How Russians end up in a far-right militia fighting in Ukraine

FILE PHOTO: Danil Yugoslavsky gets ready at Civic Council’s Warsaw office, hours before crossing into Ukraine, in Warsaw, Poland, January 15, 2023. REUTERS/Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

WARSAW (Reuters) - Danil Yugoslavsky had long hated Vladimir Putin. The tech worker says he protested for fair elections in Russia for several years before he left his homeland in despair in 2017 and eventually settled in Spain.

Even so, he never suspected his yearning to topple the Russian president would one day see him join a far-right paramilitary group founded by a former soccer hooligan known as White Rex and march into the war in Ukraine.