The Snake Island Institute (SII) is a military think tank on the rise and a central node in the “Azov Lobby.” Shortly before launching SII last year, its president Vladyslav Sobolevsky and executive director Maryna Hrytsenko visited Washington, D.C. with a delegation from the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade. Sobolevsky, an alleged war criminal, was a deputy commander of that openly neo-Nazi unit, and before 2022, deputy chief of staff of the “National Corps,” the political party of the Azov movement.