Russia may have the distinct honor of being the only country in modern history to invade
another country only to be invaded back- by its own people. And not just once or twice,
but multiple times. While the short-lived Wagner rebellion may not have toppled Putin,
another group of battle-hardened Russians are determined to see the end of Putin's regime. This
is the Freedom of Russia Legion, and they have a pretty good chance of achieving their goals.
The Freedom of Russia Legion, or Free Russia Legion, was established shortly after Russia's
invasion of Ukraine. Many Russians were angered over Putin’s decision to initiate
his “Special Military Operation,” and while hundreds of thousands took to the streets,
they were quickly subjugated with harsh police actions. Now the simple act of holding a blank
piece of paper in public can land you in jail in Russia, and even children have been jailed
for making or drawing pro-Ukrainian statements. Wagner's rebellion has only made Putin tighten
his grip on the Russian people, with the Kremlin slow to roll back emergency powers
granted to its police forces, such as the right to enter any home at any time and search it.
This has many Russians too fearful to protest the
ongoing war, but some Russians are willing to do more than protest,
and believe that it's up to them to use deadly force to end Putin’s reign for good.
Offically, they are known as foreign volunteer legions, but multiple all-Russian,
or mostly-Russian groups have formed in the wake of Putin's invasion. The most well known of these
are the Russian Volunteers Corps, which harbors some disturbing far-right ideologies, and the
Freedom of Russia Legion, which seeks to restore true democracy to Putin's corrupt kleptocracy.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend though, and the two groups share similar aims- at least for now.
These however are not the only anti-government forces to spring up in the wake of the invasion
of Ukraine. Putin's foolish invasion has led to the rise of a patchwork group of
anti-government groups- some have moved out of the country to fight alongside Ukraine, but many
others have remained to fight from within. This includes everything from pro-democracy activists
to anarcho-communists, all pulling in the same direction: end Putin's reign and hamstring the
military's efforts in Ukraine. A wave of sabotage has taken place across the country since the start
of the war, with not a week going by without another mysterious fire or explosion rocking
Russian bridges, industrial sites, and even shopping centers. In just the first few months of
2023, Ukrainian intelligence reported nearly 100 acts of sabotage inside Russia, and you only need
to turn to Russian media for verification of these high profile attacks. While many have been only
moderate annoyances to the war effort, some have had serious consequences- such as explosions and
fires at industrial centers directly responsible for supplying the troops on the frontlines.
As explained by the Free Russia Legion itself, the effort to overthrow Putin and stop the war
is largely decentralized, with only an estimated 50% of the attacks being coordinated between the
various groups. Anti-government groups have largely carried out independent operations,
and Russian partisans as well as Ukrainian intelligence have been all too happy to aid
them by publicly publishing manuals on everything from guerilla tactics to the
fabrication of homemade explosives. There is nothing that the American CIA loves more
than to see Russian targets burn, and it's rumored that groups like the Free Russia
Legion and others have enjoyed support from America's most clandestine services.
It's exactly the decentralized nature of the ongoing wave of attacks that have made it so
difficult for Russia to stop them. The nation's internal security services have been scrambling
to identify groups it now labels as terrorists and neutralize them, but the ongoing campaign
has turned into a giant game of whack-a-mole for the Russian authorities. With few if any
links between groups, bashing one down doesn't do anything to stop another two popping up in its
place. It's guerilla warfare 101, and Russian resistance fighters have proven apt pupils.
The Free Russia Legion however is a cut above these domestic insurgent
groups. It's true numbers are unknown, but believed to be around 500 to 1,000 fighters,
and the group claims that it has thousands more in the training and equipping pipeline.
The has also been boasting about its equipment, showing off armored vehicles, man portable air
defense missiles, anti-tank weapons, and artillery- and they're not lying either,
with at least two tanks confirmed to be spear heading the assault of the Belgorod region in
late May by the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps. For many,
the question is how did this group of Russian partisans get their hands on American anti-tank
missiles and vehicles, to which the Free Russia Legion has jokingly answered that they bought
them from local department stores. This answer was in direct relation to Putin defending his
position that he had no links to the allegedly “independent” guerilla fighters who invaded Crimea
and helped secure it in 2014, equipped with a wide range of Russian military equipment.
The Free Russia Legion has largely been confined to fighting along the Bakhmut axis since August
of 2022, but towards the end of spring left the region to prepare for an infiltration into
Russia itself. Whether they planned this on their own or were influenced by Ukrainian or western
intelligence is unknown, but what is known is that Russia has left its borders with Ukraine
criminally undefended. That's because Russia is counting on Ukraine not wishing to anger
its western allies, who have repeatedly stated they do not support any military operations on
Russian soil itself and have given weapons with the stipulation that they not be used
inside Russia. The fear of course is that such attacks would provoke more imaginary escalation,
though there is significant reason to fear that a major incursion into
Russia by the Ukrainian military would result in Putin using nuclear weapons.
That's because it turns out that Russia is so dependent on Ukraine's
promise to not cross its borders that it's not defending it at all.
While groups had carried out cross-border raids before, the Freedom for Russia Legion and Russian
Volunteer Corps led a brazen assault into the Belgorod region in late May. The Kremlin was
caught completely unprepared for a fighting force made up of an estimated two or three
tanks and a dozen or so armored vehicles with more unarmored vehicles like American humvees.
By the time any response had been put together, the groups had taken multiple Russian villages,
prompting a mass panic in the region that even the Kremlin's tight control over Russia media couldn't
completely bottle up. The forces it did send to repel the attack were by all accounts absolutely
hammered by the far better trained and equipped Russian partisans, with multiple Russian soldiers
complaining publicly or over social media about being soundly defeated due to a lack of training,
equipment, or support. One soldier claimed his unit had as many as 80% casualties.
It's difficult to peer through the fog of war to verify any of this information,
but the fact that the two groups made off with a few Russian armored vehicles and stayed in
occupied territory for multiple days before retreating across the border again gives a
significant amount of legitimacy to the claims of Russian forces being roundly defeated. We also
know since Wagner's rebellion that Russia keeps very few combat-capable units near its own border,
the situation in Ukraine being so desperate that they've been forced to send nearly all available
manpower and vehicles into the eastern front. That leaves only territorial defense units and
conscripts to defend territory inside Russia itself, and they were no match
for well trained partisans like the Free Russia Legion and Russian Volunteer Corps.
The brazen attack and occupation of Belgorod achieved two goals for the Free Russia Legion.
The first was to directly support the Ukrainian counterattack. The group has publicly stated that
they have two ultimate goals: the first is to create a buffer zone on the Ukrainian border,
thus denying Russian forces the ability to launch long-range attacks into Ukraine
from territory that Ukraine is denied from attacking by its western allies.
Creating a buffer zone along the north of Ukraine would significantly cut into
Russia's ability to fire shorter range missiles at Ukrainian cities like Kyiv,
and have a dramatic impact on limiting civilian casualties. It would also allow Ukraine to move
more of its western air defenses near the front, where they are badly needed.
The group's second goal is to march on Moscow itself, but currently they lack
the numbers. Judging by Vladimir Vasylivich Putin practically begging Wagner on Russian
television to stop their march on Moscow though, the Free Russia Legion only needs a few thousand
more soldiers to achieve this goal. But getting those soldiers is what the invasion of Belgorod
was meant to help with, because the brazen multi-day occupation put the Legion on the map,
and proved that it's a capable fighting force. It also proved that inside his own borders,
Putin is far weaker than many Russians unhappy with his regime might realize.
Since the attack, the legion claims that recruitment has skyrocketed.
The attack on Belgorod was also meant to directly aid the Ukrainian counteroffensive currently in
its opening stages. As we've mentioned, Russia has basically left its borders with Ukraine
completely undefended, and this has allowed it to concentrate firepower along the front
inside Ukraine itself while leaving its own borders unprotected. The Russian Volunteer
Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion's attack into Belgorod though proved that the border was porous,
and there were some groups out there willing to fight inside Russian soil.
The public response to the occupation went a long ways towards changing priorities in the Kremlin,
and every soldier relocated from the front to guard the border is one less soldier that
Ukraine needs to face on the battlefield. However, Wagner's mutinous march on Moscow proved to Russia
just how weak it was internally- no one is yet sure why Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin truly
canceled his march on the capital, but it’s widely accepted that he had more than enough firepower
to succeed. In our own observations during the apparent coup, we noted that while there were
plenty of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles present amongst Wagner's columns, the heaviest
combat vehicles spotted along Moscow's defenses were armored personnel carriers- which would have
been easy prey to Wagner's tanks and IFVs. This makes it clear that Russia has a critical shortage
of heavy combat equipment and troops inside its own borders, and the nation today is being forced
to reckon with the need to pull equipment and troops off the frontline to secure the homeland.
The Free Russia Legion has promised even greater operations to come after its success in May,
and appears to be in a state of preparing for said operations thanks to an influx
of volunteers. For its part, Ukraine has worked to keep information on the Legion largely under
wraps to help protect the identities of its fighters and any family members back home from
reprisal by government authorities. However, the unit has been fighting since August in Ukraine,
even though Ukraine itself has been hesitant to give the group much credit given their Russian
origin. What Ukraine has revealed though is that it has deployed several hundred
Russian volunteers along the front, signifying a growing level of willingness for dissatisfied
Russians to enter Ukraine via third nations and take up arms against their comrades.
The motivations for the Russians fighting on the Ukrainian side vary,
but many were already living in Ukraine when the war started and saw the nation as their
adopted homeland. Not wishing to see Putin extend his tentacles into their new home,
they took up arms at the onset of the invasion and volunteered for service. However,
others crossed the border into Ukraine after fighting had begun in order to join
the growing foreign legion fighting inside the country. According to these volunteers,
joining the war effort isn't easy either. First they have to physically get there, and while in
the early stages of the war many could simply cross at various undefended locations, now they
seek third-party routes through neutral countries into Europe and then into western Ukraine.
Once inside, each volunteer undergoes several rounds of background checks
and polygraph tests. Ukraine is rightfully concerned about Russian
sabotage agents infiltrating the foreign volunteer groups fighting on its behalf,
and the wrong man in the right place could be catastrophic for Ukraine. Distrust runs very high,
and multiple attempts to penetrate the volunteer services by Russian agents have been confirmed.
What should be worrying Putin the most however is that a growing number of Russians fighting
on Ukraine's side are deserters from the Russian army itself. These soldiers are
often demoralized from fighting in a war that they didn't ask for and see no justification in,
and both the cruel and inept nature of the Russian military only fueled their desire
to get away at any cost- even if it meant fighting against their comrades. Sometimes
these deserters bring gifts with them too, and we have numerous confirmed reports of Russian
deserters joining Ukraine’s side alongside tanks and other armored vehicles they bring with them.
As Putin's disastrous war turns against him, the ranks of groups like the Freedom
of Russia Legion grow- and the Wagner rebellion proved just how many Russian citizens are very
willing to support a coup against Vladimir Putin's dictatorship. The next operation by
the Free Russia Legion may just be the one that ends the war, by ending Putin himself.
Now go check out Top General Reveals Why Russia Failed In Bakhmut,
or click this other video instead.