National Republican Army

The National Republican Army (NRA; ) is an alleged underground partisan group of Russians inside Russia working towards the violent overthrow of the Putin government. The group claims to be a member of the Irpin Declaration, an alleged alliance of anti-government Russian militant groups. Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian State Duma, has identified the group as being behind the assassination of Russian journalist Darya Dugina in August 2022, and "many other partisan actions carried out on the territory of Russia in recent months." He said he has been "in touch" with representatives of the organization since April 2022. He describes his role as similar to that played by Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin vis-a-vis the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the Troubles, and claimed that his role is limited to providing publicity, helping fugitives, and providing technical assistance; he denied providing weapons. Commentators have expressed doubts as to Ponomarev's claims about the group. Media coverage of Dugina's assassination stresses that there is no independent verification of the Russian NRA's existence or its role in the assassination. Nevertheless, the opposition Russian Action Committee blacklisted Ponomarev from its Free Russia Congress on grounds that he had "called for terrorist attacks on Russian territory." The Committee's statement also implied that Dugina was a "[civilian] who [did] not take part in the armed confrontation", and condemned denunciations of Aleksandr Dugin following the attack as "a demonstrative rejection of normal human empathy for the families of the victims." History Following the outbreak of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, arson attacks on Russian military enlistment and induction centers were a widely reported phenomenon. The dispersed arsons were, however, rarely attributed to a group with the exception of those claimed by the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists.