Kiev Could Mobilize 130,000 Volunteers To Fight The Russians

Eight years ago, everyday Ukrainians—thousands of them—formed volunteer battalions, grabbed whatever weapons they could find and raced to eastern Ukraine to battle Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region.

Today Kiev again is counting on volunteers to bolster Ukraine’s outgunned armed forces as Russia builds up a powerful invasion force—thousands of armored vehicles and equipment for up to 200,000 troops—along Ukraine’s borders.

There’s little doubt Ukrainians will step forward to fight for their country. There also is little doubt that, in the event of full-scale war, many of them will die.

Ukraine’s impoverished army was unprepared when, starting in February 2014, Russian troops seized the Crimean Peninsula and then backed separatist fighters in Donbas. The separatists quickly declared two “independent” republics in Donetsk and Luhansk.

In response, volunteer battalions spontaneously formed across Ukraine. In the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, Gov. Ihor Kolomoiskiy, a billionaire, spent $10 million of his own money to form a battalion. “The unit Kolomoiskiy equipped and funded, Dnipro 1, can largely be credited with preventing the city’s fall into the hands of the separatists,” Maj. Michael Cohen and Staff Sgt. Matthew Green explained in a study for the U.S. Army.

More than 80 more volunteer battalions sprang up by that October. Some had formal ties to government agencies including the interior ministry. Others with a far-right ethos were barely tolerable in Kiev.

Not all had a billionaire backing them, so regular Ukrainians opened up their wallets. “Social media proved a method of grass-roots funding and assistance,” Cohen and Green explained. “Unit Facebook accounts and web pages solicited donations and sought volunteers, and people contributed in large amounts. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of funds required by the battalions were provided by private contributions.”

They rode into battle with whatever gear they could beg or scrounge. “Uniforms were usually donated collections of mismatched camouflage patterns from different militaries around the world,” Cohen and Green wrote. “The weapons used by battalions were as varied as the uniforms. Dnipro 1 was initially handed a collection of 300 AK-74 rifles, 30 M-16s and crew-served weapons of different types and calibers.”

Some of the volunteers had military experience. Many did not. The battalions had only the loosest of rank structures. For leadership, they elevated their most experienced and charismatic members. But battalion commanders and riflemen—and women—alike “slept under the stars.”

The volunteer battalions were lightly equipped and unevenly trained and led, but they fought. “They conducted reconnaissance behind separatist lines, called for and adjusted fire from conventional artillery units and carried out skirmishing to test the strength of separatist positions,” Cohen and Green explained.

But Kiev didn’t always appreciate the battalions’ sacrifices, some volunteers complained. When Russia directly intervened in the Donbas campaign in August 2014, many volunteers were caught, alongside regular forces, in an elaborate ambush in Ilovaisk.

“Some volunteer commanders expressed the opinion that they had been racing to capture towns and villages at breakneck speed on the orders of officials back in Kiev attempting to take credit for winning the fight,” Cohen and Green wrote. “They argued that the intelligence which led to their assault on Ilovaisk had been faulty.”

As the war cooled into a stalemate along the Donbas trenches, the Ukrainian army absorbed many of the volunteer battalions. With the benefit of years of foreign assistance and funding, the Ukrainian army in 2022 is a bigger, better-armed and more disciplined force.

But with just 145,000 active troops, it’s outnumbered. The Russian army could roll west with nearly twice as many soldiers, plus more and better weaponry. To stiffen its defenses, Kiev is hoping to recapture the volunteer spirit of 2014. A law that came into effect this month creates a new structure for volunteer units.

The law creates 25 brigades under the command of Brig. Gen. Yuriy Galushkin, a veteran of Donbas. To start with, there’s one brigade in each oblast plus an extra brigade for Kiev. The brigades oversee an initial 150 battalions. Additional units could stand up in major cities and regions such as Kharkov, Dnieper, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Lviv.

Ten thousand full-time soldiers form the permanent staffs of the battalions and brigades. Fifty in a battalion. Up to 120 in a brigade. Another 130,000 volunteers—up to 600 for each battalion—round out the units. “They will be under the command of the military,” the Ukrainian government stated. “The state will provide them with weapons [and] conduct training and coordination.”

The law also creates a framework for communities to form their own local defense units outside the brigade construct. “Volunteer formations can be established in small settlements to perform ancillary functions—protection, surveillance, et cetera,” according to the government.

Now imagine a village defense squad standing up to a Russian army battalion with 50 T-72 tanks. Hundreds of volunteers died in Donbas in 2014 and 2015, when only a few Russian battalions were directly involved in the fighting. Against a hundred Russian battalion tactical groups, Ukraine’s volunteers surely would suffer even greater losses.

But that might not deter everyday Ukrainians from taking up arms in their country’s defense. “As for myself, I am ready for the war,” one older man in Kharkov said. “If they will give me a gun, I will go to war. I will do whatever it takes.”