Andreas Heinemann-Grüder (ed.)
Who Are the Fighters? Irregular Armed Groups in the Russian-Ukrainian War since 2014
Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2024. Distributed by Columbia University Press
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/who-are-the-fighters/9783838217772
The war in Ukraine has been fought with, among others, irregular armed groups since 2014—volunteers, paramilitaries, and mercenaries. Based on interviews in the Russian-controlled Donbas and with Ukrainian combatants, the contributions to this volume disclose various micro-dynamics of the mobilization, group formation, and fighting. Who were these fighters and who organized them? Russia has been increasingly employing mercenaries as a way to conduct undeclared, but ruthless wars beyond her borders. Ukraine’s formation of irregular armed groups in 2014 was a response to the army’s initially glaring inability to counter Russia’s military intervention. Most of the irregular battalions acted from the beginning under governmental orders. They have never operated autonomously, but compensated for operational weaknesses of regular armed groups. The initially high power of irregular battalions derived from state support, the capabilities of commanders, social networks, and the faculties of the fighters.
C o n t e n t s
The War in Ukraine and Irregular Armed Groups
Andreas Heinemann-Grüder ………………………………………………………….. 7
Organizations of Russian Nationalists in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Nikolay Mitrokhin ………………………………………………………………………. 15
Pro-Russian Irregular Armed Groups
Natalia Savelyeva ……………………………………………………………………….. 47
The Far-Right Predecessor Organizations of the Ukrainian Irregular Armed Units
Anton Shekhovtsov ……………………………………………………………………… 89
Irregular Armed Groups in Ukraine: State Savior or State Capture?
Andreas Heinemann-Grüder ………………………………………………………. 117
Between Frontline and Parliament: Ukrainian Political Parties and Irregular Armed Groups since 2014
Kostiantyn Fedorenko, Andreas Umland ……………………………………… 189
Ukrainian Volunteer Groups: Oversight by the Government
Leonid Poliakov ………………………………………………………………………… 229
The Long Shadow of the War: Return and Reintegration of War
Veterans Julia Friedrich, Theresa Lütkefend ………………………………………………. 255
Between Two Worlds: Internally Displaced Persons
Vyacheslav Likhachev ………………………………………………………………… 285
Media Policy of Armed Groups in Ukraine
Kostiantyn Fedorenko ………………………………………………………………… 309
Russia’s Corporate Warriors
Andreas Heinemann-Grüder ………………………………………………………. 333
Andreas Umland 