Night Wolves motorcycle gang put on subsidised holiday concerts depicting evil westerners trying – but failing – to destroy Russia. The Moscow Times reports

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Pro-Putin biker group the Night Wolves has received millions of roubles from the Russian government – with some of the money being used to stage anti-western children’s shows, according to a report by opposition activist Alexei Navalny.





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The Night Wolves and their associates, all affiliated with biker leader Alexander Zaldostanov, have received 56 million roubles (about £730,000) in taxpayers’ money over the past 18 months, Navalny claims, basing his figures on a comprehensive search of government websites.

Zaldostanov, known as The Surgeon, is a personal friend of Vladimir Putin’s and has appeared in public with the Russian president several times. But little has been disclosed about how the group funds its grand-scale nationalistic performances, which include holiday concerts for children that suggest the west is bent on destroying Russia.

“Russia must be deprived of freedom; Slavic peoples need to be chained; peace should be built on their blood; those who disagree must die,” recites a western character in one New Year’s show staged by the bikers.

Navalny’s report says the Night Wolves have received 12.5 million roubles from the official National Charitable Fund for their New Year’s shows over the past two years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vladimir Putin and Alexander Zaldostanov, nicknamed The Surgeon. Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images

“Our goal is to create an alternative to the foreign dominance,” Zaldastanov was quoted as saying after the past New Year’s performance. “The educational goal of the show is very important.”

The holiday shows, known in Russia as novogodniye yolki or “New Year trees”, are a fixture of the winter holidays that dates back to the Soviet era, and have traditionally featured fairytale characters in stories about love and friendship.

But recent years have seen some changes. One production in the Russian city of Lipetsk this year featured American characters threatening Russia with sanctions and Russian characters boasting of their country’s nuclear arsenal and denouncing the “stupidity” of the west.

A show staged by the Night Wolves in 2013 featured a character representing the Statue of Liberty kidnapping Russia’s snow maiden, Snegurochka, in an attempt to ruin Russia.



The show ends with Russian forces triumphing and the hero proclaiming in a poem that the country will defeat its foes “no matter how hard foreign believers try”.

The Night Wolves recently tried to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war by riding their motorbikes to Berlin, but Poland denied the group entry and the German government canceled the visas of some people believed to belong to the group’s leadership.