A video report yesterday from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said:
The presence of a nationalist group that helped Russia seize Crimea has sparked anger in NATO member Slovakia.... a petition against the group calls it "Putin's paramilitary vanguard" in a "hybrid war against the EU, NATO, and Slovakia".
In the good old days when our President was a patriot, news of Russian sympathizers setting up a military camp in a NATO ally would have prompted Washington to take action. But today? Crickets. The Trump administration has said not one word about the Night Wolves’ infiltration of NATO allies. And Republicans in Congress aren’t saying anything either.
It’s easy to see why. Effectively, Trump has joined Putin’s war on NATO, and congressional Republicans are cowed both by Trump and by Putin. Although the Obama administration sanctioned the Night Wolves for their actions in Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine and a year ago the Treasury Dept. announced followup sanctions against two Night Wolves entities involved in Ukraine, the Trump administration has not publicized Night Wolves activity in NATO countries and the recent secret Putin-Trump discussions have weakened Western resolve to resist Russia. Plus, as Kelly Weill wrote in yesterday’s Daily Beast, Trump’s white-nationalist base loves Putin’s Russia:
“Russia is our friend,” a group of torch-waving racists chanted during an October rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “The South will rise again.”
The Night Wolves started out as a biker gang, but have since morphed into part of Putin’s paramilitary. They stormed a Ukrainian naval base and a gas facility during Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and are one of Putin’s weapons of subversion in his war on NATO. For example, the Night Wolves popped up in Montenegro to assist the failed 2016 coup by pro-Russian elements, and they are allied with Republika Srpska, the pro-Russian half of Bosnia that Russia wants to break away. Although the Night Wolves are sometimes laughed at and fail as often as they succeed, subversion is cheap and Putin likes cheap: the Night Wolves’ recent nine-day Balkan tour reportedly was funded by a Kremlin grant of only $41,000, waaaay cheaper than a Russian Navy port visit and possibly just as effective.
The best recent summary of the Night Wolves in the English-language open literature is an article in the Canadian Military Journal by Defence R&D Canada asymmetric warfare expert Matthew A. Lauder, who writes:
… the biker image of the Night Wolves is a carefully curated façade meant to provide a semblance of rebelliousness all while the group serves as a tool of the state… [Their] activities include, but are not limited to, intelligence collection, propaganda dissemination, agitation and provocation, combat operations and tailored violence, including intimidation and targeted assassination.
Putin and Trump love every bit of this and want more, and congressional Republicans go along because they fear Trump and Putin more than they love freedom.