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Editor’s note: Vladislav Gillung officially changed his name to Vladislav Romanov in his twenties. Although the first recorded use of him as Romanov is from the period between 2020 and 2022, we will refer to him as such throughout most of the story for consistency.
In September 2019, a 21-year-old man named Vladislav Gillung registered as a candidate for Russia’s municipal elections in the city of St. Petersburg.
Tweets by the former campaign leader for the anti-corruption activist and opposition candidate, Alexei Navalny, show that Gillung was attempting to run as part of the movement opposing Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The local electoral committee refused his candidacy. However, only weeks later, he seemed to have switched sides as he attended an event for the pro-Putin United Russia party.
Vladislav Gillung has since changed his name to Vladislav Romanov and became close to Rusich, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that is under western sanctions. Rusich members have been accused of, and co-founder Yan Petrovsky convicted of, war crimes.
An investigation by Bellingcat has tracked Romanov from these early days in St. Petersburg, finding that he appears to have assisted in Rusich’s fundraising and business activities. He has even been pictured near the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Romanov’s bank number has appeared in Rusich’s calls for donations. On top of this, he is listed as the person selling Rusich merchandise on a Russian webstore.
The money Rusich makes in these ventures helps fund its operations, according to experts Bellingcat spoke to.
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When Bellingcat reached out to Romanov via email, he said that he joined Navalny’s movement because he “wanted to go into politics and represent the interests of society”. He also acknowledged helping run Rusich’s online store but denied working for the group. “I don’t work with Rusich. They just asked someone with experience and education to take over their store, and I helped them out without pay. I don’t see anything special about it,” Romanov said. There is no suggestion that he has been directly involved in the violent activities other members of the group have been accused of or found guilty of, nor has he been placed under international sanctions or been accused in any criminal cases related to the group.
Denis Mikhailov, a Navalny campaign leader for the 2019 municipal elections, said that he recalled Romanov. Mikhailov told Bellingcat that Romanov was a “reserved and well-mannered guy”, who “always listened more than he talked”.
But it soon became apparent after the elections that their views differed on a number of subjects. “We talked about Ukraine, and he expressed that he sympathises with the so-called LPR/DPR,” breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Mikhailov said.
Mikhailov has since left Russia as pressure on those connected to the now deceased Navalny (who was poisoned by Russian secret service agents in 2020 and died in prison in 2024) has increased. He was not aware that Romanov had moved towards United Russia, but he said he was not entirely surprised by this turn of events. “I don’t remember [Romanov’s] exact words, but, in addition to the topic of Ukraine, he said something about Putin’s system being the only way to build a political career.”
When asked why he left the opposition movement, Romanov told Bellingcat that he “became very disappointed in the ideas of Navalny and his team”, because they worked “to destabilise Russia”.
Just two months after the 2019 municipal elections, Romanov was pictured at an event where the branding of the youth wing of the United Russia party was clearly visible.
Vladislav Romanov (centre) in a picture posted by Monika Pakhomi (left) on Nov. 8, 2019. There is a media wall behind them with two logotypes of the Young Guard of United Russia organisation (United Russia’s youth wing). The date the picture was posted coincides with a party congress that took place in St. Petersburg. Source: Monika Pakhomi’s VK Account.
Romanov told Bellingcat that he “used to be a member of both the youth wing and the United Russia party itself”.
“I haven’t been a member for three years now, as politics no longer interests me. I prefer my profession” as a businessman, he said.
The people he posed with at the event included Monika Pakhomi, a council member of St. Petersburg’s Izmailovskoe district. According to the council’s website and VK page, Pakhomi was awarded a medal for her work supporting the occupation of Ukraine by the regional All-Russia People’s Front – an organisation under European Union sanctions. Pakhomi did not respond to requests for comment.
This image allowed Bellingcat to search for and identify further pictures of Romanov available online.
One image posted to Twitter, now known as X, showed him armed and alongside prominent Rusich fighters, including Yan Petrovsky (who has been convicted of war crimes by a Finnish court) and the Russian nationalist politician, chairman of the Rodina party, Alexey Zhuravlev (currently under international sanctions), in the formerly occupied city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine. Bellingcat had previously reported on Zhuravlev’s trip to Izyum without realising that Romanov had accompanied him there.
An image from Zhuravlev’s trip to Ukraine, taken in Izyum in May 2022. From left to right: Timur “Kiba” Gromov, Alexey Zhuravlev, Vladislav Romanov and Yan Petrovsky. Source: X/Twitter.
When Bellingcat asked him about the trip, Romanov said that he spent two days with Alexey Zhuravlev in Izyum, “to deliver humanitarian aid to the residents”, and the “LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic] fighters gave Alexey and me automatic weapons for a couple of photos, and we took pictures as a souvenir”.
He added that selection for the trip was handled by his university in conjunction with the Youth Parliament of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which is why Zhuravlev was there.” Bellingcat sought to confirm this with Romanov’s university, the St.Petersburg State University of Economics, but did not receive a response before publication.
“When asked if he ever fought in Ukraine, Romanov said: “I never fought due to lack of training.” He also claimed that he “never joined Rusich”.
“Unfortunately, I have no military skills, so even if I wanted to join, I couldn’t. I’m just a businessman,” he said in messages over email.
Rusich’s Merchandise Man
Rusich is a paramilitary group that has been an active force in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Several of its fighters have been involved in Wagner operations in places like Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
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One former commander and founding member, Yan Petrovsky, has been convicted of war crimes by a Finnish court and another, Alexey Milchakov, has been implicated in war crimes.
The organisation and its leaders are under international sanctions, and so are some of its cryptocurrency wallets, but many people associated with Rusich are still largely unknown to the public. Vladislav Romanov was – until now – one of those it appears has been operating behind the scenes.
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the group claimed to Meduza that it had an IT and a Financial department that organised fundraisers and donations from supporters and was also active in cybercrime.
On April 2, 2024, Rusich posted a message on Telegram stating that it was funded solely through organised fundraising and advertising.
The Rusich message claiming they are funded through donations, advertisements and announcing plans to launch their own sports nutrition brand. Source: Telegram/Rusich.
Yet they now also sell their own products as well, including protein powders, key chains and Alexey Milchakov sticker packs.
Jonathan Deer, who has researched Rusich at the New America think tank, told Bellingcat it was common for Rusich to say, “‘We need XYZ and we need it in this amount. We are requesting that you either donate the item itself or donate to us at this card number’”. Though this still happens, Deer thinks calls for donations have become less frequent.
Rusich runs its own site to assist with merchandise operations, but it uses Ozon.ru, a Russian webshop, as well. The seller on the Rusich Ozon page is listed as Vladislav Konstaninovich Romanov, with goods shipped from St. Petersburg.
On Ozon.ru, if you hover the mouse over the information icon next to the store name, you can view more information about the seller (whether or not it is a person or a legal entity). In this case, it is Vladislav Konstantinovich Romanov’s full name. Source: Screenshot from Ozon.ru.
Bellingcat looked for this name online and found four individuals in a leaked Alfa-Bank database (Alfa-Bank is one of the largest private banks in Russia, currently under EU and US sanctions).
One of these individuals was the owner of a card number ending in 1073. This same card number, it transpires, appeared in messages from an old Rusich Telegram channel. Although that channel no longer exists, some messages were archived on TGStat, a web-based analytics tool for Telegram, such as this one from 2022.
Number and contact details for Romanov, except for the first four and last four digits of his card number.
In the messages, benefactors were instructed to donate using crypto or to just transfer money to the Alfa-Bank card number that matched Romanov’s (ending in 1073).
An old Rusich call for donation, forwarded by former Rusich fighter Evgeny “Topaz” Rasskazov. The Alfa-Bank card number matches Romanov’s card number.
A message on September 9, 2022, stated Rusich had collected 900,000 Rubles (at that time US $14,805). Two days later, they claimed to have received 1.2 million Rubles (then $19,740). Both messages list Romanov’s Alfa-Bank account as the place where donations should be sent.
It is not possible to know for sure what Rusich spent the money on. But the September 9 message did say the unit needed a wide variety of equipment.
The fact that an account listing Romanov’s details appears to be handling money for Rusich suggests he is not just a “grunt”, said Deer of New America. Other open source information gathered by Bellingcat, meanwhile, tied his name to further revenue generating projects.
Phone Numbers and Contact Books
On June 9, 2025, the Rusich Telegram channel instructed people to contact an account named “rozzkr” for ad-related inquiries. Similarly, messages sent to the Rusich Telegram channel receive an automated response asking those who want to advertise with them to contact rozzkr, their “manager”. Rozzkr appears to be connected to one of Romanov’s phone numbers, which ends in 0663, and was visible in several leaked databases.
A screenshot from TGStat.ru, showing the old description of the Rusich channel before it was changed. TGStat.ru allows you to look up old channel descriptions.
A screenshot from the Poisks Cheloveka Naytis Telegram bot showing the username history for rozzkr and three phone numbers once associated with the account. There are several Telegram bots that allow you to look up someone’s account history.
According to the 2022 Yandex Food data leak, for example, a Yandex Food account with this name and number was used in December 2021.
The rozzkr Telegram account itself contains little detail. It includes a first name that consists only of numbers, an anonymised profile picture and a seemingly random location. The account owner also added a standard message for all empty chats: an image of Alexey Milchakov in camouflage uniform and some accompanying text that says it costs 100,000 Rubles to place an ad in their Telegram channel.
A screenshot of the default message on rozzkr’s Telegram channel, giving the price for advertising with Rusich.
Price information from the rozzkr account is consistent with what Rusich posted on Jan. 27, 2024, where they said the money would be used for the group’s needs.
Romanov told Bellingcat that the number ending in 0663 was “indeed an old phone number registered” to him. But he said that in “around 2017-2018” one of his “acquaintances” asked to borrow his SIM card to register a work Telegram account. “Judging by everything, this is the one,” he said, adding that he didn’t know that “this number was still active” and that he had no idea “who currently owns the @rozzkr account on Telegram”. Bellingcat tried to call the number and it did now appear to be inactive.
Romanov did not share who he gave the SIM card to or detail why or how the phone number continued to be used in his name after 2018.
Data from the Yandex.Food leak under the name of Vladislav Gillung. The phone number matches that for @rozzkr and the email address matches the one from Romanov’s Alfa-Bank account. The “created_at” column shows activity on the app in 2021.
Other leaks also show a Vladislav Konstantovich Romanov provided the same phone number to a Russian courier service (CDEK) in 2021 and 2022.
Interestingly, Bellingcat also noticed on the Sherlock Telegram bot that another number linked to the rozzkr account was used for mobile banking by someone named Vladislav Konstantinovich R – this aligns with Romanov’s first name, patronymich and the first letter of his surname.
Bellingcat asked Romanov about the second number linked to the account and called the number itself. The number appeared to now be disconnected and Romanov did not respond to further questions about this before publication.
Leaked data from ZAGS (ЗАГС), Russia’s civil registration, shows that Gillung legally changed his name to Romanov. Romanov said his parents divorced in his childhood and that Gillung is his mother’s surname. He decided to take on his father’s surname “as is customary in Russia”.
Vladislav Konstantinovich Gillung changed his surname to Romanov. Source: ZAGS leak via the Sherlock Telegram bot.
Romanov can also be directly linked to Rusich-leader, Alexey Milchakov, through a phone number both appeared to use at least once.
Milchakov shows up multiple times in a data leak from the courier service, CDEK, often using a phone number ending in 386. The same number also appears with two other names in the CDEK leak: Anton Yakovlev and Vladislav Konstantinovich Gillung (Romanov’s previous legal name).
Romanov told Bellingcat that “Alexey [Milchakov], an old acquaintance of mine, once asked me to pick up a parcel for him when he was away.”
A Facebook leak shows that Milchakov used that number to create his now-deleted Facebook page.
Above: screenshot from Intelx.io showing Milchakov’s phone number in the Facebook data leak. Source: intelx.io. Below: Facebook data leak in Bellingcat’s database.
People using Numbuster and GetContact, meanwhile, tagged the same phone number as belonging to Milchakov.
Both screenshots depict Numbuster results for Milchakov’s phone number ending in 386. Tags include his famous nickname “Serb”, but also “Alexey Yuryevich” (his name and patronymic) and “Serb Milchakov Alexey”.
Contact book apps like these harvest data from users’ phones and have been used in many investigations, such as Bellingcat’s Berlin Tiergarten assassination investigation (where Numbuster and GetContact were used) and the investigation into the death of Colombian protestor, Lucas Villa (where TrueCaller was used).
In Numbuster, one of Romanov’s phone numbers (ending in 663 and that he used for his Yandex Food account) is tagged as “Vlad United Russia St. Petersburg Youth Politics”.
The first two entries list Romanov’s name as Vladislav Gillung. The bottom entry reads, Vlad United Russia St Petersburg Youth Politics. Source: Numbuster.
Asked how he met Milchakov, Romanov claimed that they met at a gun shop in St. Petersburg when he was buying his hunting rifle.
Bellingcat contacted Rusich before publication to ask about the details in this story but did not receive a response.
Aiganysh Aidarbekova contributed to this report for Bellingcat.
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The post How a Former Political Hopeful Helps Russian Neo-Nazi Group Rusich Sell its Online Merch appeared first on bellingcat.
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