A nation-in-the-making, in arms: control of force, strategy and the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions

Abstract

At the core of waging war and strategy is the creation, control and use of force. This article investigates the volunteer battalions that mobilized in Ukraine during the spring of 2014. It contextualizes the volunteer phenomenon and focuses on the state strategies to establish control over these militias. As ambiguous entities arising from a situation characterized by rapid social change-revolution and war-the volunteer battalions threatened existing hierarchies and questioned state authority. The situation was exacerbated by the war, which deviated from the expectations of Ukrainian combatants and Western military observers alike. The state nevertheless enjoyed a modicum of success in reining in the militias through four strategies of undermining, co-option, incorporation and coercion. While predominantly integrated into a more rigid category of paramilitary forces, the volunteers continue to play a role in both the Ukrainian society and security sector to the unforeseeable future. Introduction: the nation that saved the state The months following November 2013 resulted in a series of monumental events for the Ukrainian state and nation. The first was the Maidan revolution-later officially named the Revolution of Dignity-which after more than a hundred dead and many more injured led to the ousting of the President Viktor Yanukovych on 22nd of February. In the ensuing breakdown of state authority and legitimacy, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and stoked separatism in Eastern Ukraine. The state paralysis and failure to prevent the annexation encouraged volunteer mobilization to protect Ukrainian sovereignty. These volunteers ensured that the state would not sit idle this time around. In a sense, Ukraine witnessed a nation-in-the-making during a state-in-breaking in the form of the self-mobilization of the so-called volunteer battalions. This article investigates these volunteers, and the ways the state subsequently sought to control them. The narrative that the nation in the form of volunteer battalions saved the state remains common in Ukraine. As Azov News-the media arm of this volunteer formation turned into

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“…This required strategy with both an internal and external dimension: because the volunteers posed a potential threat to the elites, they had to be dealt with as domestic political actors, and potentially competing ones. At the same time, controlling the volunteer battalions was a prerequisite for executing strategy against the ever more openly Russian-supported separatism (Käihkö 2018a). Even though ambiguity served a strategic purpose and was in any case unavoidable in the short term, the resulting uncertainty raised questions over whether the volunteer battalions were worth the risk they posed.…”

“…If the volunteer battalions are considered as "a nation-in-themaking, in arms" (Käihkö 2018a), then it is necessary to recognize that this nation was one of many in Ukraine. The war in Donbas did not match Lederer's description of the First World War as a war of people (Volkskrieg), where states succeeded in full mobilization, and when they successfully claimed to do so in defense of society.…”

“…At the same time, the volunteers' self-identification as patriots made them vulnerable to the state's demands of loyalty (Levi 1997, 42-43). This gave rise to four ways to establish control over force: exhaustion, co-option, incorporation, and -if the previous failed -coercion (Käihkö 2018a).…”