The Boogaloo Bois’ ex-leader Mike Dunn has been fighting in Ukraine. At least 10 members of the far-right group are joining him, VICE News learned. Since the war in Ukraine began, some young Americans have rolled into towns there, waving flags with tropical prints. Local soldiers have sometimes assumed the foreign fighters had traveled all the way from Hawaii to join the fight against the Russian invasion. But in reality, those flags have nothing to do with Hawaii. They’re the symbol of the American “Boogaloo” movement, a sprawling network of anti-government extremists, militiamen, and far-right members. The movement made its way offline and onto American streets in early 2020, when groups of young men in Hawaiian shirts carrying AR-style rifles started showing up to anti-lockdown protests. Since the “Boogaloo”—memespeak for a violent uprising or civil war—failed to materialize in the U.S., some of the movement’s adherents sought battle experience elsewhere: Ukraine. VICE News has learned that 10 so-called “Boogaloo Bois” are preparing to deploy from the U.S. to Ukraine in the coming weeks, just as government agencies worry that American far-right extremists traveling to the conflict for combat experience could become national security threats upon their return. Vouching for them is Mike Dunn, a 21-year-old from Virginia, who was considered a leader in the Boogaloo movement and has been embroiled in the conflict in Ukraine since April. Until recently, he was recovering in a Ukrainian military hospital after his brigade came under heavy artillery in July, leading to fatalities, while defending a village in the Donetsk region (…) Dunn said several nationalities were represented among the foreign fighters he works with. The International Legion, a section of the Ukrainian military set up to process international volunteers and train them, officially states that foreign fighters come from at least 55 countries, with the U.S. and U.K. supplying the largest contingents. For years, experts have warned that the war in Ukraine—which was, for a time, a frozen trench conflict isolated to Donbas—could become a training ground and terrorist hotbed for the global far-right movement. Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist unit within the Ukrainian military, is dogged by its connections to neo-Nazism and the global far-right. So far, no strong evidence suggests the latest phase of the war has attracted scores of neo-Nazis or right-wing extremists to fight for Ukraine. Yet the problem remains on the Ukrainian government’s radar. In 2019, while the conflict was still simmering in Donbas, Ukrainian intelligence deported two American foreign fighters—one a Marine dropout and also a former member of designated terror group The Base—for their far-right terrorist activities in the country.
via vice: More Boogaloo Bois Are Heading to Ukraine to Fight