Philly Anti-Capitalist Philly Anti-authoritarian News

The Atlantic Nationalist Club (we are SO not calling them the ANC!) doesn’t have a lot of members and it seems like they won’t have a lot of members on the outside before long! Also, we have written about one of these guys before!

An 18-year-old member of a New Jersey White Supremacist group was arrested on charges that he solicited others to destroy energy facilities. A few days later, another member of the same group who has had run-ins with law enforcement in the past was also arrested on unknown charges.

On Andrew Takhistov, 18, of East Brunswick, New Jersey was picked up at Newark Airport as he was about to board a flight enroute to fight in Ukraine for the Russian Volunteer Corps, an organization he said was “openly National Socialist,” according to a Department of Justice press release. The release further stated that Takhistov was communicating on a social messaging platform with an individual who he did not know was an undercover law enforcement employee. In those discussions, Takhistov expressed a desire to advance his neo-Nazi ideology through violent means and said another reason why he wanted to join the Russian Volunteer Corps was not just gain paramilitary training but particularly because they specialized in assassinations, attacks on power grids and other infrastructure sabotage.

Takhistov’s arrest came after two visits in June and July to two different electrical substations in North Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey where he instructed the undercover employee on numerous aspects of how to conduct an attack on an electrical substation. It was on July 5, during one of these visits that Takhistov reportedly instructed the undercover employee to take several photographs of the electrical substations so that Takhistov could send them to his Russian friend for additional advice on how to best sabotage the stations.

Takhistov, who was known online as “Cossack,” is a member of the Atlantic Nationalist Club (AnaC, not to be confused with the African National Congress of South Africa), a group with a small handful of members that started in May 2023 as a breakaway from the New Jersey chapter of White Lives Matter (WLM) The group is led by Claudino G. Petruccelli, who in November 2021 was caught by antifa, including members of One People’s Project, attempting to post WLM stickers around Princeton, New Jersey and the following week by police as he tried to do the same thing in Somerville, New Jersey with two others, Zackerji I. Ivanovic, who is reportedly currently with the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, and Steve V. Koshlyak, who is currently a AnaC member. The three were arrested.

On Saturday, an online notification indicated that Koshlyak, who celebrated his 37th birthday two days prior, had been arrested that day and online jail records note that he is currently being held at the Burlington County (NJ) Detention Center in Mount Holly, New Jersey with a jail ID of 117724. There is no further information about his arrest including the department that arrested him or when his first appearance will take place. In addition to his November 2021 arrest, Koshlyak also has a DUI arrest going back to 2014.

While AnaC have been attempting to be known for their flash mob rallies and stickering, often associating with Dan D’Ambly’s New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA), they have been particularly displayed a violent over the past two years both as a WLM chapter and its current incarnation. A group of them including Petruccelli and another member Nicholas G. Mucci participated in the fights at Penn State University in October 2022 when Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes and internet troll Alex Stein attempted to have an event there. It was shut down after those fights, where Mucci and Petruccelli allegedly pepper sprayed those protesting the event, got out of hand. Last month, Mucci pled guilty to attempting to smoke bomb and pepper spray a benefit show for One People’s Project at a church in Asbury Park, New Jersey three months  after Penn State, the smoke bombs purchased in Pennsylvania the day of the event there, and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 16. These latest two arrests will make three members of the small hate group currently imprisoned.

According to the Department of Justice press release, Takhistov is charged with one count of soliciting another individual to engage in criminal conduct that involved destroying a public service enterprise group circuit breaker and substation. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $125,000 fine. Charges are still pending for Koshlyak at the time of this posting.