Española’s patrons revealed

Russian battalion of far-right soccer fans reportedly funded by railway official with ties to billionaire Rotenberg brothers

Alongside its regular army units, mobilized units, and prisoners’ units waging war in Ukraine, Russia has dozens of pseudo-mercenary groups that receive financing from large companies and state agencies. The Uran battalion, for example, is funded by Russian state space corporation Roscosmos; the Soyuz unit, which consists of martial artists, is supported by state-owned companies Sberbank and Rosatom; and before his death, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin spoke of private military companies linked to energy giant Gazprom. According to journalists at independent outlet iStories, the oligarch brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg decided to get in on the trend by taking control of the Española battalion, a paramilitary group of far-right football fans. Meduza retells their reporting in English.

Viktor Shendrik, the head of the security department at Russia’s state railroad monopoly Russian Railways, is the sponsor of the Española battalion, a paramilitary group consisting of Russian football fans that’s active in Ukraine, the independent outlet iStories has reported, citing three sources who know Shendrik.

Shendrik is a protege of the billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, two of Vladimir Putin’s oldest friends and closest allies. A past iStories investigation revealed how the Rotenbergs installed Shendrik in his position at the railroad firm after years of doing business with him. (The brothers own multiple companies that contract for the railroad company.)

“Española was created by fans, mostly of Spartak [soccer club]. Then the Rotenbergs came in with the idea of taking a PMC [private military company] under their own control,” one source told iStories. “A lot of major companies are creating their own private armies right now, and the brothers wanted to create their own private army on the basis of Española.” The source said the Rotenbergs chose Shendrik to head the new entity because of his experience in the security sector.

Viktor Shendrik graduated from the Russian FSB’s border service academy in the town of Golitsyno before serving in the agency’s secretive Vympel unit. In addition to his position at Russian Railways, Shendrik is on the board of directors of Transtelecom, Russia’s second-largest telecommunications company. According to leaked documents, he earned over two billion rubles (over $21 million) in 2021.

Española was founded as a volunteer battalion of soccer fans with far-right views from all over Russia and originally belonged to a battalion from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic.” In February 2024, Española declared itself a private military company. It boasts a reconnaissance unit, an assault unit, an artillery unit, an electronic warfare unit, a drone unit, and a sniper unit. Its supplies are managed by Ilya Khanin, a soccer fan and the brother of Nikolai Khanin, the head of Moscow’s Ramenskoye district.

Like most of Russia’s volunteer formations, Española is formally a part of Redut, a pseudo-PMC that serves as a mercenary recruitment proxy for the Russian Defense Ministry; this means that Española’s fighters sign their contracts with Redut. Española’s commander is a CSKA Moscow fan named Stanislav Orlov who goes by the call sign Spaniard and who started fighting in Ukraine in 2014. Española fighters took part in the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and have fought in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as well as in the battles for Vuhledar and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.