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Huseyn Aliyev, "Who Fights for Governments? Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Stephen Sikevich
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Hussein Aliyev
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Stephen Sikevich
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- [00:58]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk.
- [02:00]
Hussein Aliyev
Talk.
- [02:01]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:05]
Stephen Sikevich
Hello. Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Stephen Sikevich. My next guest is Hussein Aliyev and we will be discussing his book, who Fights for Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and beyond, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2025. Hussein Aliyev is a lecturer of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, in the United Kingdom. Hussein Aliyev, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:34]
Hussein Aliyev
Thank you very much, Steven. Thank you for inviting me.
- [02:38]
Stephen Sikevich
We always like to begin our interviews by asking our guests, tell us a little bit about yourself and what's the backstory behind writing this book?
- [02:46]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, most of my research is on former Soviet Union and I am from former Soviet Union myself. And the story behind the book actually goes back to 2014. I was doing field work in Ukraine right after Maidan movement. And the focus of my research was not necessarily on political violence or on paramilitary organizations. I was researching informal institutions and their relationships with institutional reforms post Maidan in Ukrainian state and civil society institutions. And quite frequently a lot of my informants, a lot of people that I talked to within the Ukrainian government, within the Ukrainian civil society, they refer to paramilitaries or so called volunteer battalions as probably one of the most powerful and influential informal power actors at that time. And back then in 2014, there were no academic publications on volunteer battalions in Ukraine. There are lots of conflicting and contradictory information available in mass media, lots of journalistic reports on these groups, but nothing of academic nature. Nothing that I could pick up and read and understand what are these organizations? And this is when I basically sort of unexpectedly started doing research on volunteer battalions in Ukraine. That is when I got the first contacts and when I arranged the first interviews with individuals from these organizations. And I think it just kept on going and going for several 10 years now.
- [04:32]
Stephen Sikevich
What kind of sources? You did touch on this a little bit in your previous answer, but what kind of sources were you able to use for this book?
- [04:40]
Hussein Aliyev
Basically most of my research relied on two broadly defined sources. The first one, which I mentioned in passing just a moment ago, are interviews with former and active members of volunteers battalions in Ukraine. And well, I started properly started working on this project which involved several smaller sub projects over the years. Over the past nine, 10 years and throughout this period, I've interviewed either myself or through various research assistants that I had working on these various projects, probably over 150 individuals. So these were mostly in depth, face to face interviews in Ukraine, in different places, all over Ukraine. Well, obviously when I started my field work in 2015, most of the interviews I've done either on the front lines in Donbass or closer to the front lines in places like Dnipro, which was and still is one of the major hubs for the Ukrainian military. But in the later years, as the conflict entered into its cessation phase, most of the interviews were done all over the Ukraine because thousands of these paramilitary combatants, they have demobilized and they basically went back to the places where they were living and working before. So that's the first source of my data. The second source is quantitative and it's based on obituaries, obituaries of those fallen diseased paramilitary combatants. And it has over 1,000 entries. So there are over 1,000 paramilitary combatants who have been recorded as diseased during the involvement in donbass Warsaw from 2014 all the way until the end of 2019. So the data is available publicly available online. And obituaries that are available on that database which I've used, which is a Ukrainian source. They also have lots of links to various local newspapers and various local other resources that are really helpful in establishing more information, more background about these individuals. Well, obviously I've also used quite a lot of mass media resources, YouTube interviews, mostly in Ukrainian, but also in Russian languages, mostly done by Ukrainian mass media.
- [07:20]
Stephen Sikevich
Probably a little too soon to even try to dig into archival resources right now, probably.
- [07:27]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, yes, this is not much in archives at the moment, but I believe probably in 10 years time there will be more information and well, quite a lot of information is likely to still be classified in Ukraine. So there's, there's limited access. And at the time, obviously when I started my field work in 2015, most of these events were still ongoing. There was still active confrontation in Donbass, which basically continued for, for most of the period of my research.
- [07:59]
Stephen Sikevich
And then also with the ongoing war, of course they don't want that information going out because then that reveals a little bit about their military capabilities to the Russians.
- [08:08]
Hussein Aliyev
Of course, yes, there's a lot of information that is likely to identify those individuals involved in PARAM military battalions and more generally speaking, in the war effort in Ukraine since 2014. And there were obviously a few occasions, unfortunate occasions, when this databases, I wouldn't really call them archives, but most likely I call the databases have fallen into the Russian hands, particularly when the Russians have seized Kherson in the south and they got hold of hundreds, probably thousands of names and contact information of members of those paramilitary battalions and unfortunately quite a lot of those individuals who didn't have time to leave Kherson at that point of time, they were captured by Russians.
- [09:01]
Stephen Sikevich
Now could we begin by just giving a brief definition of what you mean by paramilitary and also what this term you use, pro government militia, pgm. We're going to go into more details about what these mean throughout the interview. But just to give our audiences, especially those who are a little confused or they never heard these terms before, could you just give a brief definition just to give us a basic idea?
- [09:25]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, there are lots of debates in academic literature on the exact definition of pro government militias. I use terms pro government militias and paramilitaries interchangeably, primarily referring to organizations that are associated with governments. The links between these groups and the government can be either formal, so they might be incorporated into various government security structures, or they might be informal, which means that governments support them. Maybe the governments were involved in assembling these militias. They might provide them with funding, with weapons, with lots of other formal informal forms of support, but they may not recognize those links officially. So the definition of programmer militias, it basically refers to organizations and groups that pursue the same political, maybe ethno sectarian agenda with governments, but have some sort of degree of autonomy, tactical autonomy, decision making autonomy, maybe even operational autonomy. They are very often operating alongside government forces and sometimes the lines between government security forces or the army and paramilitaries are blurred. So I would say the precise definition of pro government militias or paramilitaries very much case dependent and what we might call paramilitary in one country could actually be well integrated police for more than in another country. So the exact precise understanding of these groups is very much context dependent. And I'm sure we'll cover it in the further parts of our podcast.
- [11:19]
Stephen Sikevich
Yes, and you did touch on this. Like how have scholars dealt with this question? Because you opened the book quite a bit talking about this debate among scholars how to study and define these paramilitary and pro government militia groups.
- [11:35]
Hussein Aliyev
Absolutely. Obviously lots of literature on programmer militias or paramilitaries focuses on state relations with this organization. So there's a lot of academic literature specifically on relations between state actors, various state institutions, and pro government militias. On institutional level, how militias are being used by the states in committing various types of violence, how the states deploy militias in certain political processes to instigate political violence, and so on and so forth. So a lot of research focuses on macrodynamics on organizational level aspects. The research on microdynamics or how these organizations actually function, how they recruit their members, how they raise their funds, how they mobilize and demobilize their members is only starting to emerge quite recently. Part of the problem is that, that, well, similarly to most other non state armed groups, paramilitary organizations are relatively difficult to research on the ground, to be on the field, and to actually being able to gain access to these organizations in order to study microdynamics processes occurring with these organizations is much harder than collecting statistical data on them and doing quantitative level research. So up until probably last five to seven years, most of the studies of pro government militias were quantitative. So they involved this large databases and they explored the macro dynamics of relations between states and militias.
- [13:27]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, you mentioned paramilitary and pro government militias. Depends on context. Now, the main context of your study was Ukraine. Now, was there a particular reason why you chose Ukraine as a focus for your study on these types of movements and groups?
- [13:46]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, probably. The main reason is because I am an area studies scholar and my previous research on armed conflicts has focused on other cases within the former Soviet Union. For example, I've previously done field work in the Russia's region of North Caucasus. So the focus of my research were jihadist organizations and violent mobilization among ethnic minorities in the North Caucasus, as well as demobilization processes. And so when the war in Ukraine started back in 2014, annexation of Crimea, and then the situation in Donbas, in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, it was an intuitive region for me to shift the focus of my scholarly attention from North Caucasus or South Caucasus towards Ukraine. And the other reason why volunteer battalions, or we can call them paramilitary organizations in Ukraine were very much of interest for me is something that I mentioned earlier on. There was basically no research conducted on these organizations back in 2014, 2015, and I was one of the first ones who actually started interviewing these members of paramilitary organizations in Ukraine. So there was a lot to learn about these organizations. And there were obviously lots of challenges because most of the time members, active members of these volunteer battalions, they were very much familiar with mass media, with journalists, they had lots of contacts with journalists. They never had proper contacts with academics. So breaking the ice and gaining access to this informant community was probably one of the biggest challenges.
- [15:35]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, an interesting part of this debate on paramilitary groups, especially in Ukraine, is that it actually kind of challenges one of our long held conceptions of the modern state that is, as Max Weber famously put it, has a monopoly on violence. But yet the. Although they're kind of pro government, they're not necessarily under official government control. They have a lot of autonomy, as you said. So what does this kind of say? And I also noticed the irony because even in Max Weber's lifetime, there were the Freik Corps, which kind of would follow under this category. They were paramilitaries, they were ex soldiers from World War I. They kind of operate with autonomy, but they also operate with the official German army to kind of crush the communist uprisings, and then later kind of moved into a lot of the political paramilitary groups of the Weimar years and so forth. But of course, that's a whole other discussion. But. But it's kind of interesting. Even Weber witnessed this firsthand. But anyways, back to the main question. What does this kind of tell us about our conceptions of the modern state and challenging that monopoly conception.
- [16:47]
Hussein Aliyev
I would say one thing that happened in Ukraine in 2014, as well as in quite a lot of countries which have relied on paramilitary, or maybe we can call them auxiliary support, was the lack of a certain type of military resource. Ukraine. When the war in Donbass started in 2014, when pro Russian separatists seized control of large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, Ukraine didn't have sufficiently trained, sufficiently prepared military forces to deal with the situation. One particular aspect that the Ukrainian military was especially weak at was the lack of well motivated light infantry. So obviously there were. Well back in 2014, Ukraine still had a sizable fleet of armored vehicles, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self propelled artillery, and so on and so forth. It also had a relatively small air force, but sufficient stockpiles of artillery shells and so on. But despite this relative abundance of this Soviet legacy military equipment, the Ukrainian military forces were incapable. Well, they were mostly staffed by individuals who served on contract and who didn't get any proper training. They were interested in salaries, in pretty much very few things apart from that back then. So there was very little motivation. There was no training, proper training. And when it comes to infantry that will actually support all these other elements, all these other arms, armor, artillery, engineering, there was a desperate lack of motivated combatants on the ground. So the desire behind this assembly of paramilitary forces in April 2014 was basically driven by this particular lack of military capacity. So the Ukrainian government was willing to share its monopoly on violence and sort of violate this Weberian concepts, but just for the sake of this particular need that it had no other opportunities to, to deal with. And I guess in quite a lot of other cases, militias fill some certain gaps that exist in security forces of those particular countries. Well, in other cases, particularly in more authoritarian settings, they are being employed to fulfill certain tasks that the governments are not willing to get involved in themselves, such as persecution of civilians, genocides, and all other sort of mass atrocities that are delegated to militia. So it's not necessarily sharing the monopoly of violence, but it's probably about delegation of certain tasks within the security sector that the government is unwilling or incapable of dealing with. In the case of Ukraine, that was mostly about filling this huge gap that Ukrainian military had at the time.
- [20:11]
Stephen Sikevich
Yeah, and in one of my previous interviews, I even asked the question, well, why did these people join these volunteer battalions rather than the official Ukrainian military? And my guests answered, well, in many ways, the military didn't really want them. So they figure well, okay, we'll just create our own units in this vacuum. So it was almost. So there was also that factor. Did you find that in your research as well?
- [20:36]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, absolutely. One of the reasons why a lot of these volunteers, they have chosen to join this paramilitary organization rather than the armed forces of Ukraine, because armed forces of Ukraine had countless problems that locals were very much aware of. First of all, lack of funding, which was quite enormous for the armed forces, even for the elite part of armed forces of Ukraine back in 2014, such as airborne brigades, such as naval infantry. And I've done quite a few interviews with junior and senior officers from this elite part of the Ukrainian armed forces, such as airborne troops. And back then, they basically had to purchase all of the equipment, all of the gear. They had to buy their own food. They had to pay for a lot of things themselves because the state was not capable to provide all of these things. In the case of paramilitary battalions, most of them were very efficient at fundraising. We would probably have a chance to talk about their funding because it did come from a variety of sources. But they were certainly much better funded than the military. So they had access to a lot of things, to effective medical aid. They had access to logistics, their food supplies, their ammunition supplies. They were much better than the military in many aspects. It was. The other thing that I would mention was the attitude. So back in 2014, Ukrainian military was basically a machine, which was based on the Soviet doctrine, on the Soviet strategy. And a lot of senior commanders, senior officers, they were trained in Soviet Russia, and they had very similar mentalities to Soviet commanders or the current Russian commander. So there was a lot of mistreatment of soldiers within the ranks. There was a lot of bullying, harassment, and so on. And in many aspects, the official Ukrainian military back then was extremely inefficient because of this long chain of command, command and control. All the decisions had to be made at the chief of staff back in Kyiv before they would be passed down to junior commanders in Donbass. So everything was slow, everything was inefficient. And the broader public has often blamed all these failures in Donbass early on, especially in April and May of 2014, when the separatists were rapidly seizing more and more of the Ukrainian territory. A lot of this was blamed on inefficiency of this official, very inflexible military structure. So that's why thousands of volunteers, they sought, and quite rightly saw that paramilitary battalions are a better place, not just for them to feel more comfortable, to be provided with everything they need. During their service, but also in terms of the efficiency, they saw that they would be able to make a difference as members of paramilitary battalions rather than members of armed forces. Well, over the years, obviously the situation began to shift.
- [23:56]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, of course, one source of the Ukrainian paramilitary or the volunteer battalions were Ukrainian ultranationalist groups which kind of had their own little paramilitary traditions, like Azov, right sector, and then unauso, that's the United National Assembly, I believe. I believe, believe, yes. And yeah, and they had a little bit of a tradition of paramilitary activity for years and so forth. How. What were their importance in the early stages of the. Of the volunteer movement?
- [24:35]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, quite a lot of this alternation in its organizations. Well, I would use a term alternation is because this is how they refer to themselves back then. So this is not something that they had opposed at that time. Well, quite a lot of them became formed, assembled, and they acquired the current shape during the times of Maidan revolution. So, for instance, the right sector or private sector, it became formed from various other smaller groups during the times of Maidan. The same with Azov movement, which evolved from the previous far right group, Patriot of Ukraine, which later became the so called polite Black men, in reference to the Russian polite Green men, which have occupied Crimea at approximately the same time. So they went through quite a bit of evolution since the times of Maidan until they saw some action in Donbass from April and May in 2014. And they were definitely. Well, some of them were quite sizable and important in terms of the effect, such as, for example, for example, Azov Battalion, which later became Azov Regiment and evolved so a few further shifts in more recent times. But right sector, private sector, it has almost always remained a relatively small organization which probably had a few hundred members, maybe around a thousand members at its peak. And although they were mostly highly trained, they were professionals, but they were rarely able to significantly affect situation on the ground. So I would say those ideologically driven paramilitary organizations were a relative minority back then. In 2014 and 2015, some of the largest battalions, such as, for example, Donbass Battalion or Dniepr1 Battalion, they were not really a battalion sized group, so they were well over 500 members, which is normal Ukrainian battalion size. They were, some of them well done. Bas Battalion had probably around 2,000 members by the end of 2014, and some other battalions had over 1,000 members. So there were lots of other paramilitary organizations which were more sizable, probably in a way more popular among individuals from certain regions of Ukraine than this alternation as a battalion. But they obviously received far less mass media attention and they were far less known at that time. A lot of them also did not survive post 2015, which means that they were incorporated into various arms of the armed forces of Ukraine and Ministry of Interior of Ukraine. And one of the few who have actually managed to retain some sort of ideological background, obviously AZOV and partially right sector, as well as some small and more marginal groups such as Karpack Siege and so on. So yes, they were certainly probably the most well known parts of the Ukrainian paramilitary movement, but not necessarily the most impactful groups when it comes to their performance on the battlefields in Donbas.
- [28:09]
Stephen Sikevich
Not only that, but also the, the pro Russian separatists and even the Russians themselves really played up the, the existence and impact of these groups. Like even I believe even Putin even said this is one reason why we're even invading Ukraine is because of these groups. We want to get rid of them because they're a threat to, to Russia, to European peace.
- [28:31]
Hussein Aliyev
So yes, I would absolutely agree. Russians, since pretty much the times of Maidan, they have used the existence of this autonationalist movements as an excuse to do a lot of things that they did in Ukraine since 2014, including the full scale invasion of 2022, when they've always blamed the Azov Battalion for whatever reason, they kept on calling it the battalion, although it was not a battalion by that time, it was a regimental of National Guard of Ukraine. But in any case they've used actively these organizations in their propaganda. Although by 2022 most of these organizations not only have lost quite a lot of their geological background, for example, in the case of Azov after it became incorporated into the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, after it became one of the regiments of the National Guard of Ukraine based in Mariupol mostly, and it has became a professional military formation, professional military unit. A lot of those earlier volunteers who were part of Azov since Maidan and during the early months of troubles in Donbass, they have demobilized it back in 2014. So these were the individuals who were ideologically motivated. Some of them were members of various football hooligan groups, so called ultras, a lot of other marginal far right groups. But after the end of large scale combat in Donbass, a lot of them didn't see any point in being within the ranks of this organization. So they've left them. And the individuals who replaced them were basically people who sought professional career in military and security sphere. So a lot of those members who, those combatants, I'm sorry, who were members of Azov Regiment. After 2016, they were there exclusively for professional reasons. And I talked to quite a few of them and they barely had any ideological background. So they didn't see themselves as individuals well versed in any sort of political ideology. So the situation by 2022 has changed rapidly. Hablas espanyon spristo dzoich?
- [30:55]
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- [31:53]
Stephen Sikevich
Now I remember some journalistic reports about, you know, even foreign volunteers trying to join like Azoff and some of these groups, because they had far right sympath. Did you uncover any of this in your research?
- [32:07]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, yeah, there were quite a number of foreigners who did join these multinationalist groups early on when it was quite easy to join these organizations. And I do not exclude possibility that quite a lot of them had far right sympathies, which wasn't necessarily problem for those battalions back then. But after their professionalization or I would say incorporation into the state structures of Ukraine, the process of actually becoming a member of this elite unit because National Guard of Ukraine was and still is one of the elite units. And the application process to actually join the National Guard of Ukraine, it doesn't matter which brigade or which battalion within that formation was quite challenging. You had to go through a number of processes. And until 2022, it was not allowed for foreigners to actually serve within these organizations. There were still individuals, there were still foreigners who would attempt to sort of collaborate with political wings of these far Right organizations. Because we have to remember that when AZOV Battalion, later regiment was incorporated into the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine and Andrey Pedevsky, the founder of azov, he eventually left this military formation. He founded his own political party, National Corps, which remained a very marginal far right political force in Ukraine. And this is a force that basically collaborated with like minded political movements or individuals across the world. So that's where a lot of these foreign individuals with far right sympathies actually go and establish some collaborative relations. But they were rarely able, and I'm pretty sure they were never able to actually become members of the armed formations because of the application processes that existed in order to become members of this elite units.
- [34:17]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, when we get to the actual military stage, how did the paramilitary formations perform in terms of military terms like tactically and strategically during the Donbas conflict?
- [34:31]
Hussein Aliyev
It was very variable in the beginning. As I've said before, Ukrainian military back then in 2014, it has lacked this particular military capacity, which is highly motivated light assault infantry. And this is what they needed. So very often they tried to combine this paramilitary units, mostly company size, 150, 200 combatants, light infantry, with armored support and artillery support from the Ukrainian armed forces. It has never worked properly because combined arms operations were never a strong part of the Ukrainian military back then. But the purpose, the goal behind combining these various elements was to make sure that Ukraine had boots on the ground, they had soldiers who would actually fight in the trenches and help the Ukrainian armed forces to retake those territories. So initially, quite a lot of paramilitary groups were very useful elements on the ground because they provided Ukrainian military with this infantry element, which it lacked otherwise. And the other aspect of why they were relatively successful during the early stages of Donbass conflict, especially from approximately April until the late July of 2014, is because they faced a very similar enemy on the other side. Well before Russians rolled their armored columns into Ukraine, which we don't obviously know the exact dates, but it most likely happened in the second half of July. Before that, pro Russian separatists were quite a mixed crowd. There were lots of local pro Russian volunteers. There were also lots of Russian volunteers who crossed the border. There were lots of Russian instructors, but overall they lacked air support, they lacked proper artillery support. Obviously Russia did its best to provide long range artillery support across the border, but they lacked a lot of elements a proper modern military force would have. And in a way they very much resembled the Ukrainian paramilitary battalions. So in this clash of two more or less similarly armed, similarly trained and similarly motivated forces, Ukrainian Paramilitaries were most of the time a prevailing force because they were more numerous, they were somewhat better trained and somewhat better motivated than pro Russian separatists. But the situation has changed completely when the Russians began sending their brigade, their battalion, the tactical groups into Ukraine and this were they elite Russian forces, vtv, paratroopers, airborne troops, and obviously the Ukrainian volunteer battalions were quite a poor match for this professional military. And during one of the first confrontations between the Russian military forces, the proper Russian military forces and Ukrainian paramilitary, which happened in the key town of Ilovaisk, paramilitary suffered rather significant defeat. There were a number of other confrontations which Ukrainian volunteer battalions did not manage very well, primarily because they lacked the same level of organization, they lacked heavy weaponry to the same degree that Russians were able to deploy them. Russians were able to match the infantry with their armored artillery support more effectively than Ukrainians did at that time. Because for Ukrainians, the battalions have never had any heavy armor, they never had any self propelled artillery or anything. So they had to rely on the army. And the mechanism was quite slow. A lot of people that I talked to from paramilitary battalions back at the time, they recalled that most of the time they had to ask for artillery support or air support from the Ukrainian military. And that usually involved several calls being made over mobile phones or over such apps as WhatsApp or Viber. And by the time these calls actually reached senior officers within the armed forces, it would be hours and sometimes days. So they would often lack the same artillery or air support that the Russians could afford.
- [39:26]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, how did the end of the Donbas War with the Minsk Agreements, how did that impact the paramilitaries? And you did mention briefly the founder of Azov. He was able to go into Ukrainian politics with the end of the conflict. How did this impact like the rank and file paramilitaries?
- [39:47]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, what happened after both Minsk Agreements that the Ukrainian government under Petroproshenko and also later on under President Zelenskyy, they have tried to shut down this volunteer movement, this paramilitary movement, first of all, by attempting to incorporate, sort of legalize all these organizations within the security structures of Ukraine. Most by the end of 2014, mid-2015, most of these paramilitary organizations, they ended up as various units within the Ministry of Interior. One of the battalions ended up as one of the brigades of Armed Forces of Ukraine. Several more battalions were incorporated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. So one of the main efforts was to legalize all these organizations. What this meant for thousands of ordinary rank and file combatants is that they either had to Sign contracts with the army or with the Ministry of Interior, or they had to demobilize. Well, for some of them, I would say probably 20%, maybe 30%, this was a good opportunity to continue their military service, to become professionals either in security, broader defined security sector, or in military. So they've stayed on. But the majority of those, especially who have joined these volunteer battalions because of ideology, they were not particularly interested in staying with the armed forces or with the Ministry of Interior. Some of them were quite successful in their own businesses, in their own careers before they became paramilitary combatants. And they didn't really need those relatively low salaries that the army and the security sector were paying. So I would say probably 80% of all paramilitary volunteers have demobilized after 2015. A lot of them returned back to their civilian lives, to their previous careers. Some of them started working for private security sector, which was booming in Ukraine. There were thousands and thousands of some small and some not so small, private security firms, companies created by the former paramilitary combatants, junior level commanders and so on. And they employed probably thousands of the former paramilitary combatants. Not all of these firms were involved in sort of a legal provision of services, and not all of them were involved in providing security services on a legal base, legal basis. I'm sorry. So that's probably separate topic, but this is how the end of the active end of Donbass war and the signing of Minsk agreements ended up for ordinary combatants. When it comes to the commanders, obviously some of them tried more or less successfully to stay in politics, because in 2014, some of the senior commanders, they were also elected as members of Ukrainian parliament. So they had some access to political offices. Others have completely disappeared and have never emerged ever since. So, yeah, it was different.
- [43:15]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, based on the available data, and we did discuss this earlier about some of the difficulties of finding this data and also some of the archival work that hasn't been declassified yet. But what can we determine about the demographics of the participants in the Ukrainian paramilitaries? Like, what kind of people would get involved in this and why?
- [43:41]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, certainly one of the largest groups of paramilitary combatants originated from Donbass region itself, from Donetsk and Luansk regions. The second largest element segment of paramilitary combatants were from the capital Kyiv. Southern regions such as Mykolai, Faders and Kherson were also very well represented among paramilitary ranks. There were certainly fewer, I would say, paramilitary combatants from the west of Ukraine. They were maybe the minority. So as a result, obviously, Russian was often the language that was spoken freely within these battalions. And some of the Battalions which mostly originated from those regions of Donbass, the Russian speaking regions of Donbass, such as Donetsk and Lugansk regions, for example, Donbass battalion, it was almost 100% Russian speaking organization, paramilitary organization. So in terms of the ages of those individuals who volunteered to become paramilitary combatants, a lot of them were young, a lot of them had university education, but also a sizable percentage of them were in their 30s, in their 40s. There were obviously some older individuals, but the majority were relatively young, relatively well educated, and obviously had some careers before Maidan happened. Some of them had their own businesses, others were successful administrators, worked for government, worked for security services. One particular aspect that I was able to find about the previous backgrounds of paramilitary competence is that probably around 80% of those individuals who did join during the early stages of Donbass war, so right after Euromaidan in 2014, when the war was raging in Donbass, they were actually individuals who had various security or military backgrounds. I called it mobilization capacity. So it's a very broad professional experience. Some of them served in police, some of them served in various other security forces. Some of them were martial experts, martial arts experts. There were individuals who worked as a bodyguard. Some of them were professional military, others who had some military background in the past. So there was this element of some sort of a security or military background that probably provided them with a degree of confidence that they would be able to perform well as part of this paramilitary organizations. The numbers of individuals with this security military background during the later waves of mobilization for paramilitary organizations significantly decreased. So most of the individuals who joined this incorporated into the state structures. Paramilitary battalions were individuals who didn't really have any security background. And they were mostly younger individuals aged 19 to 23. And they were obviously more interested in creating some sort of a career within this state structures, within the military and within the broader state security sector. So there are a very different group of individuals from those who have joined early on. Now.
- [47:26]
Stephen Sikevich
What has been the impact of the ongoing war, the 2022 invasion, but also just the ongoing war in Ukraine on the paramilitary groups and also the participants, because obviously a lot of them got brought back into service and definitely using their previous experience to try to, to utilize in the war or even to help train new, new recruits. What has been the impact as far as we can tell?
- [47:56]
Hussein Aliyev
I briefly mentioned in my book, which wasn't really about the post 2022 period, but about the Donbass war from 2014 to 2020 Dukes, this earlier paramilitary mobilization which took place in 2014 was something that provided Ukraine with a very valuable resource. Thousands and thousands of individuals went through service either in volunteer battalions or in various arms and various brigades of the armed forces of Ukraine. Yes, by the time when the Russians invaded in 2022, most of them have already demobilized. They had their own civilian lives, careers, but nevertheless they may not have been in reserves, in official reserves, but there were still individuals with this invaluable experience, military experience. A lot of them had combat experience on the front lines in Donbass. But even those who did not ever familiar with various aspects of military tactics, they. They were familiar with weapons and so on. So when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine could rely on thousands of these individuals who could remobilize relatively fast and participate in combat right away without need for any extensive training. Obviously, this resource was not endless. And after the years of this full scale conventional war, this resource began to end in a way. So Ukraine was running out of this experience and highly motivated volunteers. But they were very important resource early on in February, March 2022, when Russia invaded. When it comes to organizations, actual paramilitary organizations, where these individuals initially served in 2014, 2015, obviously Azov was still there, as was in Mariupola. Azov had some of its bases in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine. So it was present and it was able to remobilize, organize its former members, its veterans. This is what for example, happened in Kharkiv, where the former veterans of Azov were able to self organize and to repel Russian attempts to enter the city of Kharkov. It happened in other parts of Ukraine as well, in some places not so successfully. For example, Kherson Territorial Defense had probably hundreds of the former members of volunteer battalions. But unfortunately they were not able to organize themselves at the time when the Russians invaded Kherson, and they were not able to put forward any sort of organized resistance at the time. But in any case, some of these organizations managed to reemerge as territorial defense battalions. Others have tried, for example right sector, priori sector, as well as IDAR and a few other battalions. They've created their organizations from whatever was left of them at the time. But one thing that is absolutely different in the current war, as compared to Donbass War of 2014, 2015, is its scale. It's a full scale conventional conflicts with a near peer adversary. And it required not only light infantry, not only light assault infantry, but quite a lot of other elements in order to succeed. And, but for paramilitary organizations, Ukrainian paramilitary organizations, they were obviously not able to function in the same capacities they did back in 2014. Back in 2013, as more or less autonomous structures which relied on armed forces, on artillery support, armored support, and air support, they were no longer able to function in that, I would say, liberal structure. So most of them voluntarily became incorporated into various brigades of armed forces of Ukraine. And basically, as we speak, there's barely any paramilitary structures that operate on their own and are not part of military intelligence of Ukraine or various brigades of armed forces of Ukraine or National Guard. The reason why this incorporation was necessary, not from the state's perspective, but. But primarily from the perspective of these organizations, is because this is what provided them with sufficient access to ammunition, with sufficient access to heavy weapons, which was always a big challenge back then in 2014, 2015, when a lot of the veterans clearly remembered that lacking proper access to timely artillery support, to property, support from armored units, from armored brigades, support from tanks and infantry fighting machines, has caused them quite a lot of casualties and quite a lot of drawbacks on the battlefield. So because of these necessities, because of the necessities of having access to this additional arms, which they lacked previously in 2014, they basically more or less accepted this incorporation into the state structure. So as we speak, there's hardly any autonomous or independent paramilitary organizations in Ukraine. Obviously, some of them retain their names within the various brigades of armed forces of Ukraine. There is, for example, Idar Brigade or Dnipro Brigade and so on. But they've lost all of the tactical operational autonomy agency and the obvious separate as part of this broader military formations.
- [54:21]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, one question I have is because one thing that's been reported in the media lately is how a lot of Ukrainian units are. They're still relying on crowdsourcing for a lot of equipment, most notably drones. Would this be considered like a legacy of the Donbas region, where the paramilitaries had to kind of rely on their own sources of supplies and, you know, their own form of crowd sourcing for their equipment, since they could get from the Ukrainian military or the government.
- [54:51]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, absolutely. Probably crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding was invented by volunteer battalions back in 2014. And they were very effective at raising funds through social media, raising funds through various social campaigns. They had presence online, they had presence on the streets. They had presence in political institutions, in civil society. They relied on a tight and relatively huge network of volunteers, civilian volunteers, who were probably 10 times more numerous than actual combatants. So there were entire families, entire towns and cities involved in this volunteering effort back in 2014, 2015, when they could raise a very significant amount of money, not only locally, domestically in Ukraine, but also among members of Ukrainian diaspora across the world, in North America, in Canada, in the United States, in Western Europe. And this money will channel towards a war effort. So crowdfunding was probably, well, it probably accounted to more than half, probably 60% of all the funds that volunteer battalions had back then. The other sources of funding were obviously some support from government patrons and some support from oligarchs. In some cases, oligarchs were founders of some of the Volunteer Battalions. For example, DniePR1 Battalion was funded by Igor Kolomoisky, one of the richest persons in Ukraine at that time. And the other oligarchs also invested quite heavily in other battalions. But nevertheless, crowdfunding was something that was pioneered, I would say, by paramilitary battalions back in 2014. And over the following years, from 2015 onwards, obviously there were fewer efforts to collect funds by these organizations because there was no active combat. And the funds that they, for example, previously needed for vehicles, medical supplies, all sort of gear that they needed on the front lines were not as required as they later became during 2022. So yeah, obviously this is a long, long tradition and now it has embedded itself into the armed forces of Ukraine. And you can see countless of this ads on social media, on Ukrainian social media, collecting funds for drones, for four wheel vehicles, for various supplies that the actual brigades of armed forces from Ukraine need. And this is clearly a legacy of volunteer battalions because back then the armed forces of Ukraine, the brigades of the armed forces of Ukraine, they didn't really engage in this crowdfunding, but they mostly relied on whatever they could get from the state or they purchased, as I've said before, their own gear and their own supplies from their own pockets. So they were not as resourceful and organized on social media as volunteer battalions were back then. But now obviously they have to engage in these crowdfunding campaigns which very successful, especially early on in 2022 when there are millions of people from all over the world, not only Ukrainians have donated to the war effort and raised significant amounts of money. But we have to keep in mind that as a war Ranger, so economic situation in Ukraine is quite challenging. There obviously fewer individuals in Ukraine who are able to, to systematically donate to military formations in the same way they did early on in the war. So this is not likely to be a sustainable resource. And this is probably something that is understood at the higher levels in the Ukrainian military command.
- [59:07]
Stephen Sikevich
Yes, it was interesting you mentioned the Ukrainian diaspora because there's a Huge Ukrainian community where I live and they have been very active in and setting up funds for the, especially for humanitarian aid. But also I'm sure there's a lot for the military effort as well. And that's, that's something I see firsthand here. Now, what overall was kind of the relationship between the Ukrainian government with the paramilitaries? We have touched on this here or there and of course there were shifts in the relationship, but overall what was kind of of that relationship or how did the dynamic shift as time went on?
- [59:47]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, I would say the relationship between volunteer battalions and successive Ukrainian governments has been very difficult. When the paramilitary organizations were first assembled in April 2014, obviously under the interim President Torchinov, there were countless efforts on part of the government to take firmer control over this organizations. There were efforts to include the commanders, some of the senior commanders of this organizations into political processes. So the parliamentary elections in 2014 was one of those efforts when for example, the founder of Azov, Andrei Beletsky, Dmitry Yarosh, founder of Rights Sector, as well as three other top commanders were elected as members of Ukrainian parliament and were allowed to sort of participate in the politics. Eventually, by the end of active combat facing Donbas and after Minsk agreements were signed, the state tried quite hard to partly get rid of the volunteer battalions, but also to incorporate them as firmly as possible within the state structures. And. And there was quite a bit of resistance on part of some of these paramilitary organizations, for example, some parts of private sector, right sector. It did eventually split into two different groups. And one of these groups were more or less open towards incorporation, but the other group remained autonomous all the way until 2019. So they were very marginal and they had a few dozen members and a couple of training camps. But nevertheless they refused incorporation, didn't want to be part of either Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Interior. And one of the reasons some other battalions or regiments were able to retain certain degree of operational and obviously tactical autonomy is because they had powerful patrons within politics. For example, the relationship between a very powerful Minister of Interior, Arsenal and Azov battalion and the regiment was very well known. Avakov was always considered as a patron of Azov and as a person who ensured Azov's I wouldn't say development, but probably existence over all of this year. So Avakov also was the only person who remained to work as a minister under Zelenskyy government. So he provided this patronage to to Azov battalion. Again, this relationship between Awakov and Azov was partly historical because Avakov was from the city of Kharkov. He was an oligarch before he became government minister, mid level or probably small level oligarch. And Andrei Bedetsky, the founder of Azov, is also from Kharkov. And there were obviously some regional level connections between the two. And eventually Avakov provided quite a lot of assistance to, well, I would say informal assistance and patronage to Azov Battalion. Some other battalions also have had some patronage within the politics and from among the oligarchs or business elites. So this is what allowed them to remain on floats or to basically continue existing until a certain period of time. Well, things began to change somewhat under President Zelensky. When he came to office, he was quite determined to sign a peace deal with Russia. He went to a couple of meetings with Putin and he tried to fix things in Donbass, which was part of his electoral agenda. Back in 2019. As part of all of these efforts, he tried to crack down on paramilitary battalions, and he ensured that some of them were completely shut down. So those still remaining independent, relatively small paramilitary organizations, such as an offshoot of Right Sector and a few other smaller groups, they were eventually disbanded, disarmed and demobilized. And he also obviously made some efforts to make sure that other battalions which retained some degree of ideological autonomy, such as, for example, Azov Regiment, he attempted to incorporate them even more firmly. So after the removal of Arsenal, the Minister of Interior, who was a patron of Azov, we didn't. There was a period of time when Azov was sort of in a relatively challenging situation until they found patronage in the central military intelligence. So the relationship between the state actors, the successive governments in Ukraine and volunteer battalions have always dependent on this linkage that they had to the government through these powerful actors, these ministers within the government or various oligarchs, who have also acted as some sort of moderators between the government and the battalions. Because a lot of the oligarchs after Maidan, they had very close relations, working relations with Petro Poroshenko and then with Volodymyr Zelensky. So they acted as sort of a medium, ensuring that the battalions survive and that the Boches paramilitary movement is actually both under the control of government and remains somewhat autonomous and somewhat independent. Obviously, only very few of these paramilitary organizations could count on this. The majority had no proper political protection or protection from oligarchs. So probably 70% or even more of paramilitary battalions were disbanded, demobilized and disarmed after 2015. So from 2016 onwards, they didn't survive the so called peace period. In Ukraine.
- [66:29]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, how did the dynamics shift between the official Ukrainian military and the paramilitaries? Because I'm sure there'd be some both kind of common cause. They're both trying to defend Ukraine and they're also both engaged in and armed conflict and armed services. But also in a way, the volunteer battalions can also be kind of a threat to the Ukrainian military because they're kind of moving in on their territory, their monopoly on violence. If you want to go back to the barbarian definition. And this was all. And this has often been a very dynamic between paramilitaries and the official military. How did this happen in Ukraine?
- [67:11]
Hussein Aliyev
This is a very interesting topic. And in my experience, the relationships between the Ukrainian military and volunteer battalions have always been very difficult. And it depended on one thing only, personal relationships. Some of the volunteer battalion commanders, they have been relatively successful in establishing working relationships with some top military commanders, some generals in the chief of staff, but also with mid ranking, mid level military commanders. And through that personal relationship, through those links that they established and sort of cemented them over the years, they've managed to build up relatively decent working relations with the military. So they often to surpass as to, to speed up this military bureaucracy when you had to go through lengthy application processes in order to get access to ammunition to certain types of weapons. Because, well, most of the weapons, standard issue weapons, small arms, light artillery that volunteer battalions had was provided by the state as well as some of the ammunition. But in some cases they had to purchase or acquire the ammunition through different other channels. But officially they did get access to ammunition, but it was not always straightforward to get access to certain types of equipment, technology that the state could provide. You needed to have connections, you needed to have links, and you need to have network both within the politics and within the military. Some of the paramilitary commanders were really good at establishing these relationships. They could count on mutual support from military commanders. They would provide them with various favors. They would help them, for example, to hold certain frontline positions. They would send their combatants to those areas where the military had particularly weak or sensitive defense structure. So they helped them to strengthen those defense points. In return, they would get lots of various favors from the military, but it all dependent on personal relationships. So there were some of the battalions who didn't really have or didn't manage to create those relationships. And they were always in a very difficult position because to obtain hardware from the military, whether this were the weapons or ammunition or artillery support or logistics, they had to go through a lengthy, very cumbersome bureaucratic process which took days, weeks and months to overcome. And that had significantly affected the performance. There were cases when some of this smaller company level groups, volunteer battalion groups, they didn't have enough ammunition and took them weeks, if not months to actually gain access to ammunition before they could participate in combat. In other cases, they lacked completely artillery support and it took them days to call on artillery support. Whereas in other cases, for those commanders that did have good relations with senior military figures, they could often just call them on mobile phones and ask for artillery support and that would be done within minutes. It does sound bizarre that you would need a mobile phone or WhatsApp to call for artillery support, but this is how the communications often functioned in 2014 and 2015 on the front lines. And people were quite dependent on mobile networks or which was obviously a very secure form of communication, as the Russians could frequently interfere or break into this conversation. But in any case, personal connections were absolutely important when it came to relationships between the regular Ukrainian military and paramilitary combatants volunteer battalions, because without these relationships, without the paramilitary commanders being able to to establish contacts with their counterparts from the military, they would be very difficult for them to be on the front lines. And eventually after 2017, after 2019, when President Zelensky was elected, most of the paramilitary unions, even the ones that were part of the armed forces and Ministry of Interior forces, they were eventually slowly removed from the front lines. They were pushed out from the so called first line of defense. So the first line positions between pro Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, they were slowly removed away from these positions. And the connections with some of the generals have helped some of the paramilitary battalions to remain on the front lines until very late. For example, all the way in 2019, some of the units of private sector right sector were still on the front lines in FJFKA and still engaged in some small level combat with pro Russian separatists there. But most of the others were actually pushed out of the front lines because the Ukrainian government did not want to see those paramilitary units anywhere close to the front lines.
- [73:02]
Stephen Sikevich
Now, I presume if the paramilitary leaders or participants had military were ex military, they probably could rely on some of their old connections in the military. That would have probably been a helpful factor.
- [73:14]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, I believe that was the case in quite a lot of other countries. In Colombia, for example, I'm aware that a lot of former military became members of paramilitary networks. It was quite the opposite case in Ukraine, because after this incorporation and demobilization of paramilitary battalions began in 2015, some of the members of paramilitary Battalions have actually migrated into the armed forces of Ukraine, not to the same brigades where they were supposed to be incorporated, but to some different, more well paid and more prestigious brigades or arms of the the security forces of Ukraine. And there were actually more paramilitary combatants who later became professional military than the other way around. Because those paramilitary battalions which were incorporated into the various structures of armed forces of Ukraine, they were very often in very unprivileged positions. So they had lower salaries. And the professional military, they had fewer benefits than, for example, members of some parts of the National Guard of Ukraine. So they saw it more beneficial for their careers and also financially profitable to actually migrate into other parts of the armed forces than staying within your own unit, the unit which retained the same name as a paramilitary battalion. So in Ukraine it was very often the other way around. And quite a few professional military junior and mid ranking officers by 2022 who participated in combat during the early weeks of full scale Russian invasion, they were actually former paramilitary combatants or junior level commanders of volunteer battalions in 2014, 2015. Yeah, sure, I would say in case of Ukraine, it was the other way around. The paramilitary combatants were the ones who later became the military, rather than the opposite.
- [75:31]
Stephen Sikevich
Now you kind of build your own theory of paramilitary mobilization based on your research in Ukraine. And what are the main pillars and themes of that theory that you were able to build from your research?
- [75:46]
Hussein Aliyev
Oh, the theory that I propose is basically rests on two pillars. The first one is that motives of mobilization into paramilitary organization are not necessarily mutually exclusive. So the same individual might be motivated by ethnonationalism, patriotism and financial incentives at the same time. And the same individual may also be there maybe serving as a paramilitary because he or she have some mobilization capacity, which is what I refer to when I talk about some previous military or security experience. So very often, probably in 80% of cases, individuals who I worked with, who I interviewed, they had multiple reasons to become paramilitary combatants, but some of them had some security experience, which a lot of them later admitted that it didn't really provide them any edge on the battlefield, and it didn't really prepare them for anything they were about to encounter in the trenches in Donbass. They were not prepared to deal with heavy artillery, they were not used to fight in armored vehicles, they were not trained in armed warfare or anything like that. So this security experience didn't really prepare them for anything they were about to face on the battlefields, but it did provide them with a degree of confidence when they were joining these paramilitary organizations. They believed because for example, if they know how to hold a K74 or any other small arms, or if they have sufficient physical training, for example, they were formerly martial arts experts or something like that. This would provide them with some sort of edge on the battlefield, will provide them with capacities that other people do not have. So that was one of the motives. Ethnonationalism, feelings of injustice, grievances overall was always accompanying these more practical capacities then the ability to use networks, which I use as a motive because in many cases individuals who didn't have connections, who, who lacked any networks to other combatants or to individuals who were already serving in primary competence, they have very few chances to join these organizations because they lacked information, they didn't know how to join, they didn't know what to expect once you're there. So connections or networks with current paramilitaries were also immortal to join because the amount of information and support that they received through these networks was often fundamental in shaping their decisions. So there would be at least three or four of these motives in each individual case. And it was very, very seldom when there would be an individual who was motivated to become a paramilitary just because of one particular reason. So this is the first pillar, the second pillar that I propose is that these motives, they change over time as the conflict shapes, as a conflict evolves into something else. In the case of Ukraine, initially, obviously the voluntary battalions didn't pay salaries. They, they didn't have financial resources to pay salaries. They actually expected from their members to bring money into the battalion. Some of them who were owners of private businesses, they would regularly on, on a monthly basis, they would invest significant amounts of money into their battalions. Others whom I talked to, they had to sell their car. Some people had to sell their second flat in order to bring money into the battalion. For the battalion to exist, to purchase all the things that they needed. For those individuals who didn't really have any financial resources, they had to rely on this common budget created within the battalions and money into those budgets for actually brought in by individual members or through crowdfunding and so on. So my point is that the battalions did not pay salaries when they were autonomous and independent. But things have changed. After the battalions were incorporated into the official state structures and as for example, as members of National Guard of Ukraine, these individuals would be paid a very good salary for Ukraine at the time. If they were junior officers or mid ranking officers, they would actually have very decent salaries. So if eventually, if initially they have joined because of such motives as patriotism or ethno nationalism, or some of the other motives which I mentioned earlier on, such as networks or personal security experience. Later on they realized that if they stay on, they could get paid decently unless they have other opportunities in civilian life. So the motives have shifted. And also the opportunities of financial gain affected the new waves of recruits and new waves of individuals who were joining these organizations later on. Because most of those who volunteered and became members of this incorporated paramilitary organizations following 2015, they were mostly driven by financial incentives, by incentives of building a career within the military, within the security sector, by having a stable salary, all the social benefits that come along with the salary and a stable job. So they were motivated by a very different set of motivations from the earlier records. And they obviously also brought very different experiences of, or rather I would say lack of experiences. So they didn't really have any security background or military background. But to be honest, that was not really needed during those years because of relative calm. And a lot of them were quite confident that if they're part of National Guard of Ukraine, they're not likely to end up on the front lines. Frontline positions were mostly occupied by more elite units of the armed forces of Ukraine, such as airborne troops or special purpose operations forces. And they knew they would have relatively comfortable job somewhere, maybe in Donbass, maybe elsewhere in Ukraine, but away from the front lines. So their motives were mostly driven by financial incentives. And the qualitatively developers, they're also a very different group. Well, the same goes for other conflicts which transform through different stages or different periods of active combat, of cessation when there are fewer chances to die in combat and fewer threats to personal security. And this relative security attracts a very different type of volunteers, very different type of records than during the active combat phase. So this is the second part of my argument that there will be different, very different, qualitative and quantitatively obviously a type of recruits who do join the same organization, but during different stages of an armed conflict.
- [83:28]
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Stephen Sikevich
Ford was built on the belief that the world doesn't get to decide what you're capable of. You do. So ask yourself can you or can't you? Can you load up a Ford F150 and build your dream with sweat and steel? Can you chase thrills and conquer curves in a Mustang? Can you take a Bronco to where the map ends and adventure begins? Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. Ready, set, Forward. Now you touch. We did touch on this, like why people joined the paramilitaries rather than the Ukrainian military. But you did mention some people were actually wanting to pursue a. A career in the military and the security services. Do you think there might be any potential overlap between what your research has done about paramilitary mobilization and then why people would even want to join the military in other circumstances? Do you think any potential overlap exists there for future further research?
- [85:26]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes. I think there are similar cases happening in other parts of the world when conflicts evolve through different stages. And at some periods of those conflicts, former or even active paramilitary combatants may decide to join regular forces, regular armed forces, when they see that is more secure or more financially secure, more personally secure for them than being paramilitary. Competence. And as probably the case with quite a lot of programmers, militias or paramilitary organizations around the world, there is very, very little stability in times of conflict. So there are always transformations and there are different stages. And individuals on the ground, they're very much aware about the stages. They, they exist within those networks of information where information is shared and spread. So they choose what is comfortable for them, what is profitable for them, and they would shift their priorities, their loyalties, allegiances within this broader security sector. This is what happened in Ukraine with all the efforts by the state to crack down on paramilitary organizations, which did result in quite a lot of former paramilitary members either joining the military or in even higher numbers joining the private military. Private security sector, sorry, not military sector, but security sectors. There were obviously a couple of efforts in pre2022 Ukraine to create private military organizations, not on the scale of Wagner, but on a smaller scale. But One of the former paramilitary commanders were very well known Commander of Donbass Batadian did attempt to create his own private military security organization, but it didn't go well and he was jailed for a number of years. And there were also debates in the Ukrainian parliament to legalize creation of private military organizations, but it didn't go too far at that time. Time. So yeah, the private security sector was also booming and it was attracting a lot of attention not only from former primary combatants, but also from the former members of the Ukrainian armed forces. And it was probably far more influential than the actual battalions at the time. The similar dynamics, things do happen elsewhere in the world where conflicts began to decrease in terms of the level of hostilities and then the combatants, both from within the armed forces and from the paramilitary formations they choose to retreat into the private sector. So I guess parallels from the Ukrainian case could be found elsewhere. And the dynamics of paramilitary mobilization in Ukraine are quite similar to dynamics of paramilitary mobilization elsewhere where individuals have also joined a lot of these organizations due to a mixture of motives such as ethnonizationism or religious sectarian factors. And eventually the visa stayed on in these organizations because of different factors or disorganizations have reshaped to a point where the newer waves of records have been joining them for completely different reasons. So I guess the dynamics of paramilitary mobilization may resemble across the world and across different cases there will of course be some nuances which are very probably Ukraine specific or Sudan or Cologne, the specific boat. But overall there's a lot of similarity in this broader processes. And obviously I'm talking about the microdynamics about what happens within these organizations. And these dynamics are likely to be different in different types of organizations, let's say in religious, sectarian, paramilitary organizations, militia groups. Other dynamics might slightly differ, but existing research still points to quite a bit, quite a lot of similarities between how these processes evolve in different types of militia organizations.
- [90:10]
Stephen Sikevich
Now you brought up PMCs a bit and then do you think probably not on the scale of Wagner, but do you think Ukraine in the near future, especially when the conflict ends, do you think there might be a presence of Ukrainian PMCs or maybe Ukrainians joining more established PMCs around the world using their military experience? Because that might be a very interesting future topic for scholars to study if that happens.
- [90:39]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, I think there's a very real possibility of that happening. And actually I think earlier this year there was a debate in the Ukrainian parliament about legalizing private military companies. I haven't followed it up. Sorry, I'm not Sure, if it was approved, actually if that piece of legislation was approved or not. But this type of debates did happen in the Ukrainian parliament more than once, and it did happen early on, I think in 2019 or 2018. So there were quite a few efforts from this broader Ukrainian security sector security elites to possibly create private military security organizations. And as I've said, there were actually efforts to do that illegally on part of the some prominent paramilitary commanders, which didn't go quite well. But probably the most important aspect is that even before 2022, there was a sizable resource for this military organizations to rely on this veteran community, and not only paramilitary veteran community, but also the former military veteran community. So individuals who participated in combat as part of the armed forces of Ukraine during Donbass War, who also had equal military and combat experience as paramilitary combatants, and who in large numbers went into civilian sector, into private security sector or other, worked on other civilian jobs and provided this potential hypothetical private military security company served with an enormous recruitment opportunities. And it was very well understood back then in Ukraine that sooner or later that resource needs to be used with the state's blessing, probably with some bits of state funding and most likely under state's supervision. Not direct or not immediate, but something in the form and shape of Wagner maybe. So everything was moving in that direction slowly before the full scale invasion in 2022. Now the situation is obviously very different and the creation of private military components now would probably enable Ukraine to engage militarily, engage Russia militarily in other parts of the world, such as for example in North Africa or sub Saharan Africa, which Ukraine so far have been doing either covertly or overtly under the control of the central military intelligence. So but if there are efforts to further distance official Ukrainian security structures such as central military intelligence from those engagements abroad, existence of private military companies would be a very important powerful tool for Ukraine to engage Russia elsewhere outside of Ukrainian borders. And when it comes to resources, obviously now and in recent future, Ukraine will have hundreds of thousands of veterans, some of them with very extensive professional military background and experience, employing all of these veterans back then, Ukraine obviously had fewer veterans after 2014, 2015, but still. So integrating these individuals into civilian life, ensuring that they have proper psychological health care services, access as well as jobs, was a huge challenge. Now this challenge is likely to multiply many times because the number of veterans will be so much more than the it was before 2022. So there likely to be an enormous resource for private actors in Ukraine or the government actors to build on if they they Want to create private military companies.
- [95:12]
Stephen Sikevich
Yeah, I like the point you made. How even when this conflict ends, when that happens, nobody knows. But almost afterwards, you know, Ukraine and Russia might be fighting their own little proxy wars and other parts of the the world, like, like Africa, where Wagner will be fighting their Ukrainian colleagues and so forth. So the hot war is over, but the Cold war, their version of a cold war, would continue for some time.
- [95:41]
Hussein Aliyev
Yeah, I guess a lot depends on how this war ends and whether both countries would still be willing to engage in any sort of hostilities elsewhere. And yeah, we all hope that the war will end definitively, but clearly that's far too many problems as we speak. So it's hard to make any guesses at this point.
- [96:05]
Stephen Sikevich
Yeah, we're just speculating at this point. So how might your research impact scholars studying conflicts and paramilitaries in other parts of the world? You had mentioned that there are each conflict and each context is. Is different. But then you've also mentioned there are certain parallels between what happened in Ukraine with its paramilitaries and what's happening in other parts of the world.
- [96:30]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, yes, I will probably speak more specifically about as a colleagues, as a scholars working on microdynamics of paramilitary, not necessarily mobilization, but existence of paramilitary organizations, because the research on macrodynamics, it's sort of away from what I'm doing. Also because of scale. I'm working with relatively small samples of individuals. Even the sample that I use in my research in my book, for example, is just a small percentage of all the individuals who had volunteered as competence for paramilitary organizations during the peak of Donbass war in 2014, 2015. So. So I'm working with relatively limited samples. When we talk about microdynamics of paramilitary participation or aspects of paramilitary organizations. This is a relatively small but rapidly emerging field of research. And there are some colleagues who work on Shiite paramilitaries in Iraq, for example, the colleagues who work on that, former Colombian paramilitaries and some groups in Myanmar as well. So. Well, obviously these are somewhat different organizations to Ukrainian paramilitaries, but there are a lot of similarities in how these groups emerged in their relationships with state patrons, not necessarily immediately by state institutions or state actors, but by with patrons from within these state organizations and how these groups fund themselves. The sources of funding are very often quite similar because other groups, well, they probably not necessarily learned anything from the Ukrainian example, but they have developed their own approaches to crowdfunding themselves or either across the country or within a certain community. For example, there's a Shiite militias in Iraq used and still I believe are using crowdfunding from within their own sectarian group. And they're quite efficient at that. So these approaches to collecting funds that Ukrainian militias have relied on back in 2014, 2015 are probably not necessarily very case specific, but we can find them elsewhere. And with the rise of social media, there are so many opportunities for both fundraising and recruitment. A lot of militia groups around the world, as well as other non state armed groups, they use social media quite actively in advertising, marketing their organizations and attracting new members. There are lots of similar parallels, I would say, in how these groups function on tactical levels and in terms of the types of technologies that they use and they have access to. And obviously now the the importance of drones and importance of unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs is likely to change quite a lot of battlefield dynamics and the tactical level aspects. And I guess a lot of militia organizations are taking that into consideration around the world and trying to prepare their own fleets of APV drones for actual or future conflicts. So I guess there's a lot of cross case learning and institutional learning that occurs across this militia paramilitary organizations around the world. And I guess also because of the type of these organizations and the way they function, the way they cooperate with government patrons, there will always be similarities that we can learn from one case to another.
- [100:44]
Stephen Sikevich
Well, this has been a very fascinating discussion. Do you have any final thoughts, maybe touch on anything in the book we didn't get to in the main discussion?
- [100:53]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, I guess a topic for future research or possibly future conversation is how paramilitary groups evolve over longer periods of time. Time. And in the case of Ukraine, there was probably not enough time for these groups to evolve into something else because the full scale Russian invasion took place and things that happened to these organizations are basically part of that conflict. And they've hardly had any other opportunities or any future of their own outside of this conflict. But. But we know very little about the cases of paramilitary groups evolving and developing their recruitment mobilizations over a longer period of time in the absence of recurring large scale conflict. Obviously in some cases they stop existing, in other cases they merge with political parties. But what actually happens over the longer periods of time, over two or three decades, which is likely to still cause some puzzles within academia. And I guess this is, this is something that I'm quite interested in.
- [102:08]
Stephen Sikevich
I know in the Middle east there's been cases where the paramilitaries almost become a state within a state or they become the state itself. I know with Hamas and Hezbollah that's been quite the case and they've existed for at least a couple decades now.
- [102:25]
Hussein Aliyev
Yes, absolutely fascinating cases. And I guess in some cases with leftist organizations in Latin America also demonstrate the evolution of paramilitaries into completely something different.
- [102:38]
Stephen Sikevich
Well, we always like to end our interviews by asking our guests, what are you working on now?
- [102:43]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, I have just recently completed a large research project on mobilization of foreign fighters in the former Soviet Union. And obviously, well, my colleagues and I have focused quite heavily on Ukraine, but not only because it's an ongoing conflict, but also because it has been a magnet for foreign combatants since 2014. And more recently, well, since 2022, Ukraine openly invited foreigners to join its armed forces and there were thousands of foreign combatants who became members of various arms of the Ukrainian military. So this is in a way very fascinating and also enormous topic because efforts to map the scale and the scope of this foreign combatant movement across the former Soviet Union is quite extensive. And apart from Ukraine, we also focused on other conflicts in the region. For example, conflicts in the Chechen wars and the Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, as well as the early ethnicizationist wars in the South Caucasus, in Georgia and Nagorno Karbakh. All of these conflicts had some presence of foreign combatants. And very often those foreign combatants were not necessarily from outside the former Soviet Union, but they were actually individuals from within the the former Soviet Union, which also was the case with Ukraine in 2014, 2015, when most of the foreign combatants during Donbass war were not necessarily foreigners from Western Europe or North America, but they were individuals from Georgia, from Chechnya, from Belarus, from Russian Federation, and partly from Central Asia. So I think this is a very maybe unique aspect for the former Soviet Union because a lot of before 2022, a lot of foreign fighters involved in this regional conflicts in the former Soviet Union were actually from other parts of the former Soviet Union rather than from outside the region. Obviously after 2022, with a full scale Russian invasion, situation in Ukraine have changed a bit because probably now the majority of foreign combatants in Ukraine are from outside the former Soviet Union. They're from all over the world. And actually over the last couple of years, probably half of foreign combatants in Ukraine fighting on the Ukrainian side are from Latin America, which is very unusual for the region to have such high numbers of foreigners from different continent. But this is a current trend. And there's still obviously some very sizable foreign formations in Ukraine from other parts of former Soviet Union, such as from Georgia, from Belarus and from Chechnya, and actually Belarusians, until relatively recently, were the largest foreign combatant group. My colleague and I have recently published a research article based on interview data with Belarusian combatants about the process of mobilization and participation in Arussa Ukrainian work. So I'll probably stop at this point.
- [106:09]
Stephen Sikevich
Well, if you ever want to come back on the podcast, we can discuss this research. It sounds very fascinating. It adds a whole new nuance. I almost wanted to ask, do we know if any of the Latin Americans were from the paramilitaries from there trying to go into Ukraine?
- [106:27]
Hussein Aliyev
Well, actually, as far as I'm aware, quite a lot of them have previously worked or served for the official militaries in Colombia, in Brazil, in Argentina. So they were, I guess, on the opposite side. And quite a lot of motivations that we've been hearing is that they are motivated to fight against the communists, referring to Russians, and they very much sort of experience it in counterinsurgency, although that's not necessarily the type of experience that is easily applicable in the Ukrainian case. But yes, they're actually mostly from the other side of the front lines.
- [107:05]
Stephen Sikevich
Well, you're more than welcome to come back on the podcast and discuss your research.
- [107:10]
Hussein Aliyev
I would be delighted to thank you very much.
- [107:12]
Stephen Sikevich
Hussein Aliyev, thank you for joining us on the New Books Network.
- [107:16]
Hussein Aliyev
Yeah, thank you very much.
- [107:17]
Stephen Sikevich
To thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network, I am your host, Stephen Sikevich. Until next time.