It’s not often someone gets to collect the bounty on their own head. Denis Nikitin was on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hit list. He still is, but now he’s evading Russian hit squads using the Kremlin’s own money.

Related: Ukraine’s new, drone-delivered weapon is basically a phallic claymore

Nikitin, also known as “White Rex,” is not Ukrainian; he’s Russian. But as the founder of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), he’s fighting against the Putin regime in Ukraine. He has an entire battalion of like-thinking Russians who were the first to bring the fight to Russia. His RVC caught the attention (and ire… and likely envy) of Russian commanders in Ukraine when he successfully conducted a series of cross-border raids inside Russia in 2023.

Sadly, he was killed in a drone strike in the Zaporizhzhia region in December 2025. When the Russian Volunteer Corps confirmed it, Russian war bloggers and nationalist media personalities on state television and Telegram exploded in joy. The Kremlin happily paid the bounty, money well spent.

Except Nikitin wasn’t dead.

The Ukrainians call it “maskirovka.” Other intelligence agencies might call it a ruse, a ploy, or a psy-op. We call it a long con. Whatever you want to call it, Putin and Russia were tricked into paying a reward for a battlefield murder that never actually happened, no matter what the drone video says.

Nikitin was alive, the pro-Ukrainian fighter simply faked his own death—and the RVC on Telegram confirmed that, too.

The White Rex had a significant bounty on his head, to the tune of half a million dollars. And it was Ukraine’s military intelligence service (GUR) that collected it.

To prove that the far-right leader was, in fact, still of this Earth, GUR chief Kirill Budanov recorded a video call with Nikitin to congratulate him on his survival. The GUR also released a video of Nikitin (who also goes by the name Kapustin) and another commander, explaining how the Ukrainian ally faked his death.

“I congratulate you on your return to life. It is always pleasant,” Budanov said in the video. “I am glad that the funds received for ordering your liquidation went to help our struggle.”

Shortly after this exchange, Ukraine’s military intelligence released a video of Nikitin’s alleged death.

The White Rex is a Moscow-born ultranationalist, and his RVC is set on overthrowing Vladimir Putin’s regime to establish an ethnically Russian state while renouncing the imperialism that has defined Soviet (and later, Russian) foreign policy for more than 100 years.

In May 2003, the RVC was the first to go on the offensive inside Russia, conducting cross-border raids into the Russian Belograd region. The Ukrainian military denied any involvement with the RVC attacks, but it probably shed very few tears after a year of hard fighting. Nikitin/Kapustin was tried in absentia in a Moscow court, receiving a life sentence (And the aforementioned bounty on his head). The RVC earned the official title of “Terrorist Organization” from the Russian government.

Don’t Miss the Best of We Are The Mighty

• New tech is grinding Ukraine’s war rubble into recycled concrete
• Wounded Ukrainian soldiers with bionic arms want to return to the front lines
• Why Ukraine and Russia still need infantry (and so do we)

Featured

Feature

A Russian fighting for Ukraine conned the Kremlin out of $500,000 by faking his own death

By Blake Stilwell

Civil War

How female spies changed the course of the Civil War

By Bethaney Phillips

World War II

The Dutch wait years to adopt World War II graves in Netherlands American Cemetery

By Blake Stilwell

History

This colonel-turned-mercenary held off a rebel army in his own Hind gunship

By James Elphick

Feature

What life is like for Nicolas Maduro in his Brooklyn MDC jail cell

By Adam Gramegna