Putin’s childhood friends ‘create their own Wagner-like private armies filled with football hooligans’ as oligarchs prepare for power vacuum and civil war if Russia loses in Ukraine

Putin’s childhood friends in Russia are building their own private armies of football hooligans in the style of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, a local investigative site reports.

Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, close allies of the Russian president, were reportedly introduced by sponsor Viktor Shendrik to a paramilitary fan group, the Española Battalion, as oligarchs prepare for a power vacuum and civil war if Russia loses in Ukraine.

Football hooligans have already been targeted to enlist in the armed forces, but it would be the first time fans have been reclassified as a separate private military company with plans to expand recruitment.

“Española was created by fans, mainly from Spartak,” a source told independent Russian publication Important Stories. “Then the Rotenbergs came up with the idea of ​​taking a PMC (private military company) under their own control.”

“A lot of big companies are creating their own private armies right now, and the brothers wanted to create their own private army based on Española.”

The Española Battalion – mainly ultra-supporters of the Russian Spartak Moscow – was reported to be 550 strong by March 2023.

This included 100 operators of deadly Kamikaze drones, unmanned devices that crash into their targets with devastating consequences like a guided missile.

Española commander Stanislav Orlov, nicknamed “Spaniard,” said earlier that the group of volunteers has joined forces with Russian operators in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, regions of eastern Ukraine inhabited by Russian-backed paramilitary groups since 2014.

‘We recently managed to obtain a separate status, which means we no longer belong to battalions or divisions.

“We have been given permission to create a separate battalion, Española.”

The group was last reported to be recruiting “stormtroopers,” scout saboteurs, snipers, drone operators, electronic warfare and air defense operators, portable reconnaissance station operators, anti-tank guided missile operators, anti-aircraft specialists, communications specialists, mechanics. drivers and medics to join their group of ultras.

Apart from their club rivalry, supporters of clubs such as CSKA, Zenit, Spartak, Torpedo and Lokomotiv are among those already competing against the Ukrainians.

“Disputes between fans of different clubs are prohibited,” Orlov told local media. “All this has to be left somewhere out there, far away, just like alcohol.”

The groups’ apparent acceptance to fight in Ukraine is a stunning volta-face for Putin, who publicly condemned football hooligans ahead of the 2018 World Cup. threatening high fines and prison sentences for repeat offenders.

Española’s alleged new sponsors, the Rotenberg brothers, are the Russian billionaires behind the StroyGazMontazh group, the largest gas pipeline and power line construction company in Russia.

Boris Rotenberg, a former judo teacher, trained with Vladimir Putin in his youth before suddenly making big leaps as an entrepreneur with the collapse of the USSR.

Arkady Rotenberg, also a close confidante and childhood friend of the Russian president, trained with Putin in a sambo club at the age of 12.

Like his brother, he became a judo teacher before his club did promised a $180 million state-funded facility that includes a yacht club.

The pair were hit by sanctions after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. force to sell them their private jets after the intervention of their Swiss bank.

“After the sanctions were imposed, the bank unilaterally stopped accepting payments… and later sold the plane without informing the borrower,” spokesman Boris Rotenberg said.

If the Española brothers were to help, it would not be the first time that Russian companies and state-affiliated groups have funded paramilitary groups to join the war effort in Ukraine.

Major stories previously reported that Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration, and Yuri Trutnev, the first deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, had given their support to a combat unit called Soyuz to end the war to support. effort in Ukraine.

Trutnev said the group consisted of elite martial artists, “masters of international sports,” trained for Ukraine’s front lines.

Between 2021 and 2023, their donations are said to have risen to 600 million rubles (about £5.23 million).

Major donors included top companies such as Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, which was previously led by Kirienko.

Sberbank also contributed 50 million rubles (about £435,000), and RusHydro – owner of hydroelectric power stations – around 60 million rubles (£523,000).

In June last year, the Financial Times reported that Roscosmos – Russia’s state space agency and a NASA partner – was working with the military to “create, finance and equip a militia to fight in Ukraine.”

It was not yet clear whether the Uran volunteer battalion had been deployed in Ukraine.

Gazprom – a state energy company – formed the Fakel, Plamya and Potok voluntary military formations in 2023 as a more loyal alternative to the Wagner Group, ahead of the attempted coup in June.

Fakel and Plamya do Reportedly subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Gazprom – which was renamed SEFE Energy in Britain after the start of the war – delivered gas to 20 percent of British companies by August 2022.