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Early life

The journalist Andrei Soshnikov reported for the Russian-language outlet Current Time (run by Radio Free Europe) in March 2021 that police in Dnipro already held a file on a Yegor Krasnov from age 11, when teachers reported that he had tortured a classmate in a school toilet to extort money. The article quotes classmates who said he spent time in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager and ran away from it, and who described him as a fighter in district-against-district brawls. Forensic experts later ruled him sane. Before the movement, Current Time wrote, he counted himself among the "ultras" of FC Dnipro and, according to his page on VKontakte, fought supporters of the Kharkiv club FC Metalist Kharkiv. He enrolled at a university to study psychology after school, and worked summers at a McDonald's.²

In correspondence with Current Time from the Dnipro jail, Krasnov claimed that in autumn 2015, at age 14, he killed a sleeping homeless man near the Karavan shopping centre in the Livoberezhnyi district. A source with access to Dnipro crime reports told the outlet that a body with injuries was found in a derelict building near the centre on November 16, 2015, but that the building differed from the one Krasnov described and that the source could not confirm the murder he narrated. Krasnov also told the outlet he was "fully certain of the deaths of 15 of my victims," without naming cases that could be checked.² A "Haters Handbook" (third edition, 2023), credited to Michail Chkhikvishvili and containing an alleged autobiography of Krasnov, repeats the 2015 account and describes abusive teenage parents, an interest in horror films, skinheads, school shootings and serial killers, and football-hooligan circles that led to neo-Nazi contacts. The researcher Marc-André Argentino wrote that little of this can be verified.³

Founding of MKY

The Haters Handbook claims that MKY has been active since 2017, which would have made Krasnov 16 or 17.³⁴ The same publication says the group was formed after Krasnov was pushed out of an ultra-nationalist group, and the Moscow daily Kommersant wrote in 2023, citing FSB information, that he had belonged to several neo-Nazi organisations in Ukraine but "did not fit in" and that even former associates were surprised by his emphasis on a cult of killing.³⁵ The earliest videos bearing the MKY name that researchers located were posted in 2018 on the imageboard 2chan; in 2019 short films of street attacks, mostly in Dnipro, circulated on VKontakte profiles and in Telegram channels. Of 38 MKY-branded videos reviewed by Argentino and co-authors, 33 depicted attacks in Dnipro, several of which feature Krasnov, and three were filmed in Saint Petersburg by other people.⁴ Current Time counted the same 38 scenes and wrote that in one, "Maniac" fires a revolver from a balcony; it also reported that Krasnov mixed the footage with horrorcore tracks and that the Moscow performer Skabbibal helped him with the audio.²

Law enforcement and later researchers attribute to him the online pseudonym "Egor Yakovlev." The Moscow monitoring group SOVA Center wrote in February 2022 that, according to law enforcement, MKU was created by Krasnov "using the pseudonym Egor Yakovlev on the internet," and listed his nicknames as "Zon," "Maniac" and "Nemets" (German).⁶ Argentino's December 2024 paper for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) repeats that the group was founded by the pseudonymous "Egor Yakovlev," whom "Russian authorities claim" was the then 21-year-old Krasnov.³ Images circulated by MKY channels show him with extensive tattoos of neo-Nazi and horror-film motifs, often edited to cover his face with anime characters.³

In Novaya Gazeta in March 2021, the leader of the Russia nationalist group Ethnic National Movement (ENO) said his organisation "from the start was engaged in promoting Yegor," that Krasnov had "been running around since 2019," and that his brother had sat in an ENO chat and written about him in 2020. The ENO leader said MKU "does not exist as an organisation" but is "a group of five people, most of them schoolchildren," and that Krasnov had killed no more than homeless people "lying under a bench."⁷

Arrest in Dnipro, January 2020

The Ukrainian television channel ICTV's Fakty reported on January 29, 2020 (without naming him) that police in Dnipro had detained a 19-year-old who beat homeless people, then used a knife, filmed the attacks and posted them online with calls to kill. The last victim, a 22-year-old, survived roughly ten stab wounds after being sprayed with gas, beaten and robbed on the city embankment. Police found the video and a promise to kill 20 more people, and the report says the suspect and two accomplices were held within hours, were in pre-trial detention, and faced a psychiatric examination; if found sane, he faced life imprisonment for attempted murder and propaganda of violence.⁸ The local outlet IPnews published the same account on the same day.⁹

Current Time later identified the detainee as Krasnov and described the sequence: in January 2020 security guards at a Dnipro shopping-centre café noticed a revolver (a training model firing 4 mm Flobert cartridges) that he was handling and called police. Officers detained him, searched the family flat and released him with a warning of a suspended sentence for the weapon. A knife taken in the search was then linked to a series of attacks, including the stabbing of a programmer, whose lung was pierced about two weeks before, and Krasnov was detained again outside his home and not released. Krasnov told the outlet that investigators tried to attribute three murders to him and that he refused to testify.² The Dnipropetrovsk regional prosecutor's office said at the time that Krasnov had five attack episodes to his account, according to a February 2020 report by Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine cited by Novaya Gazeta.⁷

Kommersant gave a different date, writing in January 2023 that he was detained in December 2020 after attacking a drug-addicted young man with a knife, a victim who survived and testified.⁵ The January 2020 date is that of the contemporaneous Fakty report and Current Time's account, and Current Time's March 2021 article put him in the Dnipro Central jail "for a year."²⁸

Trial in Dnipro

By March 2021 Krasnov was on trial in the Kirovskyi district court of Dnipro, with hearings every two weeks, alongside a 22-year-old co-defendant, Mykola Kononenko. Current Time reported at least ten episodes in the file, three of them before the court: an attack on a Syrian medical student, the stabbing on the embankment, and a robbery in a city park involving five victims in all. Charges included robbery and attempted murder, which carries up to life. His lawyer, Maksym Romantsov, argued that he had acted in a state of affect; a lawyer for the stabbing victim predicted "about ten years." A police source told the outlet that the sanity finding was sometimes made deliberately, because a psychiatric commitment would end with release after a few years.² Meduza also wrote in December 2021 that the trial began in spring 2021.¹

In a conversation with the outlet from his cell, Krasnov said getting a phone with internet in the jail was no problem, and that the cell phone purchases there were "all done through bought-off guards." He used it to manage MKY Telegram channels, and Current Time confirmed his involvement by contacting him. A photograph from the jail courtyard later appeared on an anonymous forum, which he denied posting.² The same article quotes a participant in the Saint Petersburg cell using the name "Yaroslav" who said that the cell's recruitment, bomb-making material and channels were run with Krasnov's approval, and that the number of active participants online was about 25. MKU Telegram channels claimed "15 active cells in cities of four states."²

In December 2021 an Agence France-Presse (AFP) source in Ukrainian law enforcement told the news agency that the MKU group "did exist" but was "no longer active in Ukraine," and that Krasnov was under investigation for a series of armed attacks and a racially motivated attempted murder.¹⁰ SOVA Center, in February 2022, wrote that Krasnov was held in the Dnipro jail on charges brought by local law enforcement.⁶ The Pravo.ru legal news site, reporting the same month on the Moscow court order, wrote that he was in the Dnipro pre-trial detention centre.¹¹

The suicide report of March 2021

The ENO leader told Novaya Gazeta in March 2021 that a friend of Krasnov who ran the MKU Telegram communities had confirmed that Krasnov killed himself in the Dnipro jail in early March. The same source said that the administrator then posted a purported voice message from Krasnov denying his death, which ENO called a forgery posted because police were watching the channels.⁷ The nationalist Telegram channel Belyi Shum ("White Noise") wrote on March 14, 2021 that his lawyer had confirmed he was found dead in his cell, that police were now posting from his channels, and called it a second "planned killing" of a national socialist by "the system" after Tesak, the nickname of Maxim Martsinkevich, who had died in Russian custody in September 2020; the same post said his associates denied his death.¹² Current Time, whose correspondent had been writing to Krasnov for a month, published its piece on March 26, 2021, and described him as alive and attending hearings.² GNET's December 2024 paper refers to the group continuing "following its founder's death" without further detail.³

Russian proceedings

The FSB reported in January and February 2021 a series of detentions of alleged MKU supporters, among them in Voronezh, Gelendzhik and Yaroslavl, saying on March 19, 2021 that a group of 14 had been "organised in 2019 under the ideological influence of a resident of Ukraine, Yegor Krasnov," and had been sent instructions by him and by Ukrainian MKU members "from Kharkiv and Kyiv."⁷ Novaya Gazeta reported that the Voronezh detainees denied any link to Ukraine, that Investigative Committee of Russia materials said nothing of such links and that Ukrainian outlet StopFake had called the group a fiction.⁷ Hromadske, the Ukrainian outlet, reproduced that account.¹³

On December 13, 2021 the FSB announced 106 detentions in 37 regions, among them three administrators of MKU online communities and two people suspected of planning armed attacks on educational institutions. It said Krasnov was the creator of the group and "acted under the patronage of the Ukrainian special services," and that a case for complicity in murder had been opened against him in Russia and he was on an international wanted list.¹ The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) called the allegation false, according to Current Time.¹⁴ A Ukrainian security official told AFP that the allegations were a "media campaign" aimed at discrediting Kyiv.¹⁰ StopFake wrote that the detainees' videos showed no link to a Ukrainian neo-Nazi group and that the FSB had withheld the detainees' names.¹⁵ Argentino and co-authors, writing in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point's CTC Sentinel, described the FSB's framing as echoing Russian claims used in justifying the invasion of Ukraine and as "to be viewed skeptically."⁴

The Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR) sought, and the Basmanny District Court of Moscow ordered on February 14, 2022, an in-absentia arrest of Krasnov on a charge of murder of two or more persons (Article 105, part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code), for two months from the date of his detention or extradition to Russia; the court said he was on an international wanted list.⁶¹⁶ Kommersant noted that Ukraine does not extradite its citizens and, in its view, that the order had no practical effect, adding that the FSB "did not rule out" that MKU members were connected to the SBU and other services, and that a detainee in a January 2022 case had told the FSB he received instructions from Krasnov through Telegram.¹⁷ Pravo.ru, citing TASS, wrote that by some reports he might be linked to the August 12, 2021 2021 Voronezh Bus Explosion.¹¹ The FSB announced on January 11, 2022 that a case for creating an extremist community had been opened against him, and that a Tver region resident born in 2003 had been detained for recruiting MKU members and preparing terrorist attacks on transport infrastructure "on Krasnov's instructions."¹⁸ A separate FSB case against him was opened under Article 282.1, part 1 (organising an extremist community) and Articles 30 and 205 (preparation of a terrorist act).¹⁶¹⁹

On January 16, 2023 the Supreme Court of Russia, in a closed session lasting under an hour and without an opposing party, granted the claim of Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov to designate MKU a terrorist organisation and ban it, a ruling that took immediate effect. Kommersant, summarising FSB information, wrote that after his arrest Krasnov "came under the control of the SBU, whose staff provided him with a laptop and other means of communication" that he used to supervise cells in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Voronezh, Yaroslavl and Gelendzhik.⁵¹⁹²⁰ Komsomolskaya Pravda reported the same day that he was suspected of organizing 11 murders in the Moscow and Leningrad regions, and that MKU sites run on his instructions offered payments "by Ukrainian intelligence" of several hundred to hundreds of thousands of US dollars for killings, explosions and arson in Russia.²¹

Security-service questions

Several accounts place the movement's Russian branch near state agencies. "Yaroslav," a Saint Petersburg participant, told Current Time he joined MKU in 2018 on the invitation of an employee of "one Russian agency" whom he declined to name, saying he owed a debt after "doing things" that the agency helped him resolve, that he joined "to break it from inside," and that the only thing the handlers learned from him was that the leader's name was Egor and that he came from Ukraine. He added that he stayed on good terms with the officer.² The outlet's interviewee for the Ukrainian context, the researcher Anna Gritsenko, said Krasnov was not known in the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement, that his story passed in Ukraine as "petty crime," and that it was hard to build a ramified network from a jail cell.¹⁴

The FSB's patronage claim, Kyiv's denial, and AFP's confirmation that a Ukrainian law-enforcement source considered the group real but inactive in Ukraine are on the record together.¹¹⁰ A The Daily Beast article of August 2024 (after Russian officials blamed the MKU for a plot in nine cities) quoted SOVA Center's Alexander Verkhovsky as doubting that Russian far-right radicals needed instructions from a jailed Ukrainian.²²

After the founder's detention

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) records that after Krasnov's 2020 arrest the Georgia (country) national Michail Chkhikvishvili ("Commander Butcher") took over leadership of the network.²³ The Department of Justice, which does not name Krasnov, said that from about September 2021 Chkhikvishvili distributed the "Hater's Handbook" and that in 2022 he solicited violence in New York City.²⁴ GNET wrote that the network formed alliances with NSO9A, an offshoot of Atomwaffen Division and the National Socialist Order, which draws on the Order of Nine Angles. In January 2025 the 2025 Antioch High School Shooting shooter named Krasnov in his manifesto, listed him among names he planned to write on his weapons, and posted photographs of him, according to the ADL.³²³ A "murder guide" produced by MKY and No Lives Matter contains a previously published Krasnov weapons manual, and the third edition of the Haters Handbook carries his biography.³⁴

Footnotes

"ФСБ сообщила о задержании 106 сторонников неонацистской группировки «М.К.У.», якобы созданной под руководством украинских спецслужб" ("FSB reported the detention of 106 supporters of the neo-Nazi group MKU, allegedly created under the leadership of Ukrainian special services"), Meduza, December 13, 2021. https://meduza.io/news/2021/12/13/fsb-soobschila-o-zaderzhanii-106-storonnikov-neonatsistskoy-gruppirovki-m-k-u-yakoby-sozdannoy-pod-rukovodstvom-ukrainskih-spetssluzhb. ↩︎
Andrey Soshnikov, "Что такое «М.К.У.». Рассказываем о «культе» убийств, созданном украинскими скинхедами, и его последователях в России" ("What is MKU: the 'cult' of killings created by Ukrainian skinheads and its followers in Russia"), Current Time (Настоящее Время), March 26, 2021. https://www.currenttime.tv/a/chto-takoe-m-k-u/31171118.html. The outlet noted that those named are under investigation and only a court can find them guilty. ↩︎
Marc-André Argentino, "Brotherhood of Blood: Understanding the Origins and Trajectory of the Maniac Murder Cult," GNET, December 4, 2024. https://gnet-research.org/2024/12/04/brotherhood-of-blood-understanding-the-origins-and-trajectory-of-the-maniac-murder-cult/ ↩︎
Marc-André Argentino, Arthur Gay and Naomi Bastin, "Nihilism and Terror: How M.K.Y. Is Redefining Terrorism, Recruitment, and Mass Violence," CTC Sentinel, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 2024. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/nihilism-and-terror-how-m-k-y-is-redefining-terrorism-recruitment-and-mass-violence/ ↩︎
Aleksey Sokovnin, "ВС запретил движение МКУ" ("Supreme Court banned the MKU movement"), Kommersant, January 16, 2023. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5773015. The FSB's statements on SBU control are attributed to the FSB in the article. ↩︎
"Заочно арестован Егор Краснов" ("Egor Krasnov arrested in absentia"), SOVA Center, February 2022. https://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/counteraction/2022/02/d45798/ ↩︎
Denis Avidzba and Ivan Zhilin, "Егор Маньяк и его «команда»" ("Egor Maniac and his 'team'"), Novaya Gazeta, March 19, 2021. https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/03/19/egor-maniak-i-ego-komanda. ↩︎
Valentyna Letiak, "Різав ножем і знімав на відео: у Дніпрі затримали 19-річного маніяка," Fakty ICTV, January 29, 2020. https://fakty.com.ua/ua/proisshestvija/20200129-rizav-nozhem-i-znimav-na-video-u-dnipri-zatrymaly-19-richnogo-maniyaka/ ↩︎
"Планировал массовые убийства: в Днепре орудовал 19-летний маньяк," IPnews, January 29, 2020 (archived May 12, 2021). https://web.archive.org/web/20210512194147id_/https://ipne.ws/novosti-dnepra/kriminal-i-proisshestviya/planiroval-massovye-ubiystva-v-dnepr/ ↩︎
"Russia arrests over 100 suspects linked to Ukrainian neo-Nazi group," Euronews (with AFP), December 13, 2021. https://euronews.com/2021/12/13/russia-arrests-over-100-suspects-linked-to-ukrainian-neo-nazi-group ↩︎
"Суд в Москве заочно арестовал лидера одной из неонацистских групп Украины," Pravo.ru, February 15, 2022. https://pravo.ru/news/239163/ ↩︎
Belyi Shum, "Что известно об основателе МКУ Егоре Краснове," Telegraph, March 14, 2021. https://telegra.ph/CHto-izvestno-ob-osnovatele-MKU-Egore-Krasnove-03-14. ↩︎
"Егор Маньяк и его «команда». Как ФСБ опять «нашла» в России «украинских нацистов»," Hromadske, March 23, 2021. https://hromadske.ua/ru/posts/egor-manyak-i-ego-komanda-kak-fsb-opyat-nashla-v-rossii-ukrainskih-nacistov ↩︎
Aleksey Aleksandrov, "«Из СИЗО создать такую разветвленную сеть сложно». Что в Украине знают об «основателе М.К.У.»," Current Time, December 14, 2021. https://www.currenttime.tv/a/iz-sizo-sozdat-takuyu/31608632.html ↩︎
"Russia's FSB Detains More 'Ukrainian Neo-Nazis'. Invests Over a Year in Its 'MKU' Fake," StopFake, December 2021. https://www.stopfake.org/?p=128477. ↩︎
"Суд в Москве заочно арестовал лидера украинской радикальной группировки «М.К.У.»," Kommersant, February 15, 2022. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5216949 ↩︎
"Следственный комитет России хочет арестовать лидера украинской радикальной группы «М.К.У.»," Kommersant, February 14, 2022. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5216687 ↩︎
"Уголовное дело возбудили против неонациста Краснова," REN TV, January 11, 2022, quoting the FSB Public Relations Center. https://ren.tv/news/v-rossii/925964-ugolovnoe-delo-vozbudili-protiv-lidera-m-k-u-krasnova ↩︎
"Верховный суд признал террористическим движение «Маньяки: культ убийства»," RAPSI, January 16, 2023. https://rapsinews.ru/judicial_news/20230116/308619581.html ↩︎
"Верховный суд России объявил движение «М.К.У.» террористической организацией," Meduza, January 16, 2023. https://meduza.io/news/2023/01/16/verhovnyy-sud-rossii-priznal-dvizhenie-m-k-u-manyaki-kult-ubiystv-terroristicheskoy-organizatsiey ↩︎
"Верховный Суд РФ признал М.К.У* террористической организацией," Komsomolskaya Pravda, January 16, 2023. https://www.kp.ru/daily/27452/4706951/. ↩︎
"Pro-Kremlin Propaganda Says FSB Busted Neo-Nazi Terror Plot in 9 Cities," The Daily Beast, August 2024. https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-claims-it-busted-neo-nazi-terror-plot-in-9-cities/ ↩︎
ADL, "Maniac Murder Cult (MKY, MKU, MMC)," Glossary of Extremism. https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/maniac-murder-cult-mky-mku-mmc ↩︎
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, "Georgian National Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Soliciting Hate Crimes and Planning Mass Casualty Attack." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/georgian-national-sentenced-15-years-prison-soliciting-hate-crimes-and-planning-mass ↩︎

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