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a far-right paramilitary unit fighting alongside Kyiv’s army, has been killed in action on the front lines in Ukraine, the group announced Saturday.
Denis Kapustin, 41, was killed overnight on Saturday while carrying out a combat mission in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, the RVC said.
He was also known by the name Denis Nikitin and the nom-de-guerre White Rex.
“We will definitely have our revenge, Denis. Your legacy lives on,” RVC wrote on its Telegram channel, vowing to release additional details of Kapustin’s death following an investigation.
Kapustin, a Moscow-born neo-Nazi, moved to Kyiv in 2017 and founded the RVC at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to its manifesto, the RVC seeks to overthrow Putin and create an ethnic Russian state, abandon all imperial ambitions and focus on the well-being of ethnic Russians.
Kapustin was placed on Russia’s federal registry of “terrorist and extremists” in March 2023 following the RVC’s incursion into the Bryansk region which borders Ukraine. He was added to the Interior Ministry’s wanted list the same month.
Kapustin has been subject to a 10-year ban from the Schengen open-border area since 2019. The open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat reported that he has remained involved in far-right activities in Germany, France and Bulgaria.
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