Russia's Volunteer Formations: Instruments for Recruitment, Proof of Loyalty or Diffusion of Power?

Abstract

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to a proliferation of volunteer formations fighting alongside the regular armed forces. These include "private" military companies (PMCs) and units financed or recruited by governors, big corporations, Cossack groups or Donbas veterans. The advantages of this kind of "covert mobilization" for the Kremlin are threefold: enlarging the recruitment pool, financial burden-sharing, and containing domestic discontent by concealing the high number of casualties and avoiding or at least postponing yet another unpopular round of compulsory mobilization. At the same time, the mushrooming of various volunteer formations entails risks for the regime, too, as the Wagner mutiny revealed. After the failed mutiny, the Wagner model - which was based on controlling financial means and recruitment processes, together with extensive operational autonomy - was destroyed; the Kremlin initiated a new phase of dealing with the volunteer formations and subjected them to tighter control. Nonetheless, they could eventually become useful instruments for individual power projection in the event of a weakening of Putin's power vertical.