In September and October, the “Snake Island Institute” (SII, est. 2025) made another business trip to the United States, led by the president of this think tank, Vladyslav Sobolevsky, an alleged war criminal, and former deputy commander of the Azov movement’s openly neo-Nazi 3rd Assault Brigade. The latter now spearheads the Azovite 3rd Army Corps under the command of the “White Fuhrer” himself, the newly appointed Ukrainian general, Andriy Biletsky. Before the 2022 Russian invasion, Biletsky led the National Corps, an Azovite (“social nationalist”) political party, with Sobolevsky as his deputy chief of staff.

“I am glad that we are not quite a party, but a social movement with real membership,” Sobolevsky once said about the National Corps. “We don’t even care about elections, we care about people who believe in our ideas and are ready to follow us.” In 2020, he shut down a public presentation of “the last Ukrainian peacemaker” Sergei Sivokho’s “National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity.” Sobolevsky insisted on a military offensive. Asked about his favorite books that year, he named some by German WWII generals, Erich von Manstein and Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand, as well as “Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front,” by the Belgian Nazi leader Léon Degrelle.

Snake Island Institute: “Day 1 of our U.S. delegation. We met at the U.S. Department of State with Kevin Covert, Director for Eastern European Affairs.” (Covert is on the left, and Sobolevsky is also wearing a suit and tie.)

Sobolevsky, a former football hooligan associated with the Kyiv-based “White Boys Club,” was perhaps the only real Azovite / neo-Nazi in the delegation, but the SII is nevertheless an Azovite project. His entourage in Washington included three young women from SII: Maryna Hrytsenko (executive director), Viktoria Honcharuk (head of defense technology), and Catarina Buchatskiy (director of analytics). To recap my previous articles:

Maryna Hrytsenko has experience in Washington as a former foreign policy aide to Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of the Atlanticist “Holos” party in Ukrainian parliament. According to Hrytsenko, “our [SII’s] mission is ambitious - we are a strategic bridge of Ukraine to the world. The voice of the Ukrainian military on an international level. We act as a direct communication channel between our Defense Forces, technological innovators and strategic allies.”

Viktoria Honcharuk, who used to work on Wall Street for J.P. Morgan, returned to Ukraine in 2022 and became a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade. In addition to her role at SII, Honcharuk heads AB3 Tech, the “startup accelerator” associated with the 3rd Assault Brigade. She might not be a far-right nationalist herself, but apparently her boyfriend is a neo-Nazi platoon commander from the unit.

Catarina Buchatskiy, a former intern at the American Enterprise Institute, led a “joint project” with Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in 2023-24. They focused on “lessons from the war in Ukraine for Taiwan, including research on the use of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] in Ukraine and how to transfer operational and tactical lessons to Ukraine.” McFaul has invited his social media followers, “Check out Snake Island Institute, co-founded by Stanford super-alum [Buchatskiy].”

Buchatskiy (left) and Hrytsenko (right) both have roles in the upcoming Azovite action film “Killhouse”

These SII leaders were also joined by “Nick” and “Erik,” representatives of the Unmanned Systems Forces, a branch of the Ukrainian military dedicated to drones since last year. On their first day in the United States, they all took a meeting at the State Department with Kevin Covert, the Director for Eastern European Affairs. This year, Covert has also met with one of Zelensky’s chief political rivals, his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, as well as Oleksiy Goncharenko, a famous parliamentarian from Poroshenko’s party, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine (2014-16). Obviously, these people want to curry favor with the Trump administration. Roughly 24 hours after meeting Covert, Goncharenko got together with MAGA hero Michael Flynn, and said “I’m sure that everything will be fine and President Trump is making a lot of efforts to finally bring peace.”

Flynn and Goncharenko (March 2025), and Goncharenko calling for “Ze End” of Zelensky (July 2025)

“We didn’t come asking for help. We came to build,” says Vladyslav Sobolevsky. “In DC, we talked with DoD [Department of Defense] and congressional teams working on security aid.” Days before SII made it to Washington, Politico reported that Grace Wright, the communications director for Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence committees, was leaving her job on Capitol Hill for a new role at Snake Island Institute. Meanwhile, Sobolevsky wrote his first article for Ukrainska Pravda, about “why Ukraine needs a direct partnership with the US.” Whereas Israel became “an indispensable partner in the Middle East,” and “Taipei has integrated into US strategy through chips [semiconductors],”

Ukraine also has unique potential - combat experience, defense innovations, geopolitical position as a shield for Europe. … Ukraine must formulate its own offer to Washington: how it is and can be indispensable. In technology, these are our developments in the field of drones, electronic warfare, and cyber defense, which have proven effective in the war against Russia.

Monique Eisenhardt, a self-described “National Security, Intelligence & International Relations Expert,” who used to work for Lockheed Martin (2017-21), General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (2015-17), the Department of Defense (2013-15), the Defense Intelligence Agency (2010-11), and U.S. European Command (2008-10), was pleased to announce the arrival of the SII delegation to Washington. “During this visit,” Eisenhardt explained, “Snake Island Institute is presenting its report on maritime drone warfare and engaging [Americans] on ways to bolster the defense industrial base — issues that lie at the heart of modern deterrence and transatlantic resilience.”

“SII is making a difference,” commented David Julazadeh, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who formerly served as the chief of staff of U.S. European Command, and a deputy chief of staff at NATO Allied Command Transformation, in other words, “NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development Command.” Julazadeh is a senior advisor to NATO and Vyryn Technologies, which he describes as a “new start-up,” co-founded by Eisenhardt, “focused on bringing Ukrainian innovation to NATO and U.S. markets.” (Eisenhardt, formerly known as Monique Brown, at least used to be on the supervisory board of Azov-friendly MITS Capital, which I wrote about here.)

David Julazadeh

In the coming days, Snake Island Institute visited the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and perhaps some other DC-based think tanks. (They already made friends at the American Foreign Policy Council.) The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center hosted a joint event with SII on “Ukraine’s drone industry and the challenge of wartime supply chains.” Catarina Buchatskiy and Mykola “Nick” Holovatiuk, a drone commander from the 412th Nemesis Regiment, participated in this event alongside Laura Cooper, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2017 until this year, who “led the U.S. government team to deliver billions in wartime security assistance to Ukraine and orchestrated the 50-nation Ukraine Defense Contact Group.”

The SII delegation also held a private event at the Army and Navy Club in Washington with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). This time Vladyslav Sobolevsky and Viktoria Honcharuk spoke for the Azovite think tank, accompanied by “Nick” and “Erik,” the latter from the R&D department of the former 14th drone regiment which was apparently co-founded by the neo-Nazi organization “C14.”

In early October, the SII delegation also lectured over 100 students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, and presented their latest report, “The Black Sea’s Asymmetric Blueprint: Operational Lessons from Ukraine for 21st-Century Naval Forces.” Michael Kuiper, the adjunct professor who hosted the event, said that Snake Island Institute “captivated” the audience. “As the lights dimmed and the presentation began, the air buzzed with anticipation; each Midshipman captivated by the real-life stories of bravery and strategy unfolding before them.”

On the West Coast, Sobolevsky and friends also paid a visit to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. This appears to have been a more intimate meeting with students. In Los Angeles, the Snake Island Institute hosted a private “Defense Cooperation Forum.” According to the SII, “we brought together U.S. manufacturers, investors, and military representatives with Ukrainian military end users and defense-tech firms for a closed-door, honest conversation about the challenges and opportunities of defense innovation.” There were at least a few additional speakers, but the event partners were more interesting:

The California-based Neros Technologies has come up a couple times before, as a tech start-up and drone producer (run by Catarina Buchatskiy’s boyfriend Soren Monroe-Anderson) that has partnered with far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and the U.S. military to become “part of a new guard of US firms in the defense industry sphere.” Neros Technologies thanked SII on LinkedIn, “It was an honor to be involved in such a great event.”

Earlier this year, the D3 Venture Capital Firm, headquartered in Kyiv, which co-founded the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers, sponsored a “hackathon” in Lviv alongside the “incredible team” at AB3 Tech and other Azovite entities associated with the 3rd Assault Brigade, including the openly neo-Nazi youth groups “Centuria” and “Galician Youth.” D3’s managing partner, Eveline Buchatskiy, the mother of SII’s director of analytics, spoke at the “Defense Cooperation Forum” in Los Angeles.

THE BR-DGE, which specializes in “supporting entrepreneurs building space capabilities for the rapidly growing space economy,” describes itself as a “collaboration center” and “an outreach program … powered by Disruptive Technology Index (DTI), a California nonprofit, in partnership with SpaceWERX, the US Space Force’s innovation arm for technology advancement.” This group also left a comment after the SII event: “We loved having you guys at THE BR-DGE yesterday!”

“Learnings from Ukraine were transformative,” according to Picogrid, “a leading developer of integrated systems technology.” In 2025, this military technology firm has participated in a NATO Allied Command Transformation exercise in France, partnered with Peter Thiel’s Palantir, and scored a multimillion dollar project with the U.S. military to “provide the Air Force with technology to integrate autonomous systems into its missions.” Picogrid co-founders Zane Mountcastle and Martin Slosarik worked for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center when they established their company in 2020. Slosarik, also a former senior business analyst at the multinational consulting firm McKinsey, said he was “stoked” for the SII event, and advised people to reach out to a “deployment strategist” at Picogrid for an invitation.

Initialized Capital is a venture capital fund worth more than $3 billion that counts among its portfolio companies Coinbase, Instacart, Patreon, Reddit, and the lesser-known Picogrid. The founders of Initialized Capital include an early Palantir employee (Garry Tan) and Reddit co-founder (Alexis Ohanian).

The City of El Segundo, apparently another sponsor of the SII Defense Cooperation Forum, is said to be “an upstart, male-dominated defense tech enclave,” found in Los Angeles County. Neros and Picogrid are based in El Segundo, and so is the “electronic warfare startup” CX2, which has raised $31 million this year, and told Snake Island Institute, “Thanks so much for putting together this event, it was a pleasure.”

Back in Washington, Viktoria Honcharuk and Catarina Buchatskiy attended this year’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention on behalf of Snake Island Institute, which called it “the largest land power and defense industry event in North America.” The AUSA, a private organization that “serves as the professional association of the United States Army,” describes its annual “meeting and exposition” as “the army’s most powerful event.” According to SII, “We delivered a breakout briefing on Ukraine’s war,” apparently a private event at AUSA 2025. James Acuna, who “left” the CIA as a “senior operations officer” in 2022 (after twenty years) to set up a consulting firm based in Estonia, thanked the SII and U.S. drone developer Bryan Sardoch for “this amazing talk.”

After returning to Ukraine, Viktoria Honcharuk from the 3rd Assault Brigade remotely joined a class on “Technology in War” at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. Jeremy Gwinn, an adjunct professor, said he was “very excited” to make it happen. He also teaches at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. His career in the U.S. military spans almost 30 years. In recent years (2022-24) Gwinn was the Chief of Staff of U.S. Army Strategic Operations, which as he explains, made him “responsible for integrating space, cyber, electromagnetic warfare, information operations, and network capabilities for the Army.”

Jim Dolbow, the national security advisor to Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA) and alumni of the far-right Institute of World Politics in Washington, praised Snake Island Institute on its recent trip to the United States: “From Capitol Hill to AUSA and lots of other places in between, you’ll [sic] did one helluva great job of sharing your wisdom. Keep up the good work.”

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