April 14 — Day 781 — Questions and Answers — Russian Volunteer Corps
Hi all! I just finished a couple of days visiting with the soldiers in the Russian Volunteer Corps. These are the guys that went into Belgorod Olbast recently and raised heck around the border for a while. Kozinka village. Had reasonable access to fighters and leadership. This was a base visit.
If you’re curious about some part of that, I’m glad for your questions.
Hi all!
Thanks for your questions, here they are and my attempts to respond:
Alex Frishberg
I heard they released a statement five days ago, announcing that they have terminated their activities (assault inside Russian territories that lasted for a month or so). Is that true?
A: In general yes. They told me their operation is finished and practically all the men are back at base. They said a few people were still in the border region on operations, but they weren’t specific. The shooting is over, that’s clear.
James Sayer
Are they under UAF control and command or autonomous in their actions?
A: Great question! Their official answer is “We cooperate with the UAF but on Russian territory we operate autonomously.” When I asked the dude in charge, OK, what about those GUR helicopters (two Blackhawks) it’s clear were across the border during the RVC attacks, dropping off troops, the answer was “Sorry, we’ll have to check with GUR before we can answer that.”
In general, it looked to me like they make their own plans but they’re pretty much totally dependent on the Ukrainian government for almost all material, so what Kyiv decides to put in support of an op, determines the scale of the op. Once the op is running it seemed to me like they have tactical and operational control. The commander told me it was his call to end active operations.
Volodya Salmanov
I’m trying to wrap my head around the purpose of their actions, Stefan. Were they looking for local support, or even uprisings? Was it just a diversion? Was there a clear objective? How do the members join the units? From within Ukraine, via third countries or even direct from ruSSia?
A: The commander told me the short-term goal was to stress the Russian government and undermine Russian government credibility during Putin’s re-election. Not a diversion per se, but a raid with ground objectives and media/narrative objectives. That said, he also told me that part of the reasoning behind decision to launch the raid was to draw Russian military resources from sectors in Ukraine. He was very frank that the RVC understands their formation is not going to overthrow Russia by itself.
Members join by finding out about the RVC and making their way to the unit. Most seem to have been, initially, Russian nationals living in Ukraine for several years prior to 2022, and so able to get information outside Kremlin propaganda. For those guys, picking up a weapon to fight made sense because their homes and families were in Ukraine. Others have joined up because they were Russians inside Russia and they decided the Putin regime must be fought against. It’s not an exact analogy, but a reasonable template for those would be the urban Russian liberal. There were a few adventurer types who seemed like just young Russian guys who want to fight. There were more than a few non-Russians, but overall still a minority. In this category I found guys from Germany, Serbia, some place in South America, and the US. Those guys seemed to have gravitated to the RVC because they were in the UAF’s International Legion before and decided fighting with the Russians was a better gig.
Stewart R. King
Do they have a coherent plan for how they are going to transform Russia, or are they just launching diversionary attacks to support AFU operations?
A: They do not, and they are open about that. Their standard response is that absence of a blueprint for eliminating evil does not excuse a responsible man from opposing evil. In simple terms, they are launching diversionary attacks because “right now” that’s all they are physically capable of.
Roy Cauldery
Do they have sufficient manpower to launch future ops?
A: Certainly they have manpower to launch more raids. I would question whether they have the manpower and firepower to grab even a single village across the border and hold it indefinitely.
Are they seeing defections from the Ruzzian army directly to them?
And has that rate increased since they started their campaign?
A: The technical answer to that is “yes”, they say they have a couple of former Russian army fighters in their ranks. I wasn’t able to meet with them. I was told they weren’t on base the days I was there. Be that as it may, it’s clear that the strong majority of them are not former Russian army. You could only say the rate of former Russian army soldiers joining the ranks has increased, in the sense that a year ago there were none.
Jake Scott
How many of them are there?
A: That’s another excellent question and I will have to choose my words carefully here because they are very sensitive about details like that going public. Their commander has said they are a formation “that can perform battalion-scale” operations. I asked him about that and he said that is the case. I wasn’t given full access, but based on all evidence I saw I would call them something like a reinforced company.
William Tracy
For those not familiar-can you tell us who/what they are?
A: This is a group of fighters led by a group of Russian nationals who oppose the Putin regime. In the first part of the war they fought with Ukrainian territorial units or Ukrainian foreign contingents, but due to their background — from Russia — they found it not so easy to serve with those forces, so they eventually did the paperwork and formed their own unit. They started out as about a dozen guys in several units, they formed up as their own group in the first half of 2023, and since then they’ve been one of two or three Russian-based formations fighting on Ukraine’s side. In the last six months they’ve found a few recruits outside Russian citizens, but not a whole lot.
Richard Cooke
What is the main reason for the unit I.e Putin?
A: In simple terms, it was started by some Russian citizens in Ukraine who opposed the invasion and picked up guns to fight, and over time they came together into a single formation.
Joao Dos Reis Alberto
Do they plan on giving Staff training and Commanders courses, the attacks lack coordination and usually they send a squad on death missions. The officer corps needs military education.
A: Certainly nobody told me about any plans. The way it looked to me they had a few guys at the top with some military training or skills, and pretty much everyone in the lower ranks I talked to had been under fire and had to execute in a real war. I saw guys leading other guys in squad- and section-type training, but it wasn’t really clear to me that there were officers and NCOs like in a standard professional army. In their defense, that sort of set-up isn’t obvious in every UAF unit, never mind the territorials.
Lee Tarricone
I’m grateful to those who defend Ukraine, including these brave soldiers. But when this war finally ends, where will home be for these warriors?
A: Another good question. I asked them. It was clear there is no clear answer. All of them seemed to understand that the overthrow of Russia was such a hazy dream that dedicating one’s life to that specific goal didn’t make much sense. Everyone I talked to put it into simpler terms which pretty much always boiled down to personal reasons why that guy should be part of a unit made of Russians that fight the Russian state.
Claudio Magnatti
Hello Stefan, in Italy the press depicts them as ultra-right/fascist/nazi russians opposing putin but not being better than him. What can you say about that?
A: Those reports are absolutely false, as nearly as I can see. There was a surprising spread of nationalities in the unit and of the guys that were able to talk clearly about the kind of Russia they would like to see, without exception the goal was a standard European state with democracy, individual rights, constitutional limits to the rich and powerful, and rule of law. Among some of the big city Russians I sometimes got the vibe that there was this assumption that being educated and from a big city in a big country made a person better-informed and better-equipped to make political decisions, but frankly you get that attitude in most places. I suspect that politically most of the guys would vote conservative/republican before they would vote labor/democrat, but at the end of the day these are soldiers in a fighting unit, not professors at a university. All the people I talked to are aware the Russian media is calling them Nazis and traitors. Their answer is consider the source.
Сергей Марченко
Hi Stefan. Thank you for your work. I wonder if the Volunteer Corps has heavy weapons and a system for manning personnel.
A: They have limited heavy weapons including a few apcs, mortars, anti-tank missiles, armored cars and strike drones. Their commander told me a couple of times they have “artillery” but I’m not quite sure what that meant. He said they were hoping to get a tank soon. I am personally sure they were able to get Blackhawk helicopter support from GUR, and a couple of soldiers confirmed to me there was helicopter support in the last op although they wouldn’t say from where. But when I asked the commander the response was basically “No comment until I check with GUR”. (GUR=Ukrainian military intelligence/sometimes special operations)
Chris Warner
What is their nationality composition? All Russian, Russian and Ukranian, big mix of various nationalities? Is there a reason that they always hit Belgorod, and not mix it up with attacks in Kursk or Bryansk??
A: The response on nationality is above. As regards Belgorod, they told me it was because it’s familiar ground and, in the case of the most recent op, the terrain favored infiltration.
Tom Nestler
How are they equipped?
A: Aside from the “heavy weapons” noted above, call them fairly well-equipped infantry. Decent armor and helmets, modern carrying gear, NATO-standard med kits. AK-74 rifles and AKM machine guns, and I got the impression that they prioritize machine guns more than the average UAF unit. Mix of hand-held, unguided anti-tank weapons including Mukha and AT-4. I didn’t see any guided ATGM but they told me they had them. 120mm and 81mm mortars. Several of them told me there is this rule that when they cross into Russia they may only carry Russia/Soviet/Ukrainian weapons, they can’t have western stuff that’s been transferred to Ukraine. That said, they are allowed to carry western stuff captured from the Russians. I pointed out that for an outsider like me it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between an AT-4 captured from Russia, and an AT-4 just transferred to Ukraine from NATO. I got told I needed to trust them on that.
It is a matter of record that while the raid was going on at least one and maybe two or three Czech-made BM-21-type rocket launchers, called Vampire, were lobbing 122mm rockets into Belgorod, and at the same time Ukrainian drones were hitting Belgorod. It’s worth noting at least some of this strikes near nothing approximating a military target, and at that range a 122mm is pretty inaccurate anyway. This falls into the category of “UAF activities using heavy weapons in support of the RVC”.
Mark Kitchell
What motivated them to take up arms? Thanks, this is fascinating
A: Covered above. In general, each guy had his own personal reason which boiled down to a personal decision to fight in a unit fighting against Russia. No one was saying they are planning a victory parade in Red Square next week.
Robert Jarvis
What were their original goals for the operation, do they feel they achieved them or even surpassed them? From the news it looks like this was much more than just a successful raid.
A: According to both rank-and-file and the commander, it was a limited operation with limited objectives and those objectives were met. An example given me was that when they went into Kozinka they were confident that the initial Russian response would be local defense units with no idea what was going on driving towards the village to find out, and so ambushes on approach roads to the village should work, and — I was told — they did. The helicopter support did not achieve all its goals, I was told, but I’m not clear what this means. I suspect it was more Russian air defenses than expected or a logistical glitch of some kind that prevented the helicopters doing all that was planned. Casualties seem to have been light but there were wounded and dead, low double digits and possibly single digits. Casualty evacuation functioned but Russian indirect made it difficult at times.
My impression is their general objective was to grab the village, kill or destroy whatever military/border troops they could find in the area, ambush quick-reaction forces as possible, but for the most part then hunker down and let the Russians come to them. It’s matter of record that in “taking out” the RVC the Russian air force dropped somewhere between a few and dozens of aerial bombs on Kozinka, which flattened all manner of private property (homes). I saw guys with bandages doing light duty but I absolutely didn’t get the impression the Russian counter-attacks caused a lot of RVC casualties.
Erik Rival Storelv
What is their purpose?
A: As noted, from what I could see the best way to get to that answer is to ask each individual, it seemed like everyone had his own reasons and goals. Overall, brass tacks, I didn’t see any real tangible, collective purpose beyond “fight Russia”. But they seemed serious about that.
Mark Kitchell
How much do you believe and trust them?
A: Brilliant question! For those of you not interested in the mechanics of journalism, you might want to skip this response, it’s a favorite subject of mine.
I was there as a reporter and guys like me get lied to all the time, even by normally honest people, and that’s in peacetime. In a war the assumption has to be that anyone you talk to, as a reporter, is going to be someone with a stake in the war, and that someone not only could try to use you the reporter as a way to advance his war objectives, it’s expected. The same goes with telling the truth, if it helps him with his war goals, then he’ll speak honestly. Point is, no one you talk to is going to put speaking honestly to a stranger ahead of saying what he thinks will help him in his war.
That being said, the commander was a pretty smart guy and smart guys usually understand it’s usually a bad plan to just bald-face lie to someone who could check out anything you say, and does it for a living. In this war skilled commanders pretty much without exception have figured out that getting out information to the public is a real tool to advance unit objectives, pretending it isn’t would be stupid like not calling in artillery on a matter of principle.
(I could deffo go off on a tangent about how one of the easiest ways for a war correspondent to determine quickly if a military commander is really stupid, is to observe whether said military commander is willing to state a bald-faced, easily refutable untruth to a member of the media, rather than have the moral courage to admit what is obvious.)
So anyway, with the guy in charge the discussion always turns on what he’s willing to say, rather than what’s truthful. A sidebar is that once the conversation starts it’s impossible to filter the questions, and for a guy like me an unanswered or badly-answered question is also information. All in all I had a pretty frank and useful interview with the commander. He’d clearly talked to journos before.
As to the troops, it’s a different dynamic. These a young men mostly living mostly in the unit, without a lot of contact with outsiders, and they know they are doing something that’s cool and interesting. They aren’t used to talking to anyone outside the unit and here this dude shows up, he speaks their language, and he’s glad to chat. You shoot the breeze with enough soldiers, you will get a pretty good impression of the unit and the more you do it the better you get at it. We were on that base on two different days.
Plus you see what’s lying around, or not, how training is done, or isn’t, how lower ranks react when a higher rank walks up, etc. Etc. Old-time journos like me are a lot like the Sergeant Major, we can really see a lot, and the junior soldiers a lot of the time don’t immediately understand what it is an old guy like me who’s been around the military for years and years, can observe as an outsider.
So from my perspective I am pretty confident (maybe incorrectly but still I am) that if I got told a whopper there’s a fair chance I might suspect it, and the more time spent with the unit, the harder it becomes to fake information. So for me it’s not so much “trust” as it is “enough data to make confident conclusions”. What I just wrote I’m pretty confident of.
Which brings me back to the Blackhawks, I would have loved to have nailed that data point down. That didn’t work out. This is a little irritating because I can’t for the life of me figure out who’s flying the damn things. It’s not like GUR routinely sends staff to Fort Rucker. Budanov maybe is a super spy, maybe he isn’t, but I’m willing to bet he can’t fly a Blackhawk. I know there are no US military service personnel participating in operations in Russia because my government told me so.
Yes, I know the Germans let the cat out of the bag regarding US/British/French missile technicians working on Patriots and Storm Shadows etc. That’s not firefights and that’s not air assaults, and it’s not inside the Russian Federation.
So unfortunately I can’t state with confidence that I have any idea at all who was flying those GUR Blackhawks that went across the border, nor can I say with any confidence what they were supposed to do, nor can I say how putting those aircraft in support of that operation got green-lighted. By that I mean, OK, the aircraft belong to GUR. Fine. But did their violation of Russian air space, their placement of landing skids on Russian dirt, by US-manufactured aircraft the US has specifically, based on its official arms assistance data, never sent Ukraine, get cleared by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry? The Office of the President? The Army? I would love to have some confident answers to those questions. Don’t got any.
No biggie, this is the 21st century. We’ll find out sooner or later.
Shlomo Ben Avraham
Just wondering, did you manage to have a chat with this wonderful person ? :
A: I did not. I didn’t encounter any Ukranians in the unit, and both soldiers and command told me there are no Ukrainians in the unit. Some of the Russian-speakers understood Ukrainain great and spoke it fairly well, others had trouble stitching three or four Ukrainian words together.
