Kyiv connection: How the Charlottesville boys learned from Europe's far right
And one of them is on the lam
Cover photo/Reuters: A January 28, 2018, demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order.”
By Tatiana Prophet
Court documents show that the leader of a white nationalist group involved in the 2017 Charlottesville tiki-torch violence later went to Europe for Adolf Hitler’s birthday with a stop in Ukraine to bond with the street-violence wing of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
In a criminal complaint filed in 2018, FBI Special Agent Scott Bierwirth stated that based on his interviews with Customs and Border Patrol Agents as well as evidence from public and private social media postings, two leaders of the recently founded Rise Above Movement, an “alt-right” mixed martial arts “fight club” based in Southern California, traveled to Ukraine for a black metal rock concert, a gym workout — and an MMA fight at the Reconquista Club in Kyiv.
An undated photo of Robert Rundo published in the Free Bosnia magazine in March 2021. He had crossed the border briefly from Serbia and the Bosnian authoritiies were not excited to see him. Notice the large elbow tattoo of the wheel associated with Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
“On a conference call in December 2016, co-founder Ben Daley “instructed listeners to wear polo-style shirts and khakhis, to get military style haircuts, and to maintain an organized presence at the events.”
“They came to learn our ways,” said Olena Semanyaka, international secretary of the National Corps, the political party affiliated with the Azov Battalion, as reported by Radio Free Europe. She added that Robert Rundo, Ben Daley and Michael Miselis "showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has."
White nationalists clash with counter-protesters at the Unite the Right March through Charlottesville, August 12, 2017.
Semenyaka, an academic born in 1987, is known as the “First Lady of Ukrainian Nationalism,” according to a project by George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. She supports the establishment of an “Intermarium,” a North-South alliance of the nations between the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic that was proposed after World War I. Semenyaka also wants Ukraine to become part of NATO.
She was recently stripped of a fellowship from an Austrian academic organization due to her nationalist leanings. While she has been photographed with a swastika, she has stated that the photo was meant to be “ironic” given the accusations of far-right nationalism against her and her compatriots.
Olena Semenyaka (published by Radio Free Europe).
And while Semenyaka calls herself a European conservative, “Azov Battalion is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and use of Nazi symbolism,” stated Bierwirth in the indictment. He added that Azov is “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”
The Rise Above Movement YouTube channel posted a video from 2018 of members working out at Ukraine’s famous outdoor gym, Kachalka.
In private messages, Rundo and Daley referred to the “14 words,” a known Nazi slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” They also regularly used the phrase “da goyim know,” referring to a Yiddish term for non-Jews.
At the Reconquista Club, Rundo lost the fight, but accepted his defeat graciously and shouted “Slava Ukraina” or “Glory to Ukraine.”
Logo for the Reconquista Club, a restaurant and bar in Kyiv.
That was in April 2018, eight months after the infamous Unite the Right march in Charlottesville on the night of August 11, 2017, which shocked the world with images and videos of clean-cut, white American men in white shirts and khaki pants carrying tiki torches shouting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil,” known Nazi slogans.
In his late teens, Rundo served prison time for stabbing a Latino man in his native Queens. But what he did before moving to Huntington Beach is unknown. He and his associates had only begun organizing the Rise Above Movement in late 2016 according to court documents. They were supporters of Donald Trump but didn’t feel he went “far enough.” At the time of the rioting they had between 15 and 20 members. After Charlottesville, the founders were laying low according to their social media posts, which may have been why they had planned a Europe trip.
Robert Paul Rundo, of Huntington Beach, holds down and punches a counter-protester at a political rally at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach on March 25, 2017, federal authorities say, as fellow alleged RAM members watch. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Their involvement in the torch-bearing march was not small; according to special agent Bierwirth, on a conference call in December 2016, co-founder Ben Daley “instructed listeners to wear polo-style shirts and khakhis, to get military style haircuts, and to maintain an organized presence at the events.”
By August 2017, the boys were on their way to Charlottesville. They had bought torches and fighting tape and engaged in violence both that night and the next day, when counter-protester Heather Heyer, 32, was struck by the Dodge Challenger of James Alex Fields. Fields was convicted in her death and the injury of 19 others.
But while several of his associates were eventually charged with inciting riots, pleaded guilty and were sentenced in federal court in Charlottesville, Va., Rundo, originally from Queens, N.Y., was never charged in Virginia court for his part in the violence. He was charged in California for earlier fights at rallies in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley. But in mid-2019, Rundo and his three co-defendants were set free after a judge dismissed the charges as being “unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.”
“Make no mistake that it is reprehensible to throw punches in the name of teaching Antifa some lesson,” wrote judge Cormac Carney of the Central District of California in dismissing the case.. “Nor does the Court condone RAM’s hateful and toxic ideology. But the government has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent and punish such behavior without sacrificing the First Amendment.”
This was in spite of video, photos and admissions of violence that Rundo et al had committed against counter-protesters.
After the case was dismissed, Rundo emerged in Serbia, according to open-source investigative group Bellingcat, which is known for sleuthing out perps from Syria to the U.S. via open-source social media. Ad whilte the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the charges, Rundo was spotted in Serbia as recently as last December.
Co-founder Ben Daley was not so lucky. He, Michael Miselis and two others pleaded guilty in a Virginia court for inciting a riot at the Charlottesville march. They were sentenced to between 27 and 37 months in prison, with the fourth man getting off for time served after agreeing to testify against his co-conspirators.
But Rundo, now 32, appears to be at large. Is he another FBI asset/informant, just like several of the perps from the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? It seems odd that he hasn’t been pursued more vigorously — or that he got off in the first place.
Oddly, the judge who dismissed the charges in 2019 himself resigned abruptly from the bench in July 2020 after getting involved in an incident with the court clerk, Kiry Gray, who is black. On a webinar, Carney had called Gray “street smart.”
““In a moment of anger and frustration, I said to Ms. Gray that the people criticizing me were equating my well-intended use of the term ‘street-smart’ with the reprehensible conduct of a police officer putting his knee on a person’s neck,” Carney said at the time of his resignation, which was only six weeks after the murder of George Floyd.
