THE RNE SEEKS LEBENSRAUM…

Members of the neo-Nazi movement, Russian National Unity (RNE), have apparently decided to spread their brand of inclusive politics into neighboring states. On February 5, group of fifteen to twenty RNE supporters who had been handing out party literature severely beat up three members of Belarus’s democratic opposition in an underpass in downtown Minsk. Belarusan police–so vigilant in other circumstances–were nowhere to be found. Four days later–and after the incident was widely reported on Russian television channels–Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka charged that the Belarusan opposition members had provoked the assault “as a pretext for proceeding to create its own armed groups,” and threatened to crack down–not on the RNE supporters, of course, but on the democratic opposition. RNE activists have also become increasingly active in Latvia, where they just launched, illegally, their own publications, which call for the restoration of a Greater Russia. The Russian authorities have vowed to crack down on the group as part of a wider move against political extremism.