Militia of Novorossia
On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in response to an appeal from the leaders of the Donbass republics, decided to conduct a special military operation. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow's plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. On March 24, the UN General Assembly adopted a Western resolution on Ukraine, which holds Russia responsible for the current crisis.
On 07 July 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the idea of equating the servicemen of the LPR and DPR with Russian servicemen. The idea was voiced by the leader of the party "Fair Russia - For the Truth" Sergei Mironov at a meeting of the head of state with the heads of factions in the State Duma . “As for equating the servicemen of the LPR and DPR with Russian servicemen, I fully support this. In practice, this is being implemented. Such a proposal, I agree with it," he said.
Russian conscripts in the Donbas were carrying a rifle known in the West as Mosin–Nagant. The iconic rifle of the famous movie Enemy at The Gates on Stalingrad and many other war movies, the Mosin-Nagant was first fielded in the year 1891. This weapon, a simple bolt action rifle, was last used by Soviet forces in World War II. Up to 1943, Soviet infantry was primarily armed with the bolt-action 1891/1930 Mosin Nagant rifle with iron sights. It was accurate to 400 meters. The scoped Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle was accurate to 800 meters. During the war, the Soviet Union replaced the infantry Mosin-Nagant rifles with submachine guns. These provided excellent suppressive fire.
The gun was then supplied to the communist Vietnam, and was used by Viet Cong guerrillas. Bolt action rifles are still some of the most accurate and dependable sniper rifles in the world. To send an untrained Russian conscript into the Ukrainian slaughterhouse with a Mosin is the definition of cannon fodder.
In February 2022, officials in the Russian-backed separatist areas of eastern Ukraine took to press ganging fighting-aged men as old as 60 into their militias. Men were snatched from cars heading to the border with Russia, grabbed of the streets of Luhansk (a major city) in broad daylight, and in bars in the city of Donetsk late at night. Armed gunmen visited businesses and asked for lists of male employees. All men over the age of 18 received "military subpoenas" to attend recruiting stations. Officially it is 18-55 years old, but they have extended up to 60.
Military age men were effectively living in hiding. Once the conscripts get to the recruiting station, they are moved to barracks, sometimes without any medical checks. Therefore, most men are hiding in their homes, and men are not seen out on the street.
The press gang is generally regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. In fact, the overwhelming majority of seamen in the Royal navy were there of their own free will. The press gang was resorted to, especially during the initial mobilisation at the beginning of wars and to find certain kinds of particularly skilled seamen.
Striking testimony is borne to the terror which the advent of the press-gang inspired on the Cornish sea-board by a well-known political reformer, who in 1803 was an inhabitant of Newlyn. “The cry that the press-gang was coming,” he says, “was sufficient to cause all the young and eligible men of the town to flock up the hills and away to the country as fast as possible, and to hide themselves in all manner of places till the danger was supposed to be over. Sometimes, the possibility of retreat was cut off by a troop of light horse who were in league with the gang."
In early March 2022, the leader of the self-proclaimed republic, Denis Puszylin, promised that the mobilized soldiers would not go to the "front line", but the military from Donbas, who were interviewed by the editors of The Moscow Times, claimed that it was quite the opposite: there were people on the front line who have never had a gun in their hands before.
The widow of 30-year-old Oleg, a fallen soldier from the Donetsk People's Republic, said her husband's unit was deployed to attract the attention of enemy artillery near Mariupol. "My husband wrote to me that they were used as bait to locate Ukrainian artillery," the woman said. Her husband, Oleg, kept a diary for over a month in which he described what happened in the war. The man took part in the fighting for Mariupol and was killed by storming the port.
On March 9, when it was announced that Oleg's company would be sent to clear an industrial zone near Mariupol, the man wrote: "Pushlin said we would not be at the front, our place was on the third line (although we didn't have a job there either). They all panicked saying we had no equipment, no training, no food, were hungry etc. We were basically civilians dressed as military. "
Konstantin Skorkin, a former Carnegie Moscow Center think tank analyst and an expert on Donbas policy, says troops from self-proclaimed republics are usually used "for the dirty work". "Donbass has elite military units, such as Chodakowski's detachment. They are well equipped and probably well paid. And they have masses of mobilized men. These are ordinary people, doing quiet jobs, who are thrown to the front to patch holes. This is despite the fact that commanders promise not to send them outside the republics,"" he says.
At the end of June 2022, Moscow increased the mobilization of soldiers from the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. There are round-ups in the streets, and young men are forced to register at military conscription offices. At the same time, numerous videos appeared in social networks with appeals of soldiers to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and to the authorities of unrecognized republics in the international arena.
Conscripts from the self-proclaimed pro-Russian Donbas republics say they are cheated by their commanders and used as cannon fodder at the front. Many soldiers enter the army from round-ups, are sent to fight, even though some of them did not even have weapons in their hands before. Deserters are so desperate that they decide to refuse to obey orders despite severe penalties and accusations of treason against their relatives.
Frontline fighters have no combat experience. "We had an epileptic in our group, a man with serious problems with legs, a few drug addicts and an old man in his seventies who terrified everyone with his appearance" recalls one of the army soldiers from Donbas, who managed to survive. Desperate mothers and wives learn the fate of their men through word of mouth. Widows cannot count on the bodies of the fallen to be delivered, they are ignored by the authorities. The Russian Foreign Ministry replied to one of the women that it "does not interfere in the affairs of other sovereign states".
Among those mobilized are former prisoners. One of the men serving a sentence in a prison in the Donetsk People's Republic told The Moscow Times that the convicts are being sent to the front directly from behind bars. "They offer early release if you agree to go to the front. Most often, of course, they recruit those who already have some experience: former policemen, soldiers or security service officers. There are many of them here" said the man in an interview with "The Moscow Times". "Some people agree to go to war, they do not drag anyone by force. I refused, I have brothers and a sister in Ukraine, how can I fight them?"
The mother of a prisoner confirmed that her son had been offered a trip to the front, but the latter refused. The woman believes that in a penal colony he is much safer than in the wild. "I didn't think I'd say this, but I'm glad my son is in prison: at least that way he won't be sent to war. Several times I was stopped on the street by the military asking if there were any men in the house: they could just grab him and take him away. In prison, at least he will stay alive."
Since 2015, after the cessation of the active phase of hostilities, the formation of units of the so-called militia of Novorossia into a regular structure along the lines of the Russian army began. The purpose of this process was to create a homogeneous quasi-army structure to perform the following tasks:
- restoring internal order, the elimination of mafia anarchist military structures in the "republics";
- ensuring the coordination of units and the defense of an established front line with the formation of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd lines of the corresponding infrastructure;
- creation of a structure similar to the personnel army of the Russian Federation, for its actual inclusion in the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation with all the ensuing consequences: unified support, appointment of Russian curators (on a rotational basis), unification of the principles of service, conducting exercises, etc. on the basis of Russian military regulations, technical regulations, etc.
The inability to overcome internal contradictions and divide spheres of influence did not allow the "republics" to unite. Accordingly, their armies were also divided into two army corps - the 1st AK ("DPR") and the 2nd AK ("LPR"). In the summer of 2015, the front line largely stabilized. The battles moved into a positional phase, and this finally made it possible to form brigades and regiments of the 1st and 2nd Corps from dozens of real and virtual battalions and groups and, most importantly, equip them with equipment in accordance with the standards for combat and strength (BCS). Brigades (and sometimes regiments) were formed according to the staffing of Russian brigades and had dual command to ensure their subordination to the Russian army.
Initially, people from military intelligence were involved in the process of the formation of the authorities in the "LPR", and in the "DPR" - counterintelligence and security forces. This gave rise to differences in management approaches. So, in the "LPR" there is no Ministry of Defense. The coordination of actions and communication with the Second Army Corps, created in this territory, is carried out by Plotnitsky's assistant with a small apparatus. Plotnitsky did not have personal militant detachments.
In the "DPR", by contrast, in an attempt to take control of the scattered militias, a Ministry of Defense was created. Rather, the ministry maintained a semblance of centralized control by trying to organize interaction between these units.
Shortly after the beginning of 2015, many completely detached militia commanders were killed or sent to retire. The Russian and Ukrainian media had no doubt that these military leaders were eliminated with the assistance of the Russian special services, although there were no facts directly indicating this. After that, the functions of the DPR Ministry of Defense became very decorative. Later, with the creation of the First and Second Army Corps "DPR" / "LPR", some of the former commanders were included in their composition. These armed forces live completely independent of politicians, unresponsive to attempts to imitate their leadership.
Dual command is ensured by the presence of curators from the Russian Federation, who duplicate the command positions of the brigade and battalion levels and, by design, had real power in the units, in contrast to the formal commanders appointed from among the local population. At the same time, the formal commanders were actively promoted in the separatist and Russian media, acting as an illustration of the thesis about the “civil war” and “local people who took up arms to defend their land”, while real operational control is fully provided by regular Russian military personnel.
Duplication of functions, a significant difference in salaries, status, ranks, control over shadow incomes (sale of scrap metal, fuel and lubricants and material assets, income from "dead souls", smuggling, drug trafficking), the temporary nature of the stay of advisers (rotation lasts an average of 1 year), their indifference to personnel losses and focus only on submitting acceptable reports “upstairs” - all this creates the basis for an extremely difficult relationship that had more than once turned into open armed conflicts. Individual advisers were even given personal protection.
Resistance to the end of the freemen, especially from pocket battalions of local bosses, direct and covert sabotage by local leaders of the "DPR" and "LPR" continued until the summer of 2019. At first, it often led to direct confrontation, the killing of leaders, the encirclement and disarmament of individual units (from relatively combative ones like the "Olkhon battalion" to the comical Cossack ones). This resistance played an important role in the decision to liquidate Alexander Zakharchenko - after his death, the “personal battalions”, disguised in the “ministries of the republics” (almost every “ministry” had its own “guard”), quickly merged into the “DPR People’s Militia”. The elites of the "LPR" after the escape of Plotnitsky were more accommodating - and, accordingly, remained much more alive than "Bati".
Within 4–5 years, the Russian Federation managed to form two army corps on the territory of the ORDLO with a structure typical of the RF Armed Forces, which allows them to be integrated into the overall structure of the Southern Military District. The integration of the corps into the formal structure of the Southern Military District is ensured by the dual command of all parts of the 1st and 2nd AK, starting from the battalion level. Almost 100% staffing of subunits with equipment and low staffing allows us to consider them as cadre, which at any time can be manned by Russian servicemen.
Communication, starting from the battalion level, digital, secure, based on radio stations such as Azart and Peanuts, which also contributes, if necessary, to easy integration and manageability of units. Both in the current strength and in the conditions of replenishment of the LS to the standard, the 1st and 2nd AK are not capable of independent offensive operations (with rare exceptions at the tactical level). Moreover, with a large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in two operational directions, the 1st and 2nd ACs will not be able to provide effective defense operations. The task of the corps is to maximally delay the offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine for a time sufficient to bring personnel units of the RF Armed Forces into battle.
The critical factors in reducing the combat effectiveness of the corps are low intelligence support, poor support capabilities for the KKB (except for the 2nd AK), extremely low motivation of the fighters and poor training of command personnel, suppression of the initiative of commanders, and a clumsy and overly complicated decision-making mechanism.
At the same time, in the context of preparations by the Russian Federation for a possible offensive in the eastern direction, the 1st and 2nd Army Corps are quite capable of providing protection against possible counterattacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, completely releasing Russian personnel units for the offensive (according to the principle that units involved in defense do not take offensive action).
Russian controlled forces receive a steady supply of weapons and munitions directly from Russia. Trains are used to ship the military materiel into occupied Donbas. The munitions are imported by rail and then are used in daily and military activities, during military operations. The number of military cargoes had slightly decreased. This is primarily linked with the fact that there are no active military operations. In addition, the amount of munitions sufficient for carrying out combat operations for 14 days had been stored in the territory of the occupied areas at the first and the second army corps [1st (Donetsk) and 2nd (Luhansk) Army Corps of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation].
By 2017 the first army corps deployed in the city of Donetsk ("1 AC DPR") had a strength of five brigades, three separate regiments, eight separate battalions, two separate companies, five territorial defense battalions, more than 18,000 people.The so-called "1 AC DPR" had in service almost 350 tanks, 600 APCs, 250 atrillery pieces, and 130 MLR systems," he said. "The second army corps deployed in Luhansk ("2 AC LPR") consisted of four brigades, two separate regiments, six separate battalions, right territorial defense battalions, two separate companies. It had 155 tanks, 300 APCs, 110 artillery pieces, and 40 MLR systems.
Moscow estimated that some 3.5 to 4 million people lived in the region before the 2022 war began. The demographics of the DPR and LPR are not publicly reported. Based on Ukrainian demographics, about half the population under the age of 45 would be women, but the population over the age of 60 would be overwhelmingly female. Of the men, possibly 5% would within the 18 to 27 military age men bracket, or about 200,000 men. No more than 1,000,000 would be between 18 and 65 years of age.
Mere days before Russia launched its 24 February 2022 attack, when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers had been amassed on Ukraine's border, the self-proclaimed "People's Republics" beyond Kyiv's control launched major mobilization drives. Men between the ages of 18 and 55 were no longer permitted to leave. Paradoxically, several days earlier separatist authorities had urged all residents to evacuate the region and flee to Russia. In the first three days, reservists who once served in the Ukrainian army, were called up to visit the recruitment center. They were given no explanation for the order. One day later, separatist leader Denis Puschilin ordered yet another recruitment drive. This time, men aged 18 to 27 without military experience were called up to serve in the "people's militia." Some joined voluntarily, others were not drafted, some were taken from the streets, others only turned up after being ordered to.
By 24 February 2022 the purpose of the mass mobilization became clear: Russia launched its war on Ukraine. Russian and separatist-affiliated news media reported that volunteers had formed long lines formed outside recruitments centers eager to defend "Donbas independence." In reality, however, there were not enough volunteers. Separatist leader Puschilin thus called on companies in the separatist-controlled region to free up half of their male workforce of fighting age. This led to a veritable hunt for men in the region. They capture men in Luhansk, and in Donezk patrols arrest men in the respective age bracket. In mid-March, Puschilin ordered men above the age of 65 to be recruited to serve in special "interior ministry" units.
The mobilization drive had brought the regional economy to its knees. Donezk locals have reported that shorted-staffed shops have been forced to close, and that there had been a dearth of public transport drivers and craftsmen. Even male members of the Donezk philharmonic were sent off to fight — a grim reality that came to light only when it emerged that pianist Nikolay Zvyagintsev had been killed near Mariupol. "Most agricultural engineers, tractor drivers, machine operators and locksmiths were drafted; without them, timely and efficient spring seeding could be jeopardized," criticized even the Donezk "agriculture ministry."
Drafted men are sent straight to the frontline, without receiving any training. They are not combat-ready. At first there were volunteers but not anymore, as it is now known how they are treated and fed. The shortage would not be manpower, which could possibly equal that of the Russian invasion force, but of trained officers and NCOs to translate the sudden influx of troops into a meaningful fighting force.
Some attempted to avoid conscription. This, however, was difficult to pull off. Local authorities may declare someone unfit to serve, but then the same headquarters may come and get them anyway, claiming they did in fact sign of up a volunteer. There are no grantees, and there is an expectation of considerable bribes, typically thousands of US dollars.
