Side-Switching as State-Building: the Case of Russian-Speaking Militias in Eastern Ukraine

Abstract

Why do some militias bandwagon with the state during a civil war while others resist state authority? A formal model highlighting the role of material incentives treats militia commanders as rent-seekers competing for security sector jobs run by civilians. Western donors can send aid to inflate the size of the pie that civilians distribute to militia commanders. Our key result is a partial incorporation equilibrium by which jointly-sustainable strategies selected by a minimum winning coalition of battalion commanders maximize their share of rents. Battalion commanders outside this coalition do best by remaining outside the state. We evaluate the model using an analytic narrative of contemporary Ukraine – a hard case for our theory since ideology and ethnicity play an important role in most standard accounts of the conflict. Analysis of a volunteer battalion incorporation dataset, results from a survey of 64 Ukrainian volunteer battalion members, and a short discussion of the Azov Battalion suggest the salience of intra-Ukrainian distributional politics to militia commanders’ incorporation strategies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Though the vertical cooperative consolidation we examine in this article differs from the horizontal cooperative consolidation between militant groups discussed in the rest of the special issue, we view the two processes as similar. In horizontal cooperative consolidation, rebel groups decide whether to merge with or affiliate with a stronger group, similar to how rebel groups decide whether to affiliate with a state that is not strong enough to coerce them into joining involuntarily.

2 For a very good summary of this position, see Kristian Åtland, “Destined for Deadlock? Russia, Ukraine, and the Unfulfilled Minsk Agreements,” Post-Soviet Affairs 36, no. 2 (2020): 122–39.

3 We use field commanders, militias, and militia commanders to refer to the armed non-state actors in the Ukraine conflict and their top leadership.

4 This assumption implies that no field commander should be sufficient to unilaterally ensure state survival (s > 1) or have a veto over state stability (s < n).

5 We assume symmetry of field commanders for the sake of simplicity. Relaxing this assumption could change what the winning coalition looks like (more powerful field commanders may be more likely to be incorporated) as well as when coordination happens (coordination depends on beliefs about what the most powerful field commanders will do).

6 G does not have much leverage in the game, which we describe in more detail near the end of the article and in the downloadable appendix. For one, sending aid inflates both stag and second-stage rabbit payoffs simultaneously. Adding complexity to G’s choice set in the model (e.g., selecting an amount of aid a in a range 0 ≤ a ≤ 1) adds little. The same would be true even if the second stage of the game were iterated. The problem is that some Ukrainian actors can correctly anticipate they will be cut out of the spoils of aid in stage two by a minimum winning coalition logic, so they do not join in stage one. Changing the size of the pool of aid does not solve this problem.

7 For those seeking an accessible introduction to how the notion of a minimum winning coalition shapes political decision-making, a good start is William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions, vol. 173 (Yale University Press, 1962).

8 The equilibrium formally defined in the downloadable appendix fudges this point a bit, with exactly s joining so each is pivotal (capable of unilaterally breaking the coalition and achieving a v*/n - c payoff). If k₁>s, this commitment problem is more serious.

9 The hypothesis is stated with a playful nod to Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 1994.

10 James D. Fearon, “Why Ethnic Politics and ‘Pork’ Tend to go Together.” In an SSRC-MacArthur sponsored conference on “Ethnic Politics and Democratic Stability,” (University of Chicago, 1999).

11 There is a rich literature how rebel groups often act as spoilers for peace processes across a variety of contexts. See David E. Cunningham, “Veto Players and Civil War Duration,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006): 875–92; Wendy Pearlman, “Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process,” International Security 33, no. 3 (2009): 79–109; Wendy Pearlman and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, “Nonstate Actors, Fragmentation and Conflict Processes,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 1 (2012): 3–15; Andrew G. Reiter, “Does Spoiling Work? Assessing the Impact of Spoilers on Civil War Peace Agreements,” Civil Wars 17, no. 1 (2015): 89–111. Similarly, interveners in conflict can make a peace settlement less likely. See David E. Cunningham, “Blocking Resolution: How External States Can Prolong Civil Wars,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 2 (2010): 115–27; Aysegul Aydin and Patrick M. Regan, “Networks of Third-Party Interveners and Civil War Duration,” European Journal of International Relations 18, no. 3 (2012): 573–97.

12 Our sparse model excludes many variables that are relevant to a complete history of the case, such as variation in the economic recruiting base of militias (Yuri M. Zhukov, “Trading Hard Hats for Combat Helmets: The Economics of Rebellion in Eastern Ukraine,” Journal of Comparative Economics 44, no. 1 (2016): 1–15); local community beliefs about the legitimacy of the Maidan regime change (S. Kudelia, “How They Joined? Militants and Informers in the Armed Conflict in Donbas,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 30, no. 2 (2019): 279–306; Elise Giuliano, “Who Supported Separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and Popular Opinion at the Start of the Ukraine Crisis,” Post-Soviet Affairs 34, no. 2/3 (2018): 158); the role of some business oligarchs (Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Insufficiently Diverse: The Problem of Nonviolent Leverage and Radicalization of Ukraine’s Maidan Uprising, 2013–2014,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 11, no. 2 (2020): 201–15); regime characteristic of Russia or particular beliefs of Russian leaders (Samuel Charap and Timothy J. Colton, Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia (Routledge, 2018); Michael McFaul, “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy,” International Security 45, no. 2 (2020): 95–139; Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)); East-West cleavages in Ukrainian domestic politics (Keith Darden and Anna Grzymala-Busse, “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism, and the Communist Collapse,” World Politics 59, no. 1 (2006): 83–115); domestic changes in Ukraine undermining its ability (or NATO’s ability) to credibly commit to not taking actions in the future that might threaten Russia (Robert Powell, “War as a Commitment Problem,” International Organization 60, no. 1 (2006): 169–203); and slow-moving shifts in the global distribution of power affecting polarization in Ukraine (Nicholas Sambanis, Stergios Skaperdas, and William Wohlforth, “External Intervention, Identity, and Civil War,” Comparative Political Studies 53, no. 14 (2020): 2155–82).

13 Maj Michael Cohen, “Ukraine’s Battle at Ilovaisk, August 2014: The Tyranny of Means,” US Army Press Online Journal (2016): 11.

14 Serhy Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2015).

15 Sabrina Tavernise and David M. Herszenhorn, “Patchwork Makeup of Rebels Fighting Ukraine Makes Peace Talks Elusive,” The New York Times, July 9, 2014.

16 Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Far Right Participation in the Ukrainian Maidan Protests: An Attempt of Systematic Estimation” (European Politics and Society, Taylor & Francis, 2016), 453.

17 Ilmari Käihkö, “A Nation-in-the-Making, in Arms: Control of Force, Strategy and the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions,” Defence Studies 18, no. 2 (2018): 147–66.

18 Some in the Kremlin probably desired more secessionist Russian influence than just a sliver of the Eastern Donbas, but only if they could avoid paying occupation costs. Some pro-Kremlin groups clearly believed Russia might come to their defense if they could provoke a general uprising through actions such as seeking a referendum on independence: Ilmari Käihkö, “A Conventional War: Escalation in the War in Donbas, Ukraine” Forthcoming (2021). For others, the violence was motivated both by strategic reasoning and strong emotion: to protect family and friends or to respond to Ukrainian nationalists in the new government. Serhiy Kudelia, “The Donbas Rift,” Russian Politics & Law 54, no. 1 (2016): 5–27.

19 Those interested in these insignias (or the raw survey data) should contact the authors directly.

20 Alexander Clapp, “The Maidan Irregulars,” The National Interest, no. 143 (2016): 26–33; Andreas Umland, “Irregular Militias and Radical Nationalism in Post-Euromaydan Ukraine: The Prehistory and Emergence of the ‘Azov’ Battalion in 2014,” Terrorism and Political Violence 31, no. 1 (2019): 105–31.

21 Käihkö, “A Conventional War: Escalation in the War in Donbas, Ukraine.”

22 Kimitaka Matsuzato, “The Donbass War: Outbreak and Deadlock,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 25, no. 2 (2017): 175–201.

23 Tetyana Malyarenko and Stefan Wolff, The Dynamics of Emerging De-Facto States: Eastern Ukraine in the Post-Soviet Space (Routledge, 2019).

24 The reorganization seems to have folded the original militia units into a command-and-control structure with some brigades based on a single militia unit and others constructed from remnants of other units or reassigned fighters. For very informed speculation on these matters, see Mark Galeotti, Armies of Russia’s War in Ukraine, 1 edition (Osprey Publishing, 2019).

25 The year-by-year amounts subsequently transferred from the IMF (in SDRs): $3.9b in 2014, $7.7b in 2015, $8.4b in 2016, $8.5b in 2017, $8b in 2018, $6.9b in 2019, $6.5b in 2020. Non-military and military assistance allocated to Ukraine adds hundreds of millions. US GAO, “Democracy Assistance: State Should Improve Information Sharing with Embassies” (US Government Accountability Office, January 2020), https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-173.

26 Kateryna Zarembo, “Doing State’s Job: The Impact of Volunteers on State Defense Capacity in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” in Civil Society in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine (Columbia University Press, 2018), 101–28.

27 See also Vera Mironova and Ekaterina Sergatskova, “How Ukraine Reined in Its Militias,” Foreign Affairs, 2017, who describe how militias filled niches in state capacity. Examples include the provision of thermal imaging cameras, drones, and tablets with ballistic software and electronic maps, and the development of artillery fire control systems.

28 Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Nationalist Radicalization Trends in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” Ponars Eurasia, 2018.

29 Interviewee #63, Interview with self-identified member of 37th TBD, September 15, 2015.

30 Interviewee #3, Interview with self-identified member of Azov, August 19, 2015.

31 Interviewee #5, Interview with self-identified member of DUK (Ukrainian Volunteer Corps); 5th independent battalion, August 20, 2015.

32 Interviewee #8, Interview with self-identified member of Slobozhanshchyna, August 20, 2015.

33 Interviewee #12, Interview with self-identified member of UNA-UNSO Battalion, August 26, 2015.

34 Interviewee #13, Self-identified member of St. Mary Special Battalion (Reserve Rota), August 25, 2015, 13.

35 Interviewee #16, Interview with self-identified member of DUK (Ukrainian Volunteer Corps); 6th Alternate Battalion (Ternopil Oblast), August 25, 2015.

36 Interview # 25, Interview with self-identified member of DUK (Ukrainian Volunteer Corps); the 7th Alternate Battalion, August 28, 2015.

37 Interviewee #41, Interview with self-identified member of Bilotserkivs’kyi TBD, September 4, 2015.

38 Interview #50, Interview with self-identified member of Ternopil’, September 9, 2015. This self-reporting was inconsistent across the unit, reflected in an alternative coding in Table 2.

39 Interview #58, Interview with self-identified member of Crimea Battalion, September 11, 2015.

40 “Attention! The Azov Regiment’s response to the allegations published in ‘TIME’ magazine,” Офіційний сайт полку “Азов” На захисті України з 2014 року (blog), January 10, 2021, https://azov.org.ua/the-azov-regiments-response-to-the-allegations-published-in-time-magazine/.; Vyacheslav Likhachev, “Far-Right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy,” Freedom House, accessed March 5, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/analytical-brief/2018/far-right-extremism-threat-ukrainian-democracy; Aris Roussinos, “[Letter from Kyiv] The Armies of the Right,” Harper’s Magazine, January 2021, https://harpers.org/archive/2021/01/the-armies-of-the-right-ukraine-militias/..

41 Simon Shuster and Billy Perrigo, “How a Far-Right Militia Uses Facebook to Train New Members,” Time, January 7, 2021; Oleksiy Kuzmenko, “The Azov Regiment Has Not Depoliticized,” Atlantic Council (blog), March 19, 2020, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-azov-regiment-has-not-depoliticized/.

42 “По Ту Сторону «Азова». Чем Занимается в Тылу Самый Известный Полк Нацгвардии,” ФОКУС, August 4, 2017, https://focus.ua/long/377902., Aris 2021. Violence Marker 2021

43 We are hesitant to speculate about a specific mechanism that could allow some field commanders to block moves to reconcile and reintegrate Donbas, preferring the somewhat antiseptic language of “blocking coalition” to irresponsible speculation. Talk of “soft coups” or militaries refusing to obey orders is premature.

44 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 1st ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For a model that puts policy divergence between social forces zero-sum issues (especially language choice) more central to analysis, see Driscoll and Arel (forthcoming).

45 Formally, if c > v*/n, there is a unique equilibrium in which every field commander plays rehabilitate, G sends aid, p allocates all of v* to himself, all field commanders still play rehabilitate, and the game ends.

46 Western actors have some ways that we do not model to influence Ukraine’s actions. For example, Ukraine’s need to develop a supply chain for its military that is not dependent on Russia gives Western powers some transactional leverage over reform processes. Training and advising by Western military actors may mitigate the information problems inherent in principal-agent relationships and provides opportunities for influencing reforms. See Alexandra Chinchilla, “Advising War: Limited Intervention in Conflict” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2021); Walter C. Ladwig III, The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Eli Berman and David A. Lake, Proxy Wars: Suppressing Violence through Local Agents (Cornell University Press, 2019).

47 Roger D. Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 64–79; Aila M. Matanock, “Bullets for Ballots: Electoral Participation Provisions and Enduring Peace after Civil Conflict,” International Security 41, no. 4 (2017): 93–132.

48 See also Tymofiy Mylovanov, Yuriy Zhukov, and Yuriy Gorodnichenko, “Review of EU Policy for Ukraine,” EU Global Strategy and Human Security: Rethinking Approaches to Conflict, 2018.