A nation-in-the-making, in arms: control of force, strategy and the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions

Abstract

At the core of waging war and strategy is the creation, control and use of force. This article investigates the volunteer battalions that mobilized in Ukraine during the spring of 2014. It contextualizes the volunteer phenomenon and focuses on the state strategies to establish control over these militias. As ambiguous entities arising from a situation characterized by rapid social change – revolution and war – the volunteer battalions threatened existing hierarchies and questioned state authority. The situation was exacerbated by the war, which deviated from the expectations of Ukrainian combatants and Western military observers alike. The state nevertheless enjoyed a modicum of success in reining in the militias through four strategies of undermining, co-option, incorporation and coercion. While predominantly integrated into a more rigid category of paramilitary forces, the volunteers continue to play a role in both the Ukrainian society and security sector to the unforeseeable future.

Keywords:

• Control of force
• legitimacy
• militias
• paramilitary forces
• strategy
• Ukraine
• war

Introduction: the nation that saved the state

The months following November 2013 resulted in a series of monumental events for the Ukrainian state and nation. The first was the Maidan revolution – later officially named the Revolution of Dignity – which after more than a hundred dead and many more injured led to the ousting of the President Viktor Yanukovych on 22nd of February. In the ensuing breakdown of state authority and legitimacy, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and stoked separatism in Eastern Ukraine. The state paralysis and failure to prevent the annexation encouraged volunteer mobilization to protect Ukrainian sovereignty. These volunteers ensured that the state would not sit idle this time around. In a sense, Ukraine witnessed a nation-in-the-making during a state-in-breaking in the form of the self-mobilization of the so-called volunteer battalions. This article investigates these volunteers, and the ways the state subsequently sought to control them.

The narrative that the nation in the form of volunteer battalions saved the state remains common in Ukraine. As Azov News – the media arm of this volunteer formation turned into a National Guard regiment – framed these events in which it played an important part, “When the Ukrainian Army ran, #Azov stood up to fight for #Ukraine” (@Azov_News 2017). Even an official history of the battalions recognizes their important role, claiming to tell the “story of a heroic deed of battalions that saved the country” (Hladka et al. 2017). While it is true that the Ukrainian state did not rise to the occasion to protect its sovereignty in Crimea and was forced to act in the east partly because of the escalation of the conflict by the volunteers, the real story is more complex. Even from a sociological point of view, neither “state” nor especially “nation” are as simple concepts as this narrative suggests (Giddens and Sutton 2014, p. 409). Finally, the narrative does not consider the war as a factor that influenced both the nation and the state in profound ways: like many wars before it, even this one became an enormous force of social and societal change. Yet the war in Donbas remains an ambiguous phenomenon, which does not correspond to expectations of what war is.

This article makes two contributions to existing literature. First, it provides a sociologically grounded description of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion phenomenon, as well as the war they fought. The volunteers assumed a position between fixed categories: they were of the nation and hence close to the people, yet simultaneously armed but not of the state military. All this took place in a war that officially never was one. The volunteer battalions thus offer an excellent opportunity to probe questions about the relationship between state, nations and war, always central to military strategy. The second contribution is an investigation of these militias as a military force, which the state sought to control through four strategies: it could undermine, co-opt, incorporate, and – if necessary – coerce them. In the end the volunteer phenomenon only lasted for about a year, before they were turned from independent militias into state-controlled paramilitary forces. Yet years later, they continue to influence Ukrainian nation and politics because of their proximity to the nation.¹ The recent wars in places like Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine alike suggest that these kinds of forces are an increasingly common feature of contemporary war. The mobility of foreign volunteers in these conflicts as well as the defence plans that envisage a central role for what are often called irregular forces suggest that Western states too can learn useful lessons from the investigation of the scantly studied Ukrainian volunteer battalions.

The nation mobilized as militias, turned into paramilitaries: control of force

Western military theory has largely found the role of the nation disturbing. On the one hand, the people have been considered dangerous, and as a result been marginalized and pushed aside: military matters belong not to the nation, but to the state and its professional armed forces. A well-known example is the way Carl von Clausewitz associated the people with “hatred and animosity, which may be looked upon as blind instinct.” The people and the perils they brought could only be controlled through their subjugation to the general and the government (Clausewitz 2004, p. 19). Professionalization of the military can be interpreted the result of such thinking. Isolating the military from the surrounding society contributed to ideas of the emergence of a more limited and restrained “war without the people” (Vennesson 2011). On the other hand, the people have played an important role in war when mobilized by nation-states, allowing the unleashing of all state potential (as Clausewitz too proposed). In contemporary times, the notion that the broad participation of the people can ensure a fighting chance against a stronger opponent is entertained especially by smaller states in Eastern Europe. These views connect a nation’s will to resist with paramilitary forces and guerrilla warfare (Jokubauskas et al. 2015). Even here it is hence actors with ambiguous relationship with the state rather than high-tech armies that have become the face of warfare. As Martin van Creveld once proposed, the distinctions between government, army and people will blur (Van Creveld 1991), and raise fundamental questions about civil-military relations.

Paramilitaries and militias offer good examples of this blurring. In his analysis of the use of paramilitary forces by the Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, James Gow found them useful for three reasons: they were practical, as they allowed strategic deception and ambiguity; they were politically useful, as they on the one hand forced the military to follow their lead, and on the other hand competed with other paramilitary forces not directly controlled by Milošević; and finally, paramilitary forces could be more loyal than others (Gow, pp. 79–80). All these prospects however required that they were controlled. The Greek prefix para alone suggests that such forces are deficient and subordinate, yet analogous and parallel. They hence exist within the same category as regular forces, but ancillary to them (Oxford English Dictionary 2005).

Militias in turn do not need to possess a link to the state (Jentzsch et al. 2015, p. 756), as best illustrated by self-defence militias formed to protect communities from both rebel and state violence alike (Ferme and Hoffman 2004). The difference between militias and paramilitaries thus becomes their relationship with state. According to Ulrich Schneckener, militias “see themselves as a ‘defence’ or ‘guardian’ of an established political and social order and claim to protect it from internal to external threats and enemies.” As a result, they are characterised by “status quo-oriented violence”, and “can often rely on some sort of ‘borrowed legitimacy’” from the state (Schneckener 2017, pp. 799–800). It may however be wise to separate political and social order here so that they are not equated with state and society. While the goals of militias and the states in whose territory they operate in can align, they are not necessarily the same. Militias may well seek to defend and further social order that goes against states and their interests, while enjoying some legitimacy from parts of society, if not the state itself.

It is here the subjugation promoted by Clausewitz comes into play, as the relationship with the state that distinguishes paramilitaries from militias come with a degree of control over them (Aliyev 2016). There are both normative and practical reasons for governments to seek subordinating military force. Both combine in the Weberian notion of sovereignty, which presupposes monopoly of violence. Although this monopoly is more often partial than total, assertion of control over military force not only helps to guarantee domestic order, but ultimately governments’ stay in power. The importance of control extends even to the international realm, as the execution of strategy presumes control and coordination of military force, if understood to concern the ends-means relationship (Angstrom and Widen 2015, p. 34). Subordinating military force under one authority greatly helps in this regard (Freedman 2015). Control over force is rarely – if ever – complete during times of war. This typology of paramilitary forces under state authority and militias outside it is nevertheless analytically useful in solving the rather confused situation, where militias are simultaneously believed to exist beyond state control, as well as to constitute strategic means for states (Stanton 2015, p. 900). From the perspective of strategic theory, the gains brought by militias are best thought as the result of the alignment of aims without negating the threats such actors pose. Yet as room for plausibility of denial shrinks, strategies of control become ever more important.

Paul Staniland has proposed four such strategies: suppression, containment, collusion and incorporation. The first two are violent and coercive, the third about active cooperation and the fourth brings militias into everyday politics. As Staniland correctly points out, it is ultimately the state-militia relationship combined with their ideologies that lead to the adoption of certain strategies of control. Yet while both ideologies and relationships are subject to change (Staniland 2015), elimination and incorporation offer the promise of permanent solution (the latter also questions the usefulness of defining militias as groups that exist “outside regular security structures” (Aliyev 2016, p. 512)). Yet none of the strategies are possible for all states in all situations due to political reasons, discoverable only through case study-based inquiry.

Methods

This paper is based on a multimodal ethnographic research and interaction with Ukrainians – including academics, civil society representatives, internally displaced people, journalists, politicians and security officials – 64 people in total, but especially 12 members of volunteer battalions: seven from Azov, three from Right Sector and one each from Aidar and Dnipro-1. One Azovite had also fought in Right Sector, and further interviews with two National Guard volunteers offer important state perspective. One of the combatants and about a third of those interviewed are female. The fact that there is to date very little research on the volunteer battalions is likely the result of the methodological difficulties discussed in the existing research, such as gaining access (Karagiannis 2016, Malyarenko and Galbreath 2016). As common in ethnographic studies in general and conflict settings in particular (Käihkö 2016a), the author has sought to alleviate the limited breadth with increased depth. As a result, the focus of the study has been on volunteer battalion members, most of whom have been interviewed several times during the three trips that amount to 27 days in Kyiv and its environs during May-November 2017. The author has always lived with key informants, thus allowing participant-observation. All these interviews have been conducted in English (and in the case of three foreign volunteers, their own languages). On several occasions more than one volunteer has been present, and occasionally such discussions have been conducted in Russian or Ukrainian, and subsequently translated to the author by one of the participants.

In addition to these visits to Ukraine, interaction with key informants has continued for much longer time through social media and instant messaging apps. As communication has increasingly moved towards digital media, it is only to be expected that this change influences research relationships. In ethnographic research that builds on open-ended relations and participant-observation, this change is obvious. To give a concrete example, the author’s first relationship with a volunteer battalion fighter began in February 2017 – over two months before the first trip to Ukraine and when the fighter was on frontlines – and continues at the time of writing. At best, this communication has occurred on almost daily basis and has resulted in a correspondence of over 51,000 words. While the author and this volunteer fighter have to date not met each other face to face, most of the relationships between the author and his informants have started in Ukraine and continued through the said apps in the author’s absence. This has allowed for a continuous discussion about research topics, as well as greatly helped with quick triangulation of new information.

Aside from communication, the use of instant messaging apps has also made new introductions easier, as informants have constantly recommended new sources of information and established handshakes between the author and them. This kind of snowballing comes with a sort of vouching, which has greatly helped with gaining trust. While the author has consciously sought transparency, some of these informants have been anonymous at the time of contact, which may have contributed to their willingness to discuss issues related to the war. All of them have nevertheless been promised anonymity. After the first interviewees expressed their unease with the idea, none of the interviews have been recorded. Finally, as even audio-visual material can be sent through these apps, the author has received photos and videos that have been useful in understanding the everyday realities and effects of war.

While especially useful in maintaining contact and making new introductions, it is nevertheless difficult to see how these online methods can replace more traditional ones – especially participant-observation, but even more formal interviews. Contextualization of any phenomenon arguably requires understanding broader views than just those of the participants. This said, what can be dubbed chatnography can serve as a useful complement for more traditional methods of ethnographic data collection.

The war that wasn’t

As noted by John Hutchinson, it is in situations where states and nations are disjoined by war which witness heightened debates about nationalism and who constitute part of the nation (Hutchinson 2017, p. 9). The Maidan revolution in late February 2014 left Ukraine politically divided and institutionally fragmented. Disorder was worsened by Russia’s rapid annexation of Crimea, as well as the uprisings that took place in eastern Ukraine. While the sovereignty of the state of Ukraine had already been violated by the annexation, the uprisings also questioned the idea of the Ukrainian nation (and later the state). The situation was dire. As Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov admitted, “our country had neither the government system, nor the defense system back then” (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 30).

Even if some kind of reckoning was expected between the east and the west, the war came unexpectedly. And when it did, the resulting “hybrid” war did not correspond with the expectations of what war should be like. While the term hybrid has been subjected to criticism (Echevarria 2016, Käihkö 2016b) and is in the West mainly used about Crimea and in Ukraine about the ongoing war in Donbas, it resonates strongly with Ukrainian politicians and combatants: it not only assigns blame for the situation to Russia, but its novelty also conveys the experience that the war is not a real war, but constitutes “Sitzkrieg” – a phony war.² Betwixt and between categories, it defies existing notions of what war is. As a result, it remains an ambiguous state between peace and war.

The war in the east thus touched both societal relationships as well as the existing cultural, legal and social classifications. When it comes to the societal issues, many volunteers and nationalists note that Soviet Union’s attempts to eliminate Ukrainian nationalism makes it the antithesis of what it means to be Ukrainian. In other words, Ukraine is everything that Soviet Union – and by corollary Russia – is not.³ As Serhii Plokhy argues, by the late 1980s Ukrainians were alarmed because of the threat of losing their language, as well as their history. Especially the Cossack past became a way to bridge the diverging national narratives of the east and the west, as well as to “awaken” Ukrainian identity (Plokhy 2015). In the contemporary times, this nationalist identity coalesces around the aim “to liberate Kyiv from the Kremlin”s hegemony’(Shekhovtsov and Umland 2014, p. 60).

The post-revolutionary wartime governments have not hesitated to employ the war in nationalizing efforts, which they no doubt perceived as contributing to its legitimacy. The Maidan revolution and the war in Donbas remain pervasive features in both everyday settings and especially in the cultural sphere. State efforts are perhaps most visible in the way old Soviet national holidays have been imbued with new meaning. In the information provided by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, soldiers fighting in Donbas are linked to Ukrainian warriors in the 11th century (Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance 2016). Local exhibitions on the war have also mushroomed in various towns, where the conflict is typically portrayed as a direct consequence of the Maidan. While it has previously been reported that Ukrainian right-wing nationalists have viewed the war positively for the future of the country (Karagiannis 2016, p. 145), even several liberal civil society reformers described a constructive dimension of the war: the war has helped to form an idea of Ukrainians, whose community inhabits the territory of Ukraine, controlled by the Ukrainian state.⁴

Yet a gnawing doubt remains. While the communal feelings and euphoria experienced after the Maidan revolution were comparable to what was experienced by some in Western Europe in August hundred years before, even this time these emotions proved transitory. This is best visible from the way volunteers describe how the civilian interest towards the war waned. While initially volunteers not only mobilized to fight but also to equip, feed and support those who fought, most people had little time for war as it endured. They lived outside it, paid little or no attention to it, and showed little or no interest in those who fought it. The disdain is clear in the voices of many volunteers who endured discomfort and risked their safety for the sake of unappreciative people and a government led by Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch. Some feel outright betrayed for risking their lives for things they now wonder may not have been worthwhile. More broadly nationalists lament that the flowers of Ukraine had volunteered and died, leaving the corrupt and the cowards (witness the massive draft dodging early in the war) behind.⁵ This kind of disillusionment also concerned the way many felt ashamed for getting used to war, as the news of trickling casualties left them increasingly numb. This risked what has been described as the misgiving regarding the moral failure of the people when faced with defeat. This could lead to future domestic instability (Horne 2008, Hutchinson 2017). The easiest way of course is to accuse the government of failing the people, as some political parties and many volunteers have done. Early in the war the mere existence of militias contested the idea that the state was the main defender of Ukraine and Ukrainians, thus questioning its sovereignty and competing with it for legitimacy.

This leaves the war in the east, which is the focus of the rest of this section. The initial anarchy and the overall limited nature of the war contributed to the confusion regarding the situation. Despite protests from some political parties, Russian banks still operate in Ukrainian cities. Trade relations – including the sale of military technology to Russia, which in theory could have used the same technology against Ukrainian forces – too continued. That the state nor its military were prepared for the war is clear. While Ukraine had sought to reform its military from 2010 onwards, little had been achieved by 2014 (Sanders 2017). According to Dmitry Gorenburg, the Ukrainian force structure was still based on a Soviet-era threat assessment, which had not been updated as the likeliest security threat was deemed to be of internal, rather than external nature. As a result, internal security forces were prioritized over armed forces, the units of which were stationed in western and southern Ukraine. No units were based in the eastern parts of the country where the separatism emerged. Neither had the force been modernized. Out of the about 130,000 soldiers on paper, only around 6,000 were perceived to be fit for a fight (Gorenburg 2014). Like other state security, some handed over their weapons and equipment to the separatists (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 106). Some simply changed sides.

Once the violence started, there was no clear separation between the old and the new situation. The declaration of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) on 13th of April 2014 fell short of a declaration of war, leaving many practical questions. While this ambiguity reportedly allowed the government the freedom to both encourage volunteers but also to punish them for war crimes if necessary (Malyarenko and Galbreath 2016, p. 123), it also left volunteers in an ungrounded and unstable position. This became psychologically vexing in a context where tighter categories were expected. This for instance is evident in the way “Maksym” noted that the “war is not a traditional war. It”s mixed war with mixed method, means.’ His Azov unit was partly manned by volunteers turned into law enforcement officers, allowing it more legal room of manoeuvre. While the presence of police made it possible to make arrests, the lack of a declaration of war nevertheless meant that volunteers were often left in a limbo: they were applying violence against their fellow citizens, without having any legal authority to do so. Ultimately, “our war by Ukrainian law is full of illegal things.” In the early days of war no-one simply knew what to do or which rules applied, while the escalating war required action.⁶

The legal status of the ATO remained ambiguous despite the presidential elections in May 2014 and the parliamentary elections in the following October. It was only in September 2017 when volunteers were officially pardoned, and even then, not for all their actions. The first serious attempt to redefine the ATO by the parliament arose in October 2017 – three and a half years after the start of the conflict. It took another five months before the ATO was over, replaced by a “Joint Forces Operation” (Poroshenko: ATO over, Joint Forces Operation starting 2018). It is not apparent if much has changed in practical terms.

Considering that the state paralysis in 2014 left the volunteers with great freedom with little oversight, there had always been misgivings about them. This soon led to reports of human rights violations (Amnesty International 2014). The ambiguous war and the absence of the state however meant that the volunteers initially had to find their own ways (and often means) in war. The next section discusses the volunteer battalions and their relationship with the Ukrainian state.

Ukrainian volunteer battalions

The Ukrainian spring of 2014 saw force initially create itself, as volunteer militias mobilized to defend Ukrainian territorial sovereignty in the east. Yet as already discussed, for force to have utility there needs to be some control over it. This control is not only for achieving positive strategic effects, but also for preventing negative ones. A concrete challenge posed by these militias was the way they escalated the situation in Donbas to ensure that the state would not sit idle as it had previously done with Crimea.⁷ This escalation, combined with the way the volunteers existed between categories, questioned existing hierarchies and authority. That they had already successfully executed one revolution and that some of them threatened with another further limited the government’s pursue of independent policy (Sakwa 2015, p. 159). The volunteers were not merely a means, but effectively influenced available political ends.

Just like the Serbian paramilitaries discussed by Gow, even the Ukrainian volunteer battalions were practical as they were, to quote the title of a report written about them, “first on the front lines” (Bulakh et al. 2017); they were politically useful to the point of being indispensable early in the war; and at least in comparison to the Ukrainian armed forces, the volunteers showed high morale. Yet the fact that their loyalty was more to the nation than to the state illustrates an inherent problem with people in arms. While large-scale participation channelled through paramilitary organizations has been recognized as a historically tested method of force generation (Jokubauskas et al. 2015), from the perspective of strategy their control still remains an issue (Freedman 2015).

Early in the war, the Ukrainian volunteer battalions were more or less running their own show. It has been argued that they were mobilized in “pre-modern” – if not “neo-medieval” or “feudal” – manner, often by local notables and oligarchs (Sakwa 2015, p. 133, Sanders 2017, pp. 41–42). While useful in highlighting the importance of oligarchs in Ukrainian politics, this characterization does not do full justice to a more complex reality of volunteer battalions (Butusov 2014, Karagiannis 2016). In fact, it would be closer to truth to claim that the methods of mobilization were post-modern than pre-modern. As the word volunteer suggests, many self-mobilized – and not just in the areas touched by conflict, but all over the country. It is also important to note that local notables – many with close links to the government⁸ – understandably had an interest to protect their own home areas. Yet in practice, they often gave material support to existing organizations, rather than created their own.

Those mobilized by political parties such as Svoboda from areas far from eastern Ukraine offer the best example of the presence of very modern ideas of nationalism. Nationalism was not only an important factor with paramilitary forces in European interwar period (Gerwarth and Horne 2012), but as the depiction of volunteers as “patriotically-minded population” illustrates (Bulakh et al. 2017), still considered important. Even in the case of local self-defence formations an idea of one political alternative being better than the other must have played a role for mobilization. Yet the fact that these volunteer battalions were poorly equipped necessitated their politicization. This was often done through social media presence, leading to the practices that added post to the modern, such as the arrival of international volunteers and crowdfunding to meet logistical demands.

Perception of the volunteer phenomenon as medieval also makes it more difficult to assess the broader social context where this phenomenon arose. Rarely noted is also the fact that the state was effectively competing for volunteers early in the war, as it was recruiting to its National Guard in an attempt to channel popular passion. One reason why it struggled was the prevailing distrust of the state and the trust of the civil society – from which the volunteers originated. The battalions thus appealed to those critical of the state, and were described by one volunteer as an upshot of the Ukrainian anarchist nature, if not the idealized history of Cossacks’ freedom from state.⁹ The volunteer battalions thus offer an excellent case to explore the state-society relationship in Ukraine, not least because they initially enjoyed much more support than state institutions, including the military, which faced significant desertions after the draft was reinstated (Puglisi 2015a). One survey noted that in July 2015 61% (completely or somewhat) trusted volunteers, compared with 54% in May-June 2016. Volunteer battalions remained the second-most trusted actor, with 49% support in 2015 and 50% in 2016, with the Ukrainian Army trailing close behind with 45% and 47%, respectively. Civilian actors received much lower support, led by exceptional trust in the local self-government authorities at 20% and 24% (USAID FAIR Justice Project 2016, p. 64). As some of the volunteers were integrated into “special police battalions”, some of them continued to serve in the police forces after returning home to increase accountability and legitimacy of local police. This would have been inconceivable without societal trust.

The volunteers brought new perspective into how war can be waged, drawing from less rigid thinking and best practices from the civilian sphere. A good example of this is offered by the experience of one affluent volunteer, whose narrative resonates with many others. At the start of the hostilities and worried about a full-scale Russian invasion, he drove to a military recruitment centre, only to be turned down because of a minor medical issue by the last of the seven investigating doctors. Failing to convince, threaten or bribe the recruitment committee (he later heard from the recruitment officer that the doctors were concerned that he was a member of the secret service sent to test their adherence to the Soviet-era recruitment criteria), he had no alternative but to join one of the volunteer battalions. Like many others who thought it best to prepare for a possible armed conflict, he had paid for private lessons in handling arms, and thus possessed some training already. During the war, he worked in a squad that operated reconnaissance drones, with civilian equipment bought with $5,000 worth of donations. When his unit was integrated into the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA) he left, citing lack of any kind of war strategy and the need to prioritize his family. Looming over him was also the question whether he – a combat veteran who, in his own words, was “good in killing people” – would again have failed the medical tests.¹⁰

This narrative illustrates several important issues related to the volunteer battalions, not least their view of how the armed forces were more about “form and shape” than effectiveness. The view resonated with widespread ideas of negative Soviet mentality, captured by the Russian slang word for Soviet, sovok, which translates as dustpan. When the war started, there was no time for sovok, connected to inefficient bureaucracy, lack of initiative and overall “stupidity”, as success depended on improvisation and retaining initiative. This are qualities the volunteers were forced to excel in. With limited state authority and coercion, the volunteers had almost complete freedom to do what they wanted to do in the early stages of the conflict. Understandably, this threatened existing hierarchies and authority of the state, and necessitated their control. As this entailed integration of the volunteers into formal state-controlled security structure (Piper and Karazy 2015, Mironova and Sergatskova 2017), old Soviet-era officers and sovok returned. When volunteer battalions were integrated into the power structures that had, as one report puts it, experienced “minimal conceptual adaptations” (Bulakh et al. 2017, p. 28), they were also forced to adopt the doctrine that differed from the reality they had experienced on the frontlines.

To be fair, some lessons from the volunteers were adopted, as exemplified by how the drone operator in the narrative above was contracted by the military to deliver drones and training. Some volunteers however dropped out soon after integration into government structures, while others chose to join the Right Sector. Right Sector had formed during the Maidan as an alliance of nationalist groups and claims prominent role in battling riot police during the protests. As the various units of Right Sector never fully integrated into state security forces in the war, it continues to be perceived as the only place where it is possible to concentrate on fighting, instead of bureaucracy. The situation of female volunteers offers one concrete problem with this sovok: denied combat roles in the armed forces, one sniper was officially the head of a sewing unit. This resulted in the fact that they have largely and undeservedly remained neglected in the overall discussion in the war as the so-called “invisible battalion” (Martsenyuk et al. 2016). As the war reflects on broader developments in the Ukrainian society, this is problematic.

The nature of volunteers deserves additional attention, especially as they are simultaneously viewed with suspicion by some because of their perceived connection to extreme political movements, and hailed as heroes by others. There were different kinds of volunteer battalions, ranging from purely local ones to others with more uniform political profiles. While foreigners joined several units and even built their own, Azov receives most attention in the West because of its relationship with foreign media. The command arrangement for foreigners in Azov was simple: they were assigned to a unit with a Ukrainian speaking commander. Yet as Donbas battalion noted to those interested, “in connection with the Law of Ukraine, citizens of other states have no right to be in armed forces of Ukraine.” Hence the battalion was “compelled to refuse to [sic] all foreigners who want to protect honor and independence of our country” (Battalion ‘Donbas-Ukraina’ 2015a). As the government failed to grant citizenships to volunteers despite passing a law that allowed this, only those foreigners who had joined the battalion earlier or who were vouched by an Azovite were allowed to serve in it. Officially they received no salaries (which were meagre anyway and could hardly pay for upkeep, let alone kit) and could only act as instructors.¹¹

Many volunteers in both National Guard units and volunteer battalions shared the same background as Maidan activists, Many had belonged to self-defense sotnias, and soon formed the core of the first volunteer battalions (Hladka et al. 2017, pp. 6–18). Yet simultaneously volunteers were a varied lot, as even the battalions perceived as most extreme contained very different kinds of combatants, who often made strange bedfellows. For instance, people who had been on opposite sides during Maidan found the threat of Russian invasion good enough reason to cooperate, while Jews and Muslims fought alongside people sporting symbols associated with the far right.¹² Some described this volunteer brand of nationalism as inclusive, as anyone willing to fight for Ukraine was considered a nationalist.¹³

Volunteers hold a strong self-image as “patriotically-minded”. As the Maidan was followed by pro-Russian separatism, many understood the conflict as a mere continuation of the struggle that had begun on Maidan. The volunteer phenomenon thus largely built on nationalist notions: more ideological individuals could mobilize quickly, and it is reasonable to assume that some ideologies have higher inclination towards violence and discipline than others (Ischchenko 2016). This was also recognized by the authorities, who marked the difference between the volunteer battalions who joined “answering the call of their hearts” and the conscripted territorial defense battalions where the majority “served against their will” (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 92).

Volunteering to fight for one’s country in an armed group may however not only be the right thing to do, but also a means for a certain kind of social advancement. Even comparatively marginalized groups have often benefited from military service, as it has offered a way to enter society for groups outside it, and means of social levelling to groups at its margins. In Ukrainian history military service constituted a way for serfs to win their freedom, which however required that they succeeded passing themselves as Cossacks (Yekelchuk 2012, pp. 115–116). Neither should the power granted by the military be underestimated, nor the cleansing of stigma inherent in serving one’s country in an official capacity. In what can be interpreted as a way to instrumentalize the war, it is hardly a coincidence that many politicians – including presidents – opted to wear uniform in public. This illustrates how states continue to perceive nationalism as a useful tool when it comes to establishing legitimacy and a means of mobilization of both political support and force in times of war. If nothing else, it is cheaper to rely on ideology than financial compensation. As the troubled attempts to institute draft illustrate, political reliability also plays a role. In such situations states nevertheless seek after a certain kind of nationalism, as its more extreme forms can pose risks. This is apparent in Ukraine in the way many of the volunteers held critical views of both the state and its actions. Some saw the state as a problem, rather than a solution, and were open about their priorities: the first one was to defeat the external enemy, the second to return to Kyiv and restore order there (Furmanyuk 2015). In what highlights potential tension between nations and states, strong feelings of nationalism did not automatically lead to support of the state, let alone the government.

According to their members and unlike suggested by previous research (Aliyev 2016), the volunteer battalion phenomenon only lasted for about a year beginning in March 2014. After a year the militias had become paramilitary formations. While many of the volunteer formations joined early on – for instance, the Donbas battalion was established on April 12, 2014 and joined the National Guard of Ukraine already on May 29, 2014 (Battalion ‘Donbas-Ukraina’ 2015b) – it took significantly longer for the state to establish control over them. This process was however welcomed even by many volunteers. For instance, “Kolya” noted that “10% of the battalions were doing good, 90% bad” – with even his own among those turning into “semi-criminal enterprises” and doing criminal deeds in the cover of war and warfighting.¹⁴ While it was hence recognized that the volunteer battalions needed to end, few are happy with the way the government dealt with the issue (Bulakh et al. 2017). It is also clear that the phenomenon continues to play a role for both the Ukrainian society and security sector. The next section investigates how the state sought to establish control over the volunteer battalions.

Establishing control over voluntary battalions

Survival was the paramount interest of both the government and the state. This was however threatened by both the volunteer battalions and the Russian-backed forces the volunteers were fighting with. With the initial state paralysis, the volunteers became a crucial stopgap measure that bought time for the state to assume control of the situation. Yet there was real concern about the nature and intentions of the defenders of Ukraine, not least their relationship with the state. As the Acting President Turchynov noted during the speech in which he announced the beginning of the ATO:

I'm addressing those who want to defend Ukraine. Now the main thing is not to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, and not to play to the hands of the enemy and its agents, whose aim is not only to prevent elections, but also to topple the government and create chaos and instability (Ukraine crisis: Turchynov announces anti-terror operation 2014).

In other words, it was far from clear that tactical decisions to protect Ukrainian territorial integrity would lead to strategic gains – they might just as well lead to even worse internal political outcomes. Controlling the volunteer battalions became a top priority for the government, which sought to stay in power and to guarantee domestic order not only in the east, but on all its territory.

In this sense the Kyiv government was waging – and to some extent continues to wage at the time of writing – a war on two fronts. While the first front constituted the domestic political one in Kyiv and the implementation of much-needed reforms,¹⁵ in early 2014 the government simultaneously faced the immediate risk of military occupation. This meant that it was depending on the same forces it sought to control.

This became especially clear when the Ukrainian forces began to capture ground from the separatists after the presidential elections on the last week of May 2014. This government offensive was countered by Russian regular formations. As Deborah Sanders argues, this escalation meant that from then on it was mass that was required (Sanders 2017). If this is the case,¹⁶ mass requires centralization and organization, typically the supremacy of the state. This is also suggested by the attribution of separatist gains in late summer 2014 to their successful integration of force under a single command (Sakwa 2015, p. 174), as well as the idea that it was training and especially the Russian anti-aircraft systems that prevented Ukrainian use of air power that were decisive (Gorenburg 2014). The unclear legal status of the volunteer battalions was furthermore systematically used to discredit the Kyiv government in both international media and ceasefire negotiations. Volunteers were portrayed as criminals and neo-nazis of uncertain legal status in a manner that discredited the Ukrainian war efforts and the Kyiv government’s ability to exert its legal obligations of exercising sovereignty. Ultimately, the tenth point of the Minsk Protocol could be interpreted to require subjecting volunteer battalions to the state authority: it required the withdrawal of all foreign-armed formations, weapons and mercenaries from Ukrainian territory, and the disarmament of all illegal groups.

Finally, a strong distrust and suspicion characterized the relationship between volunteers and the army, as each perceived itself to be more professional than the other (Facon 2017, pp. 25–27). Many volunteers considered the incompetence of the military elite to have contributed to the loss of lives, yet these officers were still allowed to retain their positions. Several military defeats were rumored to be the armed forces’ way of getting rid of volunteers, and/or the result of Russian infiltration. In general, the volunteers’ self-perception of being highly motivated contrasted with their view of the military as incompetent and unmotivated. The civil society support to volunteer battalions also meant that early on the army was worse equipped than the volunteers to the point that soldiers were called “hoboes” or homeless people. Several volunteers reported trading foodstuff, liquor and money to ammunition and grenades.¹⁷ “Bravo” described how an army unit tasked to deliver food to a volunteer unit bought itself free from the task.¹⁸ The perception of the army as corrupt and demoralized meant that support was channelled through individuals rather than official channels.

The military in turn saw the volunteers as untrained and unprofessional when it came to war, if not a threat altogether. Coordination and command problems alone have been often cited as a grave problem, which became apparent with the military disaster of Ilovaisk (Kopytin and Kiriienko 2016). Perhaps because of this, the volunteer regiment under the Ukrainian Armed Forces that many volunteers had hoped for was never established.

The state resorted to four main strategies to control the volunteers: it could undermine, co-opt, incorporate, and – if these failed – coerce. Undermining in many cases refers to material factors, for instance the control of logistics and provision of artillery. Considering that the volunteer battalions early on enjoyed more supply than army formations, in the Ukrainian case the focus shifts to armaments. While volunteers were often armed with civilian weapons and were in some cases armed by law enforcement officers, arming them from the MoD depots could only become an official state policy after the volunteer formations were legalized. That no heavy weapons, especially artillery, had been provided to volunteer battalions meant that they were dependent on the army after the war escalated (Mironova and Sergatskova 2017). Azov volunteers describe how the armed forces were ordered to not provide Azov with artillery coverage in Shyrokyne in spring 2015, and how the tank support they received was given on individual basis by tank crews, rather than because of orders from above.

Co-opting concerned the way individuals associated with the volunteer battalions competed for ordinary political posts. For instance, several commanders were elected into the Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada during the parliamentary election of October 2014 (Ryngys 2014). This gave them a stake in “ordinary” politics, which reduced the risk of coups by armed formations they were in contact with. The transition of some commanders to civilian politics moved their attention from military affairs to electoral battles at the head of parties with limited support. The way several politicians and volunteer battalion members have subsequently been connected to corruption behind the frontlines and crime closer to them has tested their popularity. In some cases, the journey from the frontlines to politics has been less straightforward, as shown by the case of Dmytro Yarosh, who headed the Right Sector. After competing and failing in the presidential elections he was elected to the parliament in October 2014. Despite his new position, he continued to fight in the east until wounded in action in January 2015. Three months later he was nominated as an advisor to the Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander in Chief to improve the unity between the volunteers and the state (Ministry of Defence of Ukraine 2015). He since defended the government action on numerous occasions.

Incorporation was the final strategy employed by the state and was executed through integration of volunteer battalions into the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) structures. As “Bravo” describes the process, the government proposed this integration in a “smart” way. Instead of banning the units it emphasized the benefits of integration, such as equipment and salaries. The volunteer units were to be incorporated into existing structures so that they could show example to regular units. This appeared to confirm the volunteer’s view that their most important achievement had been bringing much needed courage and motivation to the armed forces.¹⁹

This incorporation into official state structures also came with a legal status. While it remained ambiguous in an ambiguous war, it nevertheless meant that the battalions became subjected to both rights and obligations. The important pull factors included resolving legal issues that had stopped some volunteers from mobilizing in the first place, but also salaries and other benefits (some of which however were never delivered). Yet this also subjected them to state authority, and in most cases mixed volunteers and regulars. Replacement of commanders countered politicization of these units and improved control over them. Most importantly and as described by “Bravo”, the integration diminished “individual thinking”, or the notion of “us and all the rest” prevalent in volunteer battalions. While this kind of thinking was perceived useful during the initial phase of the armed conflict, it hindered coordination after the escalation of the war (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 91).²⁰ Another volunteer did not hesitate to call the war in 2014 “anarchy”, and the volunteer battalions “groups of anarchists”.²¹

If other means failed, the state resorted to coercion and employed both law and force against volunteer battalions to make them toe the line. As the state capacity increased, the government ordered all non-integrated armed groups to leave frontlines in spring 2015. Several battalions, including Shakhtarsk and Tornado (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 5) were disbanded after committing crimes. Several volunteers were charged for crimes committed in the east, and Poroshenko threatened that resistance could be met with emergency powers and terrorist designations (Piper and Karazy 2015). This would effectively have equalled volunteers with separatists as enemies of the nation.

Both incorporation and coercion were however dependent on state legitimacy and coercive power, which means that the four strategies may not be automatically transferable to other contexts. That the state could draw volunteers into it suggests that it had succeeded in garnering at least some legitimacy as the representative of the Ukrainian nation and its interests. As Michael Mann discusses, national-states have been able to form such national cages, restricted by norms and laws (Mann 1993). There is no doubt that this was also the purpose of President Turchynov’s speech cited above, where he sought to form a united front against a common enemy within the legal and moral framework of a nation-state at war. That the war was fought within this framework from the start is clear from the symbolism used by the volunteer battalions. From the start, their symbols replicated national ones, ranging from the flags of Ukraine or its colours to the Ukrainian trident. Many battalion names referred to national administrative divisions such as oblasts, suggesting regional mobilization. Some early volunteers wore badges that referred to the Ukrainian Armed forces. In some cases, the bearers had military background, but another interpretation is that the volunteers perceived themselves as patriots who felt obligated to step up to protect the violated territorial sovereignty of Ukraine when the state was unable to do so. The volunteers can thus be said to have been loyal to Ukraine, while their loyalty to the state remained uncertain. This kind of national framework can hardly be taken for granted in other cases; reportedly even the separatists the volunteers fought against resorted not to conscription (that ultimately builds on a mix of coercion and nationalism) but to contract forces (Malyarenko and Galbreath 2016, p. 130).

The legitimacy of the state increased as even volunteers began to question the behaviour of their battalions. This allowed the state more room to manoeuvre. Despite the many threats, aside from a few armed clashes and some political protests the volunteer response to the state action was muted. Neither was there anything comparable to the targeted killings that took place across the frontlines on the separatist sides, where several commanders perceived too independent were assassinated (Matveeva 2018, pp. 175–178). A few volunteers however noted rather matter-of-factly that they believed to be under surveillance by the security services, who might believe them to pose a danger to state interests (however defined). As a result, they for instance refused from discussing certain issues on the phone or on instant messaging apps.

While the integration was in many ways successful, it resulted in new problems. While the MoIA was faster to reach out to volunteer battalions than the more bureaucratic MoD (Hladka et al. 2017, pp. 4, 68), the battalions could negotiate which of the ministries they would integrate into. This choice was reportedly often a political one: as the minister of defense is appointed by the president, and the minister of internal affairs by the prime minister the relationships between their ministries ultimately reflects the rivalry between the president and the prime minister (Puglisi 2015b, p. 6). The volunteers may thus well have contributed to tension between the two ministries (Facon 2017, pp. 24–25), and become potential instruments in the power struggle between competing interests within the government.

Some battalions became territorial defence battalions under the MoD and were placed under regional military enlistment offices. Others were closer to the MoIA, which controlled police battalions and reserve battalions of National Guard, under the authority of the regional police commanders. For instance, because of Azov’s closer links to the MoIA – the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov later named a former Azov commander as the head of the national police – it became a part of the National Guard. Upgraded into a Regiment, it also set up a tank company equipped with T-64 tanks, as well as an artillery “division”, with equipment found on the battlefields and received from the state (Ryngys 2014). While this can be interpreted as the negation of the strategy to undermine it, Azov nevertheless offers the best example of the evolution of the volunteer battalions from revolutionaries with construction helmets and ice hockey armor to disciplined military formations closely paying attention to NATO standards. Ukrainian military reportedly sends some of its officers to be trained by Azov.

All these measures taken to control the volunteer battalions were also matched by the changing nature of the war. Initially the scale of the war was small and no frontlines existed. This allowed small groups of combatants to make a difference in tactical engagements and skirmishes, with up to a few dozen casualties on either side. Decisions regarding the war were made much closer to the action, and sometimes by the same people who executed these plans. Results of successes and defeats however remained local, with volunteers seeing limited strategic benefit of most of these acts. The greater successes, as the capture of Mariupol, were few. Overall, it was the volunteers who dragged the government into combat, and the “were the first to start firing” (Hladka et al. 2017, p. 105). In other words, through their deeds the volunteers escalated the situation so that the state too needed to get involved in the war – something it had failed to do in Crimea just weeks before. Several interviewees noted that the first time the government became involved in the war was at the Donbas Airport at the end of May 2014.²² Others say the state presence only became noticeable in August-September.²³

With the more overt Russian involvement, after the spring of 2015 the war stabilized and increasingly assumed the fixed frontlines reminiscent of the First World War in the minds of those who fought it. Trenches and static positions began to fix physical borders between the areas controlled by government and the separatists, or the two incompatible ideas of the state and the nation. This, as well as the quest for mass and the strengthening of the state contributed to integration efforts of the volunteer battalions. While it took a year for the government to assert control over the volunteers, several interviewees agree that this control was total only “in theory”, whereas in reality several issues remain unclear.

One example of how theory and practice differed was the way volunteer battalions retained significant autonomy despite integration. In practice the units often presented written operation plans to the armed forces and informed all the nearby units before execution. Volunteer battalions could also resist orders given by the military. In Shyrokyne during the first part of 2015 several volunteer forces refused orders to, as this would have exposed Mariupol to rocket attacks. Instead, they went on offensive. During the Victory Day celebration in 2017 Azov battalion reportedly celebrated by scoring a direct artillery hit on separatist positions. With the state keen to prevent escalation of the situation, it reacted angrily and withdrew Azov behind the lines.²⁴

The state understood that it too could use the ambiguity of the battalions to its own advantage. Unlike what is sometimes reported (Bulakh et al. 2017, p. 7), not all the Ukrainian volunteer battalions have been integrated to the state structures. Here the Right Sector stands out, as its formations have refused integration up until the time of writing. It has been useful as it has been able to conduct operations the state military and intelligence services cannot do, for both practical and legal reasons. In fact, it has been claimed that it was the Right Sector that conducted the first offensive operation of the war at the orders of Turchynov (Butusov 2016). While Ukrainian government thus chose the integration of the volunteer battalions, it still recognized that they allow for increased freedom of action through deniability. That it could also draw fire and attention from the separatists meant that other sections of frontline would be quieter. It did not harm that any casualties suffered by Right Sector would not end up in the slowly but surely increasing official figures, which are politically problematic. Finally, because of the role Right Sector played in Maidan it enjoys some legitimacy, which may inhibit the government may feel it difficult to actively go against it. This might however not be necessary either, as its numbers are described insignificant. As a comparative case where force is largely kept outside formal structures, Russia’s war in the shadows is widely recognized and requires no discussion here (Freedman 2015, Bowen 2017).

Conclusions: control of force in Ukraine

At the core of waging war is the creation, control and use of force. This is evident in the case of the Ukrainian volunteer battalions investigated in this article, and the strategies the state used to achieve this control necessary to use force. Arising from the nationalist sentiment that followed the revolution and the war, the volunteer militias initially mobilized outside state purview. In this manner they assumed a position between rigid categories: they were of the nation and hence close to the people, yet simultaneously armed but not of the state. Neither was the conflict the volunteer battalions fought what they had expected. Even officially, it was never a war, but an Anti-Terrorist Operation, which left many important questions unaccounted. A comparable confusion was even experienced by Western military observers, who invented new prefixes to this kind of war that deviated from their expectations. This necessitated fast learning process. While the ensuing volunteer battalions amounted to a crucial stopgap measure that bought time for the state to assume responsibility for the situation, their ambiguous status simultaneously threatened the existing hierarchies and authority.

Both because of this threat but also the need to use these forces strategically, the state intervened to enforce more rigid categories on the militias through four strategies of control: it could undermine, co-opt, incorporate, and – if these failed – coerce them. The way the war first escalated before stabilizing led to clearer boundaries between two incompatible ideas of the state and the nation, as well as the prioritization of mass and training on the government side. This in turn required centralization and organization, processes complicated by inherently political questions of legitimacy. Perhaps most important factor for control of force however was the way the state managed to portray itself as the legitimate defender of Ukrainian interests. This made it very difficult for those describing themselves as patriots to openly go against it. Within a year, the state had turned the majority of the volunteer militias into paramilitary forces of ancillary status, achieving at least a modicum of control over them.

While successful and necessary from both normative and practical reasons, the process was hardly without friction. It also led to re-establishing the previous power structures, the reformation of which the volunteers might have played a greater role in. With thousands of volunteers, the phenomenon will continue to play a role in Ukraine. It should be clear from this brief contextualization alone that the volunteer battalions also offer an excellent case to investigate not only the role of militias and paramilitary forces in contemporary wars, but also the relationship between war, nation and state. The volunteer battalions reflect the ways the Ukrainian state is nationalizing, but also the way war – and hence the volunteer phenomenon – plays a central role in these efforts. This is hardly unprecedented, as paramilitary forces in Eastern Europe too became a tool in nation-building during the interwar years (Gerwarth and Horne 2012). Even the way the war in eastern Ukraine took a surprising form raises questions about the concept of war in general. This too remains another important venue of future research. The fact that the war in Ukraine continues at the time of writing only serves to make these questions more important.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF).

Notes on contributor

Ilmari Käihkö is a visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology at Uppsala University, supported by the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF). A veteran of the Finnish Defence Forces and specialized in the ethnographic study of armed groups, he was recently nominated assistant professor at the Swedish Defence University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ukrainian MP Mustafa Nayyem, Yale University, New Haven 21st February 2018.

2. Ukrainian volunteer “Maksym” 10th of May 2017, Kyiv.

3. “Maksym” 12th of May 2017, Kyiv. Ukrainian academic, 20th September 2017, personal communication.

4. Ukrainian volunteer “Kolya”, 8th of August 2017, Kyiv and two West Ukrainian civil society reformers, 10th of August 2017, Kyiv.

5. Two West Ukrainian civil society reformers, 10th of August 2017, Kyiv.

6. “Maksym” 10th of May and 29th of September 2017, Kyiv.

7. Interviews of “Maksym”, 10th of May 2017, Kyiv, and “Kolya”, 8th of August 2017, Kyiv.

8. Many of these notables played both economic and political roles. A good example is the oligarch and governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who financed several volunteer battalions.

9. “Maksym” 7th of August, 2017, Kyiv oblast.

10. “Kolya” 8th of August and 28th of November 2017, Kyiv.

11. Foreign volunteer “Alpha”, 24th of February 2017, personal communication.

12. “Maksym 10th of May, 2017, Kyiv. Kolomoyskyi”s close ties to Israel and the Chechen Dzhokhar Dudayev volunteer battalion also add to this complexity.

13. Foreign volunteer “Bravo” 24th November 2017, 27th of March 2018, personal communication.

14. “Kolya” 8th of August and 28th of November 2017, Kyiv.

15. Ukrainian civil society reformers and politicians, 10–11 August, 24–26 November 2017.

16. This argument is not without its problems, as Russia nevertheless possesses what has been called escalation dominance against Ukraine. As volunteers put it, there were Russian units across the border who pushed back whenever Ukrainian forces pushed too hard. In other words, nothing Ukraine could muster against Russia after the latter began to escalate the situation was enough. This said, the Russian unwillingness to get openly involved in the conflict has meant that its ability to escalate has so far been limited. Also, the prioritization of mass leaves open the question what kind of military would have been able to stop the uprisings from escalating in the first place.

17. “Maksym” 10th of May 2017, Kyiv.

18. “Bravo” 24th November 2017, Kyiv.

19. “Bravo” 24th November 2017, Kyiv.

20. “Bravo” 24th November 2017, Kyiv.

21. Ukrainian volunteer “Taras” 1st of December, 2017, Kyiv.

22. “Kolya”, 8th of August 2017, Kyiv.

23. “Taras” 1st of December, 2017, Kyiv.

24. “Taras” 1st of December, 2017, Kyiv.