By Arshad Mohammed and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States imposed sanctions on Wednesday on two men linked to a Russian “ethnically motivated violent extremist group,” one of whom visited the United States to connect with far-right groups while the other funded pro-Russian fighters in the Donbas.
The U.S. Treasury said it targeted Stanislav Shevchuk, a Europe-based Ukrainian who served as a representative of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) and who traveled to the United States in 2017 seeking connections with “extremist” groups.
It named the other man as Alexander Zhuchkovsky, a Russian who has used a Russia-based social media platform to fundraise and recruit for RIM, which the Treasury described as an “extremist” group that was itself sanctioned by the U.S. State Department in 2020 for having provided training for acts of terrorism.
Zhuchkovsky has raised over 200 million roubles since 2014 to purchase weapons and military equipment for RIM and other pro-Russian fighters in the Donbas area in Ukraine and facilitated the travel of RIM fighters to the region, the Treasury said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Zhuchkovsky has kept using his social media accounts and online payment methods to buy military equipment and supplies for Russian fighters carrying out the invasion and fighting in the Donbas, it added.
The Treasury described its naming of the two men as “specially designated global terrorists” as part of an effort to go after “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist” groups that reach out to people in the United States.
After failing to take Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in March, Russia has focused its assault on the Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine made up of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces where Moscow has supported pro-Russian separatists.
“The Russian Imperial Movement has sought to raise and move funds using the international financial system with the intent of building a global network of violent groups that foster
extremist views and subvert democratic processes,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a Treasury statement.
The Treasury said it also imposed sanctions on Swede Anton Thulin for his pursuit of terrorist training even after serving his prison sentence for his 2017 attacks in Sweden, which it said showed he continues to be a terrorism threat.
All property and interests in property of the three men that fall under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked and those who deal with them may also be sanctioned under some circumstances.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis in Washington and by Arshad Mohammed in Saint Paul, Minn. Additional Reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Chizu Nomiyama, Alexandra Hudson)
