Unmasking Maskov: How Bellingcat Found a Man Outfitting Russian Neo-Nazis
H8Core is a Russian fashion brand that sells clothing items glorifying far-right ideology and the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Its products – which include t-shirts, caps and hoodies – have been cross-promoted on a variety of pro-Wagner and far-right Russian channels. They have even been held aloft by senior figures in the neo-Nazi Wagner paramilitary group, Rusich, which is currently under international sanctions.
While the people behind the H8Core brand have sought to use a variety of social media channels to promote their wares, they have managed to keep their identity secret – until now.
An investigation by Bellingcat can reveal that a former Wagner fighter named Roman Morin is behind H8Core. He is also an admin of White Uncles in Africa, an openly racist Telegram group that, at the time of writing, has more than 77,000 subscribers and promotes H8Core products.
Bellingcat used various social media posts and leaked Russian databases held on publicly available sites to identify Morin.
While it is well known that far-right and white supremacist groups use fashion retail to fund their operations and spread awareness of their causes, there has been far less attention paid to how Wagner affiliated groups employ some of the same practices.
According to Candace Rondeaux of New America, a US-based think tank, several groups have begun to sell and promote pro-Wagner merchandise over the years.
Identifying H8Core’s Admin
On Nov. 30 last year, White Uncles in Africa shared a picture on its Telegram channel of a man wearing a baseball cap and posing with a flag sold by H8Core alongside Alexey Milchakov (call sign: Serb) commander of the Rusich paramilitary group. The post detailed how the individual in the cap was delivering three “combat kits” to ‘Serb’ for the Rusich fighters.
Like Rusich, Alexey Milchakov is under international sanctions. Former commander Yan Petrovsky is now facing a life sentence in Finland for war crimes allegedly committed in Ukraine 10 years ago. Both men have Wagner IDs, and at various points worked as contractors for the mercenary group, according to Ben Dalton, a Program Manager at New America.
As Bellingcat came to discover, the man delivering the combat kits, with face blurred in the above image, was Roman Vasilyevich Morin, 38, from Stavropol.
He first came to Bellingcat’s attention shortly after White Uncles in Africa released their merch in collaboration with H8Core last summer. Their t-shirts and other merchandise promote Wagner’s work in Africa.
In the group’s messages, they instruct prospective customers to contact the H8Core admin referred to as “Uncle Roma” (short for Roman).
At that point, Bellingcat did not know “Uncle Roma’s” real name. Yet his old accounts gave away a lot of personal information that showed “Uncle Roma” was Morin.
Firstly, his email address is listed as the contact for H8Core’s YouTube page.
H8Core: Racist Memes and T-shirts
H8Core was founded in 2014 according to Morin. VK.com posts suggest that H8Core started selling neo-Nazi streetwear in Russian far-right clothing stores or through their VK page that same year.
Their VK.com page has more than 23,000 subscribers. Their Telegram channel is much smaller, with just over 3,000 subscribers and was only created in 2019.
Morin claims he isn’t motivated by money, “H8Core is not business, it’s a hobby,” he said. He insists the clothing isn’t aimed at neo-Nazis, but at “Russian patriots” and Wagner mercenaries.
In 2024, H8Core made a name for themselves in the pro-Wagner universe on Telegram. On Sept. 22, White Uncles started selling black t-shirts with the phrase “Work & Travel”, a masked white man, a pick-up truck, and Africa printed on them.
Many more promotional messages followed where they requested potential customers to contact the H8Core admin for orders. Nowadays, customers can buy their “merch” from Wildberries.ru, a Russian online retailer. Wildberries didn’t respond to our request for comment.H8Core and White Uncles came to Rusich’s attention. They even promoted H8Core merchandise on their own Telegram channel, which has more than 250,000 subscribers.
This same email address was used by Morin to register as an individual entrepreneur with the Russian authorities.
Vendor information on the Russian online marketplace, Wildberries.ru, appeared to confirm that Morin was selling White Uncles in Africa patches. The social INN number (the taxpayer identification number) matches the one found in the Russian company register for H8Core and which lists Morin’s name and email address.
Using the leak aggregator intelx.io, Bellingcat found several databases (Burger King, Sportmaster) that link Morin to the same email address. The leaks also revealed his phone number and that he was born on Nov. 18.
The H8Core VK page corroborated this by congratulating the admin and founder, “Online Maskov”, on his birthday, Nov. 18.
A Mask Off Moment
Although Morin blurred his face when delivering kits to Rusich, Bellingcat was able to find a media appearance where he was fully unmasked.
Morin also goes by the names Online Maskov and Andrey Maskov on VK.com and Instagram. He used the same pseudonym when making an appearance on the TV show Liniya Zashchity in May 2016. On the show, he spoke about his business venture: staging fights for the amusement of wedding guests.
In this TV appearance, we get a clear view of Morin’s face and a H8Core tattoo on his right hand. Knowing what Morin looks like, it is easy to spot him in older H8Core VK photos and YouTube videos.
Bellingcat shared Morin’s full name with Future Frontlines, a programme of the US-based think tank New America. They reviewed a dataset compiled from 164 leaked internal personnel files of the late Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s company, Evro Polis and subsidiary companies, dating from 2014 to 2021. Morin’s name appears in the records.
Bellingcat was then able to cross-reference the data because Morin’s records included his date of birth, phone number, passport number and personal identifiers that Bellingcat already had.
Morin served in Libya in 2020 as a radiotelephone operator and “driver-operator” under the call sign “deyatel” (деятель).
According to his record, he served in the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV), which explains the tattoo “За ВДВ” (For the VDV) on his left hand. While this tattoo is common among paratroopers, the font and style tend to differ.
Morin, H8Core and White Uncles in Africa: A Close Relationship
In a promotional message, White Uncles in Africa claimed that the H8Core “owner” was someone they had a long and close relationship with. They also claimed he was a “W-veteran”.
But open source evidence suggests that the H8core founder, Morin, is even closer than they were letting on.
White Uncles in Africa: Pro-Wagner Snuff
“White Uncles in Africa” is an openly racist, pro-Wagner Telegram group that, at the time of writing, has more than 77,000 subscribers. Their posts feature torture, severed heads, alleged cannibalism, footage of Russian mercenaries and their allies fighting Tuareg separatists, and recruitment messages for Russian men willing to fight in Africa.
In addition to selling H8Core clothing, they have recently begun offering uncensored versions of their graphic photos for 500 Telegram Stars (Telegram’s payment system) per month. As of the time of publication, Telegram hasn’t responded about whether this violates their Terms of Service.
Some graphic videos are still available for free. A video depicting the killing of a Syrian man by Wagner fighters is available on their channel in its entirety. According to Morin, this video made him join the Wagner group.
At the turn of the year, a White Uncles admin shared a New Year’s message in their group. The man depicted was hiding his face, but there was evidence that he was Morin. Despite trying to blur his tattoos in the video, they missed a few crucial keyframes where the tattoos on his hand were visible. These appeared to be similar to tattoos displayed by a masked figure in H8core and White Uncles in Africa social media photos.
On Jan. 8, 2025, the White Uncles admin claimed to have been in Krasnodar for a concert by the Russian metal band Aria. They also posted a Telegram story about it (which disappeared after 24 hours).
Towards the end of the video, the camera pans to the right, and we see Morin, who is again identifiable by his tattoos, cheering and clapping.
On the same day, the Uncle Roma account shared a few videos of the same concert with Morin’s face again on full display.
The Meeting with Milchakov
After unmasking “Maskov,” Bellingcat reached out to Morin via Telegram. We asked him about the findings of our investigation.
He replied almost immediately, admitting to giving the combat kits to Milchakov, being a Wagner member and serving in Libya. Morin claimed that H8Core had no neo-Nazi elements and was not a business but merely a hobby.
He said he was inspired to join the Wagner group in 2020 after he saw the infamous 2017 execution video of Wagner fighters torturing and killing a Syrian man. (WARNING: extremely disturbing content. For the original articles by Novaya Gazeta, see here and here).“I am an advocate of radical punishment for terrorism and I love justice,” he wrote to Bellingcat.
In Russian neo-Nazi circles, retail business gained momentum after the video from Syria started circulating online.
“That’s when they really started selling patches, stickers, coffee mugs, and t-shirts. Quite a few [mercenaries] had businesses selling military memorabilia. Now, almost everyone we look at has some sort of thriving retail business, whether it’s t-shirts or coffee mugs,” explained Candace Rondeaux, Senior Director at New America.
As for why Morin and Milchakov met, and why Morin gave combat kits to Rusich, Candace Rondeaux believes White Uncles in Africa is trying to “convey some sense of greater credibility within the network. Milchakov doesn’t really need credibility; he’s already proven himself”.
According to TGStat, a site that provides statistics on Telegram channels, White Uncles in Africa went from 2,000 subscribers to more than 77,000 over the course of a year. In the last month alone, they added more than 2,000 subscribers.
“There is no story about the Wagner Group without the internet and social media. In many ways, the Wagner phenomenon is as much about battlefield and conventional military tactics as it is about information warfare,” Candace Rondeaux told Bellingcat.
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here, and Mastodon here.
