Translated material
Candy with poison and Nazi International
In the United States there is a trial of the Russian-Ukrainian neo-Nazi group “Maniacs. Cult of murder"*
Photo: Imago Stock and People
Georgian citizen Mikheil Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old neo-Nazi, arrested in Chisinau in July 2024 and extradited to the United States on May 22, 2025, is now being held in a modern skyscraper on the banks of the Hudson River, which houses the Brooklyn federal headquarters MDC. Following the example of the vast majority of federal prisoners in America, Chkhikvishvili did not wait for trial, but prudently pleaded guilty in the hope of a reduced sentence and awaits sentencing, which is scheduled for March 9, 2026. The prosecutor's office is going to demand that he be sentenced to 18 years in prison, but it is not a fact that the judge will listen to this.
In international circles of young neo-Nazis who communicate with each other in quite decent English, Chkhikvishvili is known as Commander Butcher, who headed the “Maniacs” organization before his arrest. Cult of Murder"* (MKU).
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York describe the team as a “violent international extremist neo-Nazi group” “based in Russia and Ukraine” and founded in 2019 by Yegor Krasnov. In Russia, where the group is also called “Satanist,” and in Great Britain, this organization is recognized as terrorist.
There was a time when Chkhikvishvili came to the United States not under escort and stayed with his grandmother in Brooklyn, and once spent a couple of months in San Jose with his passion, who retained unflattering memories of him and voluntarily testified to the FBI.
As stated in court documents,
MKU members communicated on Telegram and exchanged videos depicting criminal acts the group committed, “including beatings and stabbings.”
Through posts in Telegram channels, MKU activists tried to recruit associates who would have experience working with explosives and biological and chemical weapons to commit crimes with mass casualties, the prosecutor’s office wrote in a May petition asking that Chkhikvilishvili not be released on bail. The court granted the request.
At first, Chkhikvishvili introduced himself as a recruiter, administrator and curator of the MKU, and in the end - as its leader. Since September 2021, it has periodically released manifestos written in English. Its third and final edition was published in October 2023. Here the authors were declared to be Commander Myasnik and the MKU team. The prosecutor's office cites the titles of two chapters: “Weapons of Anarchy” and “White Race, One Race.”
Chkhikvishvili in the preface called himself a National Socialist from birth and proudly stated that he personally killed for the white race, wanting to spread the flame of Lucifer and continue his mission of ethnic cleansing.
To the uninitiated, all this may seem nonsense and staged, and indeed - some young neo-Nazis stopped their activities after their mother took away their iPhone - but the prosecutor's office claims that Chkhikvishvili's calls for violence led to “numerous senseless murders in the United States and around the world,” and cites several examples.
In particular, in January 2025, a 17-year-old student shot and killed a student at Antioch School in Nashville, Tennessee, wounded her classmate, and then committed suicide. Moreover, he directly broadcast part of what was happening on his mobile phone. Shortly before this, the killer posted a video on the Internet in which he stated that his action would be carried out in the name of the MKU and another similar organization, and mentioned by name Chkhikvishvili and the founder of the MKU Yegor Krasnov.
In August 2024, another neo-Nazi, wearing a skull mask and a vest with images of a black sun and a death's head, streamed himself stabbing five people in front of a mosque in the Turkish city of Eskisehir. Before this, he distributed the MKU manifesto and repeatedly referred to its author, that is, Chkhikvishvili.
As the Turkish press wrote, this follower explained that he was motivated by misanthropy. According to the prosecutor's office, this term is often used by members of the MKU and appears in its publications.
Another example of the influence of the MKU on teenagers: in April 2022, a 17-year-old German citizen living in Romania stabbed a 74-year-old woman there with a knife and streamed himself cutting her throat at the end. According to US prosecutors, the killing was part of an initiation ritual for members of the MKU. At first, the killer explained that he attacked the woman because she was Jewish, but later told investigators that he mistook her for a gypsy.
In July 2022, Chkhikvishvili sent a video of this crime to his American associate and wrote that he found the murder of “granny” very funny.
“I finished what Hitler failed to do,” he noted philosophically. “Done? - Chkhikvishvili answered. “We’re just getting started.”
The addressee's name was Nicholas Welker, and at that moment he was the leader of the international extremist organization Feuerkrieg Division (FKD), founded in 2018 by an 11-year-old Estonian boy and demonstrating the predilection of current neo-Nazis for old Nazi terminology. According to the prosecutor's office, "like MKU, FKD adheres to neo-Nazi ideology and wages war against racial minorities, the Jewish community, the LGBTQ** community and journalists."
I read Welker’s criminal case and learned that he was a drunk, a drug addict and periodically homeless, “had neither a job nor a girlfriend,” but had nine convictions since 2013. Mostly for trivial matters, so his longest prison sentence lasted only 100 days.
Welker pleaded guilty to threatening a Brooklyn journalist who traveled to Estonia for a major American publication and interviewed local Nazis there, and was sentenced in April 2024 to 44 months in prison.
American journalists for the most part are not cowards, but they are reasonable people, and the recipient of Welker’s threats considered it best not to write about young neo-Nazis anymore. By the way, the letter with threats and an image of a pistol pointed at the victim’s head was prepared for Welker by his young colleague from Argentina.
From July 2022 to March 2023, Welker and Chkhikvishvili contacted each other via telegram and, in particular, discussed MKU attacks on American Jews. For example, on July 19, 2022, Chkhikvishvili proudly noted that “at the moment, the MKU is the only group that has committed so many murders.” On July 3, 2022, he texted that “besides killing the victims, we should also rob them.”
On July 11, 2022, Chkhikvishvili bragged to Welker that he had tortured and was going to kill an old Jew whom he was hired to look after in the rehab. “I work privately in a rehab for a Jewish family. They pay me, and I torture a dying Jew. I think I almost killed him today. If he dies soon, this murder must be counted towards me.”
Having opened a case against Chkhikvishvili, the FBI tracked down the Orthodox Jewish family in question in Brooklyn. Investigators learned that the grandfather, to whom the family assigned Chkhikvishvili, died, but without any participation of the young Georgian, who worked for her for several weeks and then disappeared without warning.
As usual in such cases, the time came when Chkhikvishvili met a potential associate, who turned out to be an undercover FBI employee, and communicated with him on Telegram and Wire from September 2023 until his arrest. He encouraged his new acquaintance to take part in an action that promised to go down in the annals of the struggle against people whom he and Welker called “Untermensch” in the old Nazi manner. The idea was for the FBI to dress up as Santa Claus on New Year's Eve and hand out ricin-laced chocolates to children of Jews and other nationalities, or, as Chkhikvishvili called them in correspondence, “targets of an inferior race.”
While they were preparing for this action, Chkhikvishvili bombarded the FBI with future material evidence in the form of instructions on making bombs or ricin and manuals on the use of bladed weapons, such as knives, hammers, screwdrivers, etc.
In the photo from the criminal case, Chkhikvishvili looks ominous, but when he was brought to court to confess, he, as the British Guardian wrote, appeared in the image of “an office IT specialist: short-cropped hair, black-framed glasses, attentive, clearly spoken and very helpful.”
However, “helpful” in this case does not mean “ready to cooperate,” because if Chkhikvishvili had cooperated with the investigation, he would not have faced 18 years.