NEW BOOK: Who Are the Fighters? Irregular Armed Groups in the Russian-Ukrainian War since 2014

[umland]

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://www.ibidem.eu/en/Series/Society-Politics/Soviet-and-Post-Soviet-Politics-and-Society/Who-Are-the-Fighters.html

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 Luetkefend ………………………………………………. 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