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Editor’s note: Vladislav Gillung officially changed his name to Vladislav Romanov in his twenties. Although the first recorded use of him as Romanov is from the period between 2020 and 2022, we will refer to him as such throughout most of the story for consistency.

In September 2019, a 21-year-old man named Vladislav Gillung registered as a candidate for Russia’s municipal elections in the city of St. Petersburg.

Tweets by the former campaign leader for the anti-corruption activist and opposition candidate, Alexei Navalny, show that Gillung was attempting to run as part of the movement opposing Russian president, Vladimir Putin. 

The local electoral committee refused his candidacy. However, only weeks later, he seemed to have switched sides as he attended an event for the pro-Putin United Russia party.

Vladislav Gillung has since changed his name to Vladislav Romanov and became close to Rusich, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that is under western sanctions. Rusich members have been accused of, and co-founder Yan Petrovsky convicted of, war crimes. 

An investigation by Bellingcat has tracked Romanov from these early days in St. Petersburg, finding that he appears to have assisted in Rusich’s fundraising and business activities. He has even been pictured near the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Romanov’s bank number has appeared in Rusich’s calls for donations. On top of this, he is listed as the person selling Rusich merchandise on a Russian webstore.

The money Rusich makes in these ventures helps fund its operations, according to experts Bellingcat spoke to.

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When Bellingcat reached out to Romanov via email, he said that he joined Navalny’s movement because he “wanted to go into politics and represent the interests of society”. He also acknowledged helping run Rusich’s online store but denied working for the group. “I don’t work with Rusich. They just asked someone with experience and education to take over their store, and I helped them out without pay. I don’t see anything special about it,” Romanov said. There is no suggestion that he has been directly involved in the violent activities other members of the group have been accused of or found guilty of, nor has he been placed under international sanctions or been accused in any criminal cases related to the group.

Denis Mikhailov, a Navalny campaign leader for the 2019 municipal elections, said that he recalled Romanov. Mikhailov told Bellingcat that Romanov was a “reserved and well-mannered guy”, who “always listened more than he talked”.

But it soon became apparent after the elections that their views differed on a number of subjects. “We talked about Ukraine, and he expressed that he sympathises with the so-called LPR/DPR,” breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Mikhailov said.

Mikhailov has since left Russia as pressure on those connected to the now deceased Navalny (who was poisoned by Russian secret service agents in 2020 and died in prison in 2024) has increased. He was not aware that Romanov had moved towards United Russia, but he said he was not entirely surprised by this turn of events. “I don’t remember [Romanov’s] exact words, but, in addition to the topic of Ukraine, he said something about Putin’s system being the only way to build a political career.”

When asked why he left the opposition movement, Romanov told Bellingcat that he “became very disappointed in the ideas of Navalny and his team”, because they worked “to destabilise Russia”.

Just two months after the 2019 municipal elections, Romanov was pictured at an event where the branding of the youth wing of the United Russia party was clearly visible.

Romanov told Bellingcat that he “used to be a member of both the youth wing and the United Russia party itself”. 

“I haven’t been a member for three years now, as politics no longer interests me. I prefer my profession” as a businessman, he said.

The people he posed with at the event included Monika Pakhomi, a council member of St. Petersburg’s Izmailovskoe district. According to the council’s website and VK page, Pakhomi was awarded a medal for her work supporting the occupation of Ukraine by the regional All-Russia People’s Front – an organisation under European Union sanctions. Pakhomi did not respond to requests for comment.

This image allowed Bellingcat to search for and identify further pictures of Romanov available online.

One image posted to Twitter, now known as X, showed him armed and alongside prominent Rusich fighters, including Yan Petrovsky (who has been convicted of war crimes by a Finnish court) and the Russian nationalist politician, chairman of the Rodina party, Alexey Zhuravlev (currently under international sanctions), in the formerly occupied city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine. Bellingcat had previously reported on Zhuravlev’s trip to Izyum without realising that Romanov had accompanied him there.

When Bellingcat asked him about the trip, Romanov said that he spent two days with Alexey Zhuravlev in Izyum, “to deliver humanitarian aid to the residents”, and the “LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic] fighters gave Alexey and me automatic weapons for a couple of photos, and we took pictures as a souvenir”.

He added that selection for the trip was handled by his university in conjunction with the Youth Parliament of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which is why Zhuravlev was there.” Bellingcat sought to confirm this with Romanov’s university, the St.Petersburg State University of Economics, but did not receive a response before publication. 

When asked if he ever fought in Ukraine, Romanov said: “I never fought due to lack of training.” He also claimed that he “never joined Rusich”.

“Unfortunately, I have no military skills, so even if I wanted to join, I couldn’t. I’m just a businessman,” he said in messages over email.

Rusich’s Merchandise Man

Rusich is a paramilitary group that has been an active force in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Several of its fighters have been involved in Wagner operations in places like Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic.

One former commander and founding member, Yan Petrovsky, has been convicted of war crimes by a Finnish court and another, Alexey Milchakov, has been implicated in war crimes.

The organisation and its leaders are under international sanctions, and so are some of its cryptocurrency wallets, but many people associated with Rusich are still largely unknown to the public. Vladislav Romanov was – until now – one of those it appears has been operating behind the scenes. 

In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the group claimed to Meduza that it had an IT and a Financial department that organised fundraisers and donations from supporters and was also active in cybercrime.

On April 2, 2024, Rusich posted a message on Telegram stating that it was funded solely through organised fundraising and advertising.

Yet they now also sell their own products as well, including protein powders, key chains and Alexey Milchakov sticker packs.

Jonathan Deer, who has researched Rusich at the New America think tank, told Bellingcat it was common for Rusich to say, “‘We need XYZ and we need it in this amount. We are requesting that you either donate the item itself or donate to us at this card number’”. Though this still happens, Deer thinks calls for donations have become less frequent.

Rusich runs its own site to assist with merchandise operations, but it uses Ozon.ru, a Russian webshop, as well. The seller on the Rusich Ozon page is listed as Vladislav Konstaninovich Romanov, with goods shipped from St. Petersburg.

Bellingcat looked for this name online and found four individuals in a leaked Alfa-Bank database (Alfa-Bank is one of the largest private banks in Russia, currently under EU and US sanctions).

One of these individuals was the owner of a card number ending in 1073. This same card number, it transpires, appeared in messages from an old Rusich Telegram channel. Although that channel no longer exists, some messages were archived on TGStat, a web-based analytics tool for Telegram, such as this one from 2022.

In the messages, benefactors were instructed to donate using crypto or to just transfer money to the Alfa-Bank card number that matched Romanov’s (ending in 1073).

A message on September 9, 2022, stated Rusich had collected 900,000 Rubles (at that time US $14,805). Two days later, they claimed to have received 1.2 million Rubles (then $19,740). Both messages list Romanov’s Alfa-Bank account as the place where donations should be sent.

It is not possible to know for sure what Rusich spent the money on. But the September 9 message did say the unit needed a wide variety of equipment.

The fact that an account listing Romanov’s details appears to be handling money for Rusich suggests he is not just a “grunt”, said Deer of New America. Other open source information gathered by Bellingcat, meanwhile, tied his name to further revenue generating projects.

Phone Numbers and Contact Books

On June 9, 2025, the Rusich Telegram channel instructed people to contact an account named “rozzkr” for ad-related inquiries. Similarly, messages sent to the Rusich Telegram channel receive an automated response asking those who want to advertise with them to contact rozzkr, their “manager”. Rozzkr appears to be connected to one of Romanov’s phone numbers, which ends in 0663, and was visible in several leaked databases.

According to the 2022 Yandex Food data leak, for example, a Yandex Food account with this name and number was used in December 2021.

The rozzkr Telegram account itself contains little detail. It includes a first name that consists only of numbers, an anonymised profile picture and a seemingly random location. The account owner also added a standard message for all empty chats: an image of Alexey Milchakov in camouflage uniform and some accompanying text that says it costs 100,000 Rubles to place an ad in their Telegram channel.

Price information from the rozzkr account is consistent with what Rusich posted on Jan. 27, 2024, where they said the money would be used for the group’s needs.

Romanov told Bellingcat that the number ending in 0663 was “indeed an old phone number registered” to him. But he said that in “around 2017-2018”  one of his “acquaintances” asked to borrow his SIM card to register a work Telegram account. “Judging by everything, this is the one,” he said, adding that he didn’t know that “this number was still active” and that he had no idea “who currently owns the @rozzkr account on Telegram”. Bellingcat tried to call the number and it did now appear to be inactive.

Romanov did not share who he gave the SIM card to or detail why or how the phone number continued to be used in his name after 2018.

Other leaks also show a Vladislav Konstantovich Romanov provided the same phone number to a Russian courier service (CDEK) in 2021 and 2022.

Interestingly, Bellingcat also noticed on the Sherlock Telegram bot that another number linked to the rozzkr account was used for mobile banking by someone named Vladislav Konstantinovich R – this aligns with Romanov’s first name, patronymic and the first letter of his surname.

Bellingcat asked Romanov about the second number linked to the account and called the number itself. The number appeared to now be disconnected and Romanov did not respond to further questions about this before publication.

Leaked data from ZAGS (ЗАГС), Russia’s civil registration, shows that Gillung legally changed his name to Romanov. Romanov said his parents divorced in his childhood and that Gillung is his mother’s surname. He decided to take on his father’s surname “as is customary in Russia”.

Romanov can also be directly linked to Rusich-leader, Alexey Milchakov, through a phone number both appeared to use at least once.

Milchakov shows up multiple times in a data leak from the courier service, CDEK, often using a phone number ending in 386. The same number also appears with two other names in the CDEK leak: Anton Yakovlev and Vladislav Konstantinovich Gillung (Romanov’s previous legal name).

Romanov told Bellingcat that “Alexey [Milchakov], an old acquaintance of mine, once asked me to pick up a parcel for him when he was away.”

A Facebook leak shows that Milchakov used that number to create his now-deleted Facebook page.

People using Numbuster and GetContact, meanwhile, tagged the same phone number as belonging to Milchakov.

Contact book apps like these harvest data from users’ phones and have been used in many investigations, such as Bellingcat’s Berlin Tiergarten assassination investigation (where Numbuster and GetContact were used) and the investigation into the death of Colombian protestor, Lucas Villa (where TrueCaller was used).

In Numbuster, one of Romanov’s phone numbers (ending in 663 and that he used for his Yandex Food account) is tagged as “Vlad United Russia St. Petersburg Youth Politics”.

Asked how he met Milchakov, Romanov claimed that they met at a gun shop in St. Petersburg when he was buying his hunting rifle.

Bellingcat contacted Rusich before publication to ask about the details in this story but did not receive a response.

Aiganysh Aidarbekova contributed to this report for Bellingcat.

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The organisers of an annual combat sports event allegedly told the venue owner that they were using the space to film an activewear commercial featuring a small “crowd” including women and children. 

In reality, the event hosted on Aug. 30 by SoCal Active Club was part of a movement that champions violent and racist ideas. It featured combat sports fights and performances from two neo-Nazi bands who each have had a member involved in lethal violence, including one for a 2012 mass murder described by the former US Attorney General as a “heinous act of hatred and terror”.

Bellingcat verified a tip-off from independent researcher Wiley D. Cope and researchers from SoCal Research Club (SCRC) that the event was held at a suburban San Diego professional wrestling venue based on images posted by SoCal Active Club as well as a teaser video posted by a far-right propaganda outlet, which Bellingcat is not naming to prevent amplification. The venue operates as a professional wrestling school on weekdays, and is available for rental for events on weekends. 

Charles Smith, co-founder and CEO of Rising Star Entertainment Group, which leases out the venue, confirmed the location after Bellingcat showed him images of the event. He told Bellingcat by email that he was not aware that the space was being used for an Active Club event, and had never heard of the group or “any sort of racial movement here in San Diego of that calibre” before he was contacted by journalists about it.

Smith said he was told by the event’s hosts via Peerspace, a third-party booking and rental website, that the booking was to shoot “an active fitness clothing brand prototype commercial”. 

“I was informed that there would be a small audience of people that would be being used as the ‘crowd’ for the filming and that it would include women and children,” Smith told Bellingcat, “so of course I thought nothing of it.” 

Upon verifying from the images that the event did indeed take place at his venue, Smith said that it was “disappointing that this is undeniable proof that this event occurred here with this audience”.

The international Active Club movement focuses on using fitness, fighting and fashion to recruit young men and boys into the far right, normalise fascist ideas and prepare them for physical violence. The Active Club movement was founded by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, who is currently on probation in the United States after having pleaded guilty in December 2024 to planning and engaging in riots at political rallies across California in 2017.

Since 2023, Bellingcat has been tracking and geolocating annual “fight nights” held in the US, where white nationalist groups that focus on training their members to fight against their purported enemies gather. 

“Collaborations with other Active Clubs and neo-fascist organisations, such as the Patriot Front, serve as important cultural events for the far-right to grow their sphere of influence,” Heidi Beirich from the US-based Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), told Bellingcat by email. 

“Exposing Active Club and neo-fascist activities associated with violence helps to inform the public, and authorities, about the beliefs that turn into violence,” Beirich added, “especially when these beliefs have become commonplace in mainstream politics.”

Smith, who told Bellingcat that he is of mixed African-American and Japanese ethnicity, said that he visited the venue late in the evening after the event, when the hosts were cleaning up.

“I was greeted with pats on the back, handshakes, and a couple [of] ‘thanks for letting us use the space, greatly appreciated,’” he told Bellingcat. “It’s hard to believe it’s the same group.” 

SoCal Active Club and the far-right propaganda outlet, which was founded by Rundo, did not respond to Bellingcat’s requests for comment.

Identifying Details: An Orange Wall

On Sept. 2, SoCal Active Club posted several photos on their Telegram channel from the event. Two of these photos show details of the venue, including an orange-coloured part of a wall in the background. 

The photos also show a banner for a support group of the Hammerskins, a violent international neo-Nazi gang that has links to the Active Club movement, particularly in the United States. Hammerskins members have been convicted of multiple crimes, including assault and murder.

A 12-second black-and-white teaser video released by the far-right propaganda outlet founded by Rundo gave a blurry idea of the shape of the building and the ceiling of the venue.

These images provided crucial clues for Cope and researchers from SCRC, a Southern California-based research collective that monitors and shares information on hate and extremist groups, including Active Clubs. Based on local knowledge of the area and their familiarity with the activities of members of the Active Club chapter in Southern California, they began searching for San Diego County gyms and warehouses with boxing rings for rent. They found the venue the same day the teaser video was released, Cope said.

Bellingcat was able to confirm that this was the location of the Active Club combat sports event, using videos and images from previous events held by the wrestling school (which we are choosing not to name as there is no evidence that they have any involvement in the event). 

In a video posted on the school’s YouTube channel on Aug. 17, 2025 – two weeks before the Active Club event – the same orange wall and black banners with orange trim that are only partially obscured at the Active Club event, are visible. Also visible in both the venue’s YouTube video and the photos posted from the Active Club event is a wooden ceiling beam, with wires on the left-hand side.

Another photo posted by the hosts further confirmed that the professional wrestling venue was the location of the Active Club combat sports event. In a photo taken of one of the neo-Nazi bands that performed at the event, brown beams and wires are visible on the ceiling; these same beams and wires, in the same positions, can be seen in photos posted by the venue on their Peerspace page advertising the venue for rent for events.

Bands ‘A Major Cause For Concern’

The Active Club event was more than just a “fight night”. In their post after the event, the SoCal Active Club hosts thanked two US-based neo-Nazi bands for their musical performances after the fights, praising the bands for “really topping the event off with incredible energy.” 

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Bellingcat is not naming the bands to avoid amplification, who have been active for many years in US and international neo-Nazi music scenes.

Both bands have had members associated with violence, including mass murder. A former member of one of the bands, Wade Michael Page, murdered seven people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012 before taking his own life in what US authorities called a hate crime and a terrorist act. Page was also a member of the Hammerskins. 

A current member of the other band that performed at the Active Club event pleaded guilty in 2012 to attempted involuntary manslaughter and served prison time for his crime. This band member punched a man outside a Michigan bar and ultimately caused the man’s death from a severe brain injury.

According to the GPAHE’s Beirich, the presence of these bands is “a major cause for concern, albeit unsurprising considering the purpose of the Active Club movement is based on beliefs in an impending, and unavoidable, race war”.

“The history of violence associated with Active Clubs is clear,” Beirich added.

Evening Vigil Turned Into Alleged Assault

Two weeks after the combat sports event on Sept. 13, members of one of the Active Clubs that organised it participated in an alleged assault in Huntington Beach, California. 

Members of Patriot Front, SoCal Active Club and other far-right and neo-Nazi groups took part in an evening vigil in Huntington Beach, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, in honour of assassinated right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk.

According to reporting from the event by The LA Ten Four, a newsletter covering issues surrounding first responders in the Los Angeles area, the man who was attacked was a vigilgoer who confronted the far-right group along with several others, calling them “un-American” and “traitors” and following the group into a parking garage. 

Video footage of the assault taken by The LA Ten Four shows the man being punched, kicked and stomped on by several others. At least two of the attackers appear to be wearing SoCal Active Club t-shirts, identifiable as such by photos and videos posted from the vigil.

SoCal Active Club has not responded to Bellingcat’s request for comment on their apparent involvement in this assault as of publication.

Wiley D. Cope contributed research to this piece.

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