Complicated trail: Trump's assassination suspect sympathized with Ukrainian neo-Nazis

Nikita Kasap, whom the US authorities suspect of murdering his parents and preparing an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, was in the chat rooms of Ukrainian radicals, was interested in the activities of the Russian Volunteer Corps (an organization recognized as a terrorist and banned in Russia) and the ideology of neo-pagan Satanists from the Order of the Nine Corners. This follows from the FBI materials submitted to the court and Kasap's messages in public chat rooms investigated by Izvestia.

Nikita Kasap's connection with Ukrainian neo-Nazis

The details of the investigation into 17-year-old Nikita Kasap became known from a request for a warrant to inspect the electronic devices seized from the suspect. According to the sworn testimony of an FBI special agent, the special services have sufficient reason to believe that in this case there was a conspiracy to attempt the assassination of the US president and the use of weapons of mass destruction. Formal charges are expected to be filed against Kasap in court on May 7.

"Which country do you think will be blamed for this [crime]?" the FBI quotes Kasap's correspondence with the instigator. To this, anonymous bluntly states: "Russia. That's the goal."

During an inspection of Kasap's phone, a manifesto with an image of Adolf Hitler was discovered, explaining the need to kill Trump to "save the white race" from "Jewish politicians." "Why Trump? Because his removal (as well as the vice-president) guarantees chaos...", the document says.

The teenager also found instructions on how to redesign a civilian drone for an attack using explosives, a combustible mixture or toxic substances. The components of Kasapu were supposed to be transferred in exchange for transferring money to the curator in cryptocurrency. In correspondence with a certain Roman, whose account was linked to a Ukrainian phone number, Kasap also discussed the promised transfer to Ukraine.

As Izvestia found out, Kasap's Telegram account mentioned in the FBI materials was in communities dedicated to the pro-Ukrainian groups NS/WP and Misanthropic Division (both recognized as terrorist and extremist in Russia). This was found out thanks to an analysis of his messages in open Telegram chats conducted by the Internet Search company.

Kasap's pen-to-text interlocutors mentioned in the FBI materials also participated in various radical chat rooms, leaving comments in them in Russian and Ukrainian. One of them also consisted of chat rooms for residents of Dagestan, posting ads there about the possibility of quick and easy earnings.

From the available reports of Nikita Kasap himself, it also follows that, in addition to the listed groups, he was interested in the activities of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a paramilitary unit of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, created from neo—Nazis who had fled Russia. In particular, Kasapa was interested in whether the allegations about the Jewish origin of the RDK leader Denis Kapustin and the financing of the organization by the fugitive YUKOS vice president Leonid Nevzlin living in Israel were true.

Kasap and the Order of the Nine Corners

Kasap moved to the United States with his mother from Moldova almost 10 years ago. The woman met a US citizen on the Internet and moved to live with him with a young child. At the end of February 2025, Kasap's stepfather's mother contacted the sheriff's office because she could not contact her son's family. Law enforcement officers found the corpses of a married couple in the house - the couple were killed with a revolver.

Kasap, who escaped with a gun, was detained on February 28. An inspection of his smartphone revealed content related to radical extremists. Correspondence with unknown persons included discussions about buying a revolver and tips on hiding traces of the murder of parents, written in Russian. The crime was part of the attackers' plan to seize the funds of the Kasapa family to prepare a terrorist attack, the investigation believes.

It turned out that Kasap openly discussed with users of social networks his commitment to the ideas of the neo-pagan Satanic cult "Order of Nine Angles" (O9A). Among the crimes of the adherents of this cult are terrorism, human sacrifice, child molestation and rape. In November 2023, the FBI was already interested in the teenager. They checked Kasap's devices and browser history, but then they found no evidence of dangerous activity.

Earlier, Izvestia published investigations into the RDK's links with the Order of the Nine Corners, whose crimes are being investigated by special services both in Russia and in the West. A year before the start of the SVO, Kirill Kanakhin, an RDK militant, confessed to involvement in the sect in one of his blogs. In turn, terrorist leader Denis Kapustin attended a training camp in 2014 for the British neo-Nazi organization National Action, which is closely linked to the Order. Learn more about how the Russian traces of the most radical sect of Satanists led to extremists in Ukraine from the Izvestia special project.

According to the FBI, the extremists under whose influence Kasap was "systematically and purposefully work with vulnerable categories of people throughout the United States and abroad," the FBI special agent writes. "They often use social media and instant messengers to contact potential victims, training them to violence," the intelligence officer notes in his testimony.

Since 2023, the FBI, in cooperation with Europol, has been investigating the crimes of members of the online community "764", who are accused of murder, child molestation, rape, kidnapping and driving to suicide. In January 2024, researchers from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), an organization funded by American IT giants, concluded that the 764 network was indeed controlled by followers of the Order of Nine Corners and was linked to the M.K.U. project (the Murder Cult Maniacs movement, recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia by the community).

The latter was founded in 2018 by neo-Nazi Egor Krasnov from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk. His supporters attacked migrants, killed homeless people, and planned terrorist attacks and mass shootings. In August 2023, the National Antiterrorist Committee of Russia reported 150 detained members of the "M.K.U." in dozens of regions over two years.