[willvarfar]

Yeah! The Ukrainians had small but vocal numbers of fascist volunteers on _their_ side, and that got a lot of bad press and the Russian side went to great lengths to paint the whole of Ukraine as fascist. So its really surprising they'd have fascists going to the _Russian_ side.

[simonh]

Russia is selling itself as a counter to liberal, internationalist hegemony in the form of the EU. Ukraine wants to join the EU and is economically supported by the EU and broke away from Russia's political sphere over it, and the alt right hates the EU political project. This makes Russia and the European alt right natural allies.

[bayesian_horse]

Russia is funding and supporting several right-wing groups and parties in Europe.

The cooperation is based on mutual pursuit of more power.