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Biker Gang Revs Up Russia
Night Wolves, led by ‘the Surgeon,’ channel the Kremlin and Orthodox piety.
Vladimir Putin walks with Alexander Zaldostanov, the leader of a Russian motorcycle club called the Night Wolves, near Sevastopol in Crimea. PHOTO: ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
MOSCOW—When a Russian biker gang known as the Night Wolves wanted to settle a score, they didn’t reach for knives and knuckle-dusters. Instead, they took on their rivals in the traditional Russian fashion and denounced them as foreign agents.
That is what happened when the Night Wolves, the country’s most prominent motorcycle club, got into a feud with local chapters of the Hell’s Angels and the Bandidos. Last year, the leader of the Night Wolves, Alexander Zaldostanov,sent an angrily worded letter to a lawmaker, asking for a formal investigation into whether the two biker gangs could be banned as agents of Western imperialism.
“Given that such a network can be used as a fighting force in a foreign-inspired color revolution in Russia…we ask you to carry out the appropriate checks,” the letter said.
The Night Wolves are no ordinary motorcycle club. They’re Russian nationalists in biker gear who have been a powerful force for whipping up pro-Kremlin sentiment. And they have an important patron in President Vladimir Putin, who has donned black jeans and dark sunglasses to ride shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Zaldostanov on a modified Harley trike.
Alexander Zaldostanov
On Monday, members of the Night Wolves rolled into Berlin to celebrate Russia’s May 9 holiday, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Last year Polish authorities threw cold water on their plans by preventing most of the Night Wolves from entering their country on the way to Berlin.
Under the leadership of Mr. Zaldostanov, the Night Wolves have cast themselves as a bulwark against the Western forces they believe are arrayed against Russia. And the Hell’s Angels and Bandidos, he suggested, are agents of the U.S. State Department on call to provide the muscle for an anti-Putin revolution.
Noel Clay, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said “we support a wide variety of public-private partnerships, but this particular partnership had not occurred to us.”
Mr. Zaldostanov and his Night Wolves were hoping to take advantage of a recently passed law that gives Russian prosecutors the power to declare foreign organizations “undesirable” in Russia and shut them down if they threaten the country’s constitutional order or security. The Kremlin introduced the law to thwart what Russian officials describe as a Western conspiracy to promote “regime change” in Russia by funding nongovernmental organizations.
“I see [those groups] as a threat to my country, the government that I love and will use all my strength to preserve,” said Mr. Zaldostanov, who wore a woolen hat and leather vest in a conversation with The Wall Street Journal.
The tattooed Mr. Zaldostanov, known better by his nickname, “the Surgeon,” has led the Night Wolves to national prominence with a heady mix of macho motorcycle riding, militarized patriotism and Orthodox piety.
The group organizes annual bike rallies, including one to mark Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. In a performance in the Crimean city of Sevastopol last year, bikers did flips in the air, while others, not on bikes, took to a stage dressed as soldiers to re-enact World War II battles against Nazi Germany—to a heavy-metal soundtrack.
Mr. Zaldostanov leads the Night Wolves on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, during this year’s ride from Moscow to Berlin to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. PHOTO: TATYANA ZENKOVICH/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Mr. Zaldostanov says he isn’t a Kremlin pet, but rather that his goals and vision align with those of the Kremlin. His bikers, he says, aspire to be like the little-known historical figure of Alexander Peresvet, a fighting monk who battled a Tatar opponent on horseback in a 14th-century battle (killing each other, as the story goes).
“There’s something ethereal about him,” said Alexander Prokhanov, a member of the secretariat of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, a group of professional writers, in a radio interview last year. “You look in his face and see something angelic—a storm of angels.”
Mr. Zaldostanov recently announced that the pro-Putin bikers intend to build a patriotic youth center in Crimea, complete with Soviet-era war games for children.
Another of Mr. Zaldostanov’s initiatives is his anti-Maidan movement, designed to prevent a Ukrainian-style revolution, known popularly as the Maidan, from happening in Russia. When he sent the written request to investigate the Hell’s Angels and Bandidos, other leaders of the anti-Maidan movement signed on.
Alexei Klishas, head of a constitutional law committee, forwarded the letter on to the office of Russia’s prosecutor-general. The prosecutor’s office says it hasn’t chosen to close down the Hell’s Angels and Bandidos—but wouldn’t say if checks into the groups were finished.
The Moscow Hell’s Angels, part of the group founded in the U.S., say they are unperturbed by the allegations of being foreign agents.
“We knew this was nonsense from the start,” said the group’s spokesman in Moscow, who calls himself Ivan, who added a few choice expletives. “We’ve had a few phone calls. I don’t pay attention really.” The Bandidos, which originally hail from Texas, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Night Wolves’ gated headquarters is on the territory of an old junkyard in Moscow. The place is littered with Soviet memorabilia and scrap metal soldered together in the shapes of lions and eagles. Bike arenas, rusting scrap metal and lots of leather on the bikers give it the air of a stage set from “Mad Max,” one of the Surgeon’s favorite movies.
The biker leader says that while he adopted the easy-rider aesthetic from American road culture, he shies away from outlaw associations. Instead, he prefers to heap praise on the president and his attempts to reassert the greatness of the Russian World, as Mr. Putin puts it.
“The difference between me and these other groups is that we embrace the values and traditions of Russia and we don’t set ourselves against society,” Mr. Zaldostanov said. “I’ve added patriotism to the idea of being a biker.”
Corrections & Amplifications:
Noel Clay is a spokesman for the U.S. State Department. An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited him as a spokeswoman. (May 10, 2016)
Noel Clay is a spokesman for the U.S. State Department. An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited him as a spokeswoman. (May 10, 2016)
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
