It’s rush-hour on a Friday and Artyom Leonov, 20, and a group of activists have arrived at a heaving, traffic-clogged highway in northern Moscow. For hours they lie in wait with video cameras, hoping to catch cars driving illegally on the hard-shoulder.



A car comes. The activists physically block it, firmly telling the driver to reverse back onto the motorway as the cameras roll – a humiliating experience for the motorist who unleashes a hail of abuse and physical threats.



The action-packed footage – which over the years has captured encounters with Kalashnikov assault rifles, baseball bats and pistols drawn in anger – is then sent back to Stopkham’s headquarters in downtown Moscow and packaged with a swagger-heavy hip-hop beat before being pushed out through social networks.

It may not seem like the most thrilling form of youth activism, but these heated exchanges with drivers have been watched more than 200 million times on YouTube.

Stopkham, whose name translates roughly as “Stop the Boorishness”, was founded in 2010 and has reportedly received grants from the Kremlin worth four million roubles in 2013 and six million in 2014.

The group are are an offshoot of Nashi, the original but now defunct pro-Kremlin youth outfit founded in 2005 to defend Russia but has since been phased out after a string of scandals.

At Nashi’s annual forum in 2010, the concept of Stopkham immediately given the stamp of approval by Rashid Nurgaliyev, then Russia’s Interior Minister. Two years later the group had re-registered as a separate organisation because, in the words of one Stopkham activist, Anton Yerokhin, “Nashi had a bad reputation.”

Aleksandra, a spokeswoman for Stopkham’s leader Dmitry Chugunov, who would only share her first name, says the group now has “nothing to do with Nashi.”



DIY traffic police

In a departure from Nashi’s political focus, Stopkham takes aim at infractions on the roads – whether it’s stopping motorists from driving on the pavement or chastising bad parkers by slapping windshields with the group’s signature stickers: “I don’t care about everyone else, I park wherever I want.”

The group’s tactics capitalise on the public’s anger over the country’s notorious traffic congestion. In addition to their millions of followers online, drivers on the roads toot their horns or shout thanks to the activists, some ask for stickers.

Through its support of Stopkham, the Kremlin has shown it is keen to embracing youth groups and web-based activism. It has also financed the lesser-known Khryushyi Protiv, translated as the piglets’ protest, a youth group monitoring whether groceries have passed their sell by date.

Stopkham are not the first to address traffic concerns in Russia. The Blue Bucket brigade, are a Moscow-based group protesting against government bureaucrats’ proclivity to flaunt traffic rules.

But the similarities may end there. “Stopkham is an Internet show,” says Pyotr Shkumatov, founder of the Blue Bucket brigade, adding that his group is “completely different.”

Shkumatov also points out that Stopkham’s founder, Dmitry Chugunov was a former Nashi “commissar” and is now a member of the Public Chamber, a prominent advisory body for the Kremlin.

We had a man with an axe once, a man who ran at us with a golf club ... one time a man pulled out a grenade Artyom Leonov, Stopkham

“His followers essentially engage in showmanship – fights, provocations, some other things,” Shkumatov said, adding that the attention and web clicks are “precisely because of Stopkham’s tactic of provocation.”

It’s a tactic prone to backlash. On 10 February four of the group’s activists were savagely beaten in St Petersburg. Three were hospitalised and had their cameras stolen. The attack was reportedly led by a man the group had targeted.

“We had a man with an axe once,” says Leonov in Moscow. “There was a man who ran at us with a golf club. We’ve seen it all. There was even one time during a night raid when a man pulled out a grenade,” he adds.

On patrol with Stopkham

The group is hypersensitive about protecting its reputation. When RFE/RL meet the activists near a Moscow metro station many were smoking, but as the cameras came out the cigarettes were quickly extinguished.



Before they start their patrol, Leonov firmly lays down the rules: no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no swearing. The group of some 20 activists aged between 18 and 29 then split into two groups.

Within an hour, a few cars drive down the hard-shoulder to bypass a traffic jam, but seeing the group, they reverse quickly.

On patrol with a group of Stopkham activists in northern Moscow. Photograph: Tom Balmforth/RFE/RL

They don’t catch anyone in the act that evening, but blame their location: it’s a favourite haunt of Stopkham so the drivers know what to expect, they said.

At times the group has the feel of a marginal club. Many of its members hail from Russia’s provinces. One is a computer game reviewer, another a salesman for a mobile phone operator in a small town near Moscow, another is an out-of-work actor from Irkutsk who aspires to join Russia’s elite “spetsnaz”, a word for the special forces.

The activists claim they take part in the group because they see traffic violations as a serious problem and deny being paid to turn up.

The activists claim they see traffic violations as a serious problem and deny being paid to turn up

Despite Stopkham’s efforts to distance itself from Nashi – infamous for its brazen harassment of opposition politicians and foreign ambassadors – they have been accused of links to the Anti-Maidan movement, a group that takes a pro-separatist position on the war in eastern Ukraine.



A blogger in Moscow claimed to have spotted Stopkham activists among the Anti-Maidan’s ranks when the group turned up to counter a rally in favour of anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny.

Aleksandra claimed she had “no information” about whether Stopkham activists attended this rally. She promised RFE/RL that should would clarify Stopkham’s relationship to Anti-Maidan, but did not get back to us before this story was published.

An original version of this article first appeared on RFE/RL