Russian Ultranationalist Party

The **Russian Ultranationalist Party** (**RUP**) was a Russian ultranationalist political party and armed paramilitary force which was active in the former Soviet Union from 1991 to 2017. The Ultranationalist Party was founded by the former Soviet official and arms dealer Imran Zakhaev following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, and it gained popularity among Russian nationalists opposed to Boris Yeltsin's "shock therapy" economics and the Russian leadership's alleged "prostitution" of the country to the West. The bulk of the party's support base came from the former National Salvation Front of Russia (including the National Bolshevik Party, Russian National Unity, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) and other far-left and far-right nationalist organizations who formed an alliance with the goal of restoring the former Russian Empire or USSR and restoring Russia's superpower status. The Ultranationalists harbored a syncretic ideology combining Soviet-era nostalgia and communist symbology (with certain factions advocating for socialist economics) with ethnic and religious nationalism, populism, militarism, xenophobia, irridentism and revanchism. Zakhaev himself was a Marxist-Leninist hardliner, while Boris Vorshevsky was a moderate nationalist and Vladimir Makarov invoked Orthodox Christian and Russian nationalism, as well as harboring ambitions of rebuilding the Russian Empire. The diverse factions of the Ultranationalist Party would eventually fight among themselves following Zakhaev's death in 2011 with the majority remaining loyal to the moderate Vorshevsky and a minority backing Makarov's hardline "Inner Circle" faction.

The Ultranationalist movement spread to other former Soviet states such as the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, appealing to Soviet-era nostalgia and promising to uplift their economic situations through ending Western influence on the post-Soviet economies and political systems. Zakhaev also fostered close relations with Ba'athist insurgents in Iraq during the Iraq War, and he allied himself with insurgent leader Khaled al-Asad and his powerful army of Iraqi Ba'ath Party loyalists. From 2011 to 2016, the Ultranationalists waged an insurgency against the Russian government, but, with British and American support, the government loyalists inflicted several defeats on the Ultranationalists in 2011. al-Asad's insurgent forces were defeated in Iraq, while al-Asad himself was killed in the Amsar raid in Azerbaijan shortly after. The British SAS and the US Marine Corps then launched a joint operation to track down Zakhaev, seemingly killing his son Viktor Zakhaev in a gun battle in Uzlovoy and killing Imran Zakhaev after a chase through the Altai Mountains. The Russian government masterfully covered up the seeverity of what many believed was a second Russian civil war, claiming that they had conducted local nuclear tests in central Russia within established United Nations protocols, despite world leaders quickly denouncing the action (in fact, the missiles had been launched by the Ultranationalists with the US Eastern Seaboard as their target), the Ultranationalist Party gave no comment to international media agencies despite rumors of a possible leadership struggle beginnng to surface following Zakhaev's death, and the Russian government formally called off the search for an Estonian cargo ship lost in the Bering Strait due to a major storm (the ship had been raided by the SAS after it was discovered to have been carrying a nuclear warhead).

By 2016, however, the Ultranationalists had made peace with the Loyalist government, with the moderate nationalist Boris Vorshevsky becoming President of Russia after democratically defeating the Loyalist candidate in the 2015 presidential election. Some Loyalist holdouts continued to offer resistance to Ultranationalist Russia from exile, but the vast majority of Loyalists remained loyal to the Ultranationalist government. United Russia and the RUP had a rapprochement following the end of the civil war, as they shared the same nationalist ideology, and the Ultranationalist cause came to exceed the RUP membership and unite most Russians under the banner of nationalism. The Ultranationalists established military bases in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, among elsewhere, re-exerting Russia's Soviet-era dominance over the other former Soviet republics with local support. The Ultranationalist Party by and large moderated its former views, with President Vorshevsky remaining a *de facto* rival of the West, but essentially moving past the Western intervention in the Civil War.

The Ultranationalist leadership struggle had, by that point, intensified into a rebellion by Vladimir Makarov's extremist (neo-fascist) wing against Vorshevsky's moderate Marxist-Leninist wing, the latter of which was more conducive to making peace with the international community. The Ultranationalist government of Russia unveiled a statue of Zakhaev in Moscow and renamed Domodedovo International Airport to "Zakhaev International Airport", and Vorshevsky's government won over most Russians, including members of the former regime. In 2016, the American general Herschel Shepherd (with the reluctant help of Makarov) intentionally provoked a war between Russia and the USA to justify the overthrow of the Ultranationalist government, launching his own personal crusade against the faction whose support for the Iraqi insurgents had led to the deaths of 30,000 of his soldiers in Iraq. Makarov took advantage of the Russo-American confrontation (which he had helped to provoke) to capture and depose Vorshevsky, and he temporarily assumed the leadership of Russia and ordered a series of chemical attacks across Europe to clear the way for a Russian Army ground offensive. Makarov's plan from the start of the war had been to recreate the Russian Empire through Russian military world domination, and, with the Zakhaev International Airport massacre blamed on the United States, Makarov was able to consolidate Ultranationalist support behind his plan to subdue the West. Russian forces overran much of Europe, occupying Prague and being repelled in Berlin, London, and Paris. Ultimately, Vorshevsky was rescued from the Mir diamond mine in a Task Force 141 special operation, and he was reinstated as President of Russia, making peace with Europe and America at Hamburg. Following a near-miss assassination attempt in Prague, Makarov was forced into hiding, and he was ultimately tracked down to the United Arab Emirates in 2017 and assassinated by SAS captain John Price. As part of the peace terms with NATO, Vorshevsky entered into a coalition government with United Russia and the loyalists from the old regime, and the backlash from the war ultimately led to Vorshevsky stepping down and returning control of the government to Vladimir Putin, who continued Russia's rivalry with the United States. The Russian Ultranationalist Party then fell apart due to the failure of its war effort, with most of its moderate members rejoining United Russia and its extreme members joining the CPRF, LDPR, The Other Russia, and other nationalist parties.

By 2020, however, the Russian Ultranationalists resurfaced as a terrorist organization led by the surviving Viktor Zakhaev. Zakhaev used his front company Zakhaev Arms to supply the terrorist group al-Qatala with state-of-the-art guns, armor, and vehicles, which allowed them to invade and take over the city of Verdansk, Georgia. Zakhaev was killed by Captain Price in 2020, which left a power vacuum, allowing a man coincidentally named "Makarov" to take over by 2022.