Night Wolves MC (Motorcycle Club)
Night Wolves MC (Nochnye Volki MC) is an outlaw motorcycle club founded in the USSR in 1989. The club has strong political connections which is more recent years has seen their image shift from “one percenter bikers” to “political activists”.
Night Wolves MC History
The Night Wolves Motorcycle Club was founded around the Moscow area in 1989.
The club has strong political ties, with Russian President Vladimir Putin having ridden with the club’s leader, Alexander ‘The Surgeon’ Zaldostanov in 2011 when Vladimir Putin was the Russian Prime Minister. They are also closely aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church.
They started out as a group who were organizing illegal rock music concerts, mainly due to the censorship laws that had been placed on music by the Soviet Union.
The club run a number of different businesses:
- Arranging concert/club music performances and promotion
- Tattoo shops (and co-founders of the International Moscow Tattoo Convention)
- Wolf Wear – Clothing
- Wolf Racing – Motorsport racing
- Wolf Engineering – Custom motorcycle engineering and manufacturing
There are also strong connections to the following businesses, both of which use company logos with a similar style to the Night Wolves MC patch:
- “Wolf” Holding – Which runs multiple companies including a security agency. The security agency offers armed and unarmed protection of buildings and premises, property in transit and the installation and monitoring of tracking systems.
- Wolf International Centre for Special Training – Provides security training, including military style martial arts and the use of weapons.
Night Wolves MC Patch / Motto / Colors
The Night Wolves Motorcycle Club patch consists of a wolf’s head in front of a glowing moon. There are flames trailing from the side of the wolf’s head.
Night Wolves MC Chapters
The Night Wolves Motorcycle Club are generally considered the largest outlaw motorcycle club within Russia, with dozens of chapters within the country. They also have other chapters spread across Eastern Europe.
- Night Wolves Russia
- Night Wolves Belgorod chapter
- Night Wolves Cheboksary chapter
- Night Wolves Dmitrov chapter
- Night Wolves Gomel chapter
- Night Wolves Kaliningrad chapter
- Night Wolves Kalyazin chapter
- Night Wolves Kashin chapter
- Night Wolves Kazan chapter
- Night Wolves Kharkov chapter
- Night Wolves Kolomna chapter
- Night Wolves Krasnodar chapter
- Night Wolves Kursk chapter
- Night Wolves Lugansk chapter
- Night Wolves Magnitogorsk chapter
- Night Wolves Minsk chapter
- Night Wolves Moscow chapter
- Night Wolves Nizhnij Novgoro chapterd
- Night Wolves Novorossiysk chapter
- Night Wolves Nordland chapter
- Night Wolves Orenburg chapter
- Night Wolves Popasnaya chapter
- Night Wolves Pushkino chapter
- Night Wolves Rostov-don chapter
- Night Wolves Sakhalin chapter
- Night Wolves Samara chapter
- Night Wolves Saratov chapter
- Night Wolves Serpukhov chapter
- Night Wolves Sevastopol chapter
- Night Wolves Shatura chapter
- Night Wolves Smolensk chapter
- Night Wolves St Petersburg chapter
- Night Wolves Stupino chapter
- Night Wolves Sviblovo chapter
- Night Wolves Taman chapter
- Night Wolves Torzhok chapter
- Night Wolves Tver chapter
- Night Wolves Tyumen chapter
- Night Wolves Volgograd chapter
- Night Wolves Voskresensk chapter
- Night Wovles Yoshkar-ola chapter
- Night Wolves Bulgaria
- Night Wolves Latvia
- Night Wolves Macedonia
- Night Wolves Romania
- Night Wolves Serbia
- Night Wolves Ukraine
- Night Wolves Kiev chapter
- Night Wolves Nomads
Famous Night Wolves MC Members
The Night Wolves have multiple extremely strong political allies including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Aleksander Zaldostanov “The Surgeon” – Night Wolves President
Aleksander Zaldostanov is the leader of the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club and arguably the most famous outlaw motorcycle club member in Russia. He was born in Kirovograd, Ukraine on 19 January, 1963, however has spent most of his life living in Moscow, Russia.
His nickname of “The Surgeon” comes from his previous life where he worked in a dental clinic.
Amongst his friends is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ramzan Kadyrov – President of the Chechen Republic
Ramzan Kadyrov has been the President of the Chechen Republic in 2007, at the age of 30 and is the son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov. Ramzan Kadyrov is a former Chechen rebel.
He became a member of the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club in August 2014.
Night Wolves MC Crime / In The Media
2008 – The Night Wolves make their first public appearance at a political rally. The group attends the victory of Dmitriy Medvedev.
2011 – Vladimir Putin (who was the Russian Prime Minister at the time) meets the group at the Night Wolves Moscow clubhouse and participates on a ride.
2012 – 20 October, 2012. The Night Wolves travel to the clubhouse of Tri Dorogi MC (Three Roads MC) in Zelenograd. Tri Dorogi are allies with Bandidos MC. A fight breaks out and shots are fired. One of the members of Three Roads MC shoots Night Wolves member Valery Bely with a rifle, killing him. The suspected motive is that the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club did not want any Russian motorcycle clubs to align with groups from the USA. “Bandidos Zelenograd” patches were discovered as part of a police search of the clubhouse after the fight. Tri Dorogi MC member Yuriy Nekrasov is later charged. The Night Wolves Vice President Aleksandr Benyush said they were not going to take revenge on Nekrasov. “He is not our enemy. Our enemy is the ideology that the Bandidos MC and Mr Nekrasov fell victims to”.
2015 – April/May, 2015. The Night Wolves attempt to ride to Berlin, Germany to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the allied forces victory over the Nazi forces. The government of Poland refused the club entry into their country and the German government cancelled their visas.
2015 – May, 2015. A report presented by Russian opposition member Alexei Navalniy claims that between 2013 and 2014 the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club were granted 56 million rubles (approximately $US1.1 million) by the government. The grants were used to present shows that had a general anti-western theme. The Moscow Times newspaper reported “A show staged by the Night Wolves in 2013 featured a character representing the Statue of Liberty kidnapping Russia’s snow maiden, Snegurochka, in an attempt to ruin Russia. The show ends with Russian forces triumphing and the hero proclaiming in a poem with apparent religious undertones that the country will defeat its foes no matter how hard foreign believers try”.
2015 – October, 2015. The Moscow Times reports that the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club have received a grant of 12 million rubles (approximately $US190,000) to build a “Patriot” youth center in Sevastopol in Crimea.
Night Wolves MC Books / Movies / TV
No books specifically written about Night Wolves MC are available for us to recommend.
Instead you may be interested in viewing our list of outlaw motorcycle club books.
Night Wolves MC Enemies and Allies
Night Wolves MC enemies:
- Tri Dorogi MC
- Bandidos MC
Night Wolves MC allies:
- To be confirmed.
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