Commander of Russian Espanola unit shot dead by Russian security forces in Sevastopol

Stanislav Orlov, the commander of the Russian neo-Nazi unit Espanola, who went by the alias Ispanets (Spaniard), was killed during an attempted arrest at a dacha in temporarily occupied Sevastopol on 4 December. [A dacha is a seasonal secondary residence, usually with a little plot of land, where people grow vegetables, fruit trees and berries or keep a garden - ed.]

Source: ASTRA Telegram channel, citing eyewitnesses and video footage from the scene; Vazhnye Istorii (Important Stories), a Russian news outlet

Details: According to reports, from early December the Russian pro-war community circulated only unconfirmed rumours about the disappearance of Stanislav Orlov, whom some compared to Prigozhin and Motorola. The cause of his death has not been officially disclosed, including by Espanola itself. [Yevgeny Prigozhin was the Wagner Group financier who led a failed mutiny in June 2023, during which he accused Russia's military leadership of betraying Wagner fighters and briefly advanced towards Moscow before standing down after negotiations; Arsen Pavlov, alias Motorola, was a Russian militant who participated in Russian aggression in Donbas and was killed in occupied Donetsk in explosion - ed.]

A Russian Telegram channel reports that a funeral for Orlov, aged 44, will take place on 22 December at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

ASTRA established that Orlov was killed on 4 December in the Flotsky garden cooperative in occupied Sevastopol, where he had been living in the weeks before his death.

At 12:17 local time, a black SUV without licence plates, a UAZ off-road vehicle, a passenger car and a minibus with military plates arrived at house No. 51, where Orlov was staying. Armed security officers exited the vehicles, after which residents reported hearing gunshots.

CCTV footage shows that an ambulance arrived and removed Orlov's body only six hours after security forces first appeared at the site. Searches were also conducted throughout the cooperative, and the caretaker, Roman Dudnikov – who looked after birds and animals at Orlov's dacha – was detained.

According to ASTRA, citing former Espanola fighters, security forces came to Orlov in connection with a criminal case involving illegal weapons trafficking (Article 222 of Russia's Criminal Code).

Several weeks before Orlov's killing, Ruslan Kazantsev ("Altai"), the former commander of Espanola's naval unit, was remanded in custody in a separate arms-trafficking case, the Telegram channel reported. Weapons supposedly transported by Espanola fighters from a military base in the village of Chornomorske were found in his garage in Sevastopol. Another fighter, Grigory Gusiev ("Koldun"), was also taken into custody.

On 19 December, the Espanola Telegram channel confirmed Orlov's death.

Background:

• Stanislav Orlov was a member of the CSKA football group Red Blue Warriors and had fought in Donbas since 2014. He also worked for the Union of Donbas Volunteers, established by former Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov and United Russia MP Nikolai Khanin, Cherta reported.
• In early October, Espanola announced its disbandment. Orlov described the move as a "reset", saying the unit would have "new leadership and new people". Some Z-bloggers claimed the disbandment was encouraged "from above".
• Espanola was a volunteer brigade formed from football hooligans and neo-Nazis. The unit was sponsored by Viktor Shendrik, head of security at Russian Railways, according to Important Stories. Shendrik is an FSB officer and a protégé of Vladimir Putin's associates, the Rotenberg brothers. During the war, he obtained Serbian citizenship with visa-free access to the EU, Vazhnye Istorii found.

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