﻿What if there are more Russians who want to overthrow Putin than he thinks? What if
those Russians took up arms against him? Guess what? Much of this is already happening,
and these groups of dissident Russian partisans are now launching raids on the territory of
their own country. But who are these anti-Putin Russians and what do they mean for the war?
Here’s what you need to know about the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer corps,
two groups of Russian dissidents who are fighting against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Let’s get started. When Vladimir Putin launched his
full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, most international observers expected the
fight to be a mostly defensive war on the part of Ukraine and that hostilities would be confined to
Ukrainian soil. Putin and his inner circle felt the same way, sure in their ability to win the war
rapidly. They believed that attacks on Russian territory were an inconceivable possibility.
But Ukraine proved its deep offensive capability as early as April of that year when the Moskva,
the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, mysteriously sank. Since then, Ukraine has
demonstrated a capability to reach assets deep into Russian-controlled areas, such as the attack
on the Crimean Bridge in the fall of 2022 and several missile and drone strikes into Russia
itself. Now, attacks on the Russian homeland are scaling up as the war that Putin started
comes more and more into his own territory. At the beginning of the war, Ukraine put out a
call for foreign fighters to bear arms against the invaders alongside its native soldiers. Thousands
of people from all over the world took up the offer, but perhaps most surprising were the
Russians who defected from their own country in order to fight on the side of Ukraine. To them,
the basic reason was simple: Vladimir Putin and his regime in the Kremlin are not the same as
Russia itself, and as long as the former remains in power, the latter will suffer,
with this war being the primary piece of evidence. Two groups of fighters with this
assumption in mind joined the fight in Ukraine and are cooperating with the Ukrainian military. They
are known as the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, respectively.
Although the details are secret, the Freedom of Russia legion’s spokesman,
who goes by the name “Caesar,” claims that the group has “several hundred” members, all of them
being Russians who seek the downfall of the Putin regime. However, “Caesar” may be understating the
number of personnel that the Legion has to call upon in order to deceive the enemy. The true
number of soldiers in this fighting force may be higher and stretch into the thousands. The Legion
fights under a blue, white, and blue flag which it calls the “flag of free Russia.” The group
paints an “L” on its vehicles, for liberty, in opposition to the Russian army’s letter “Z.” The
purported political representative of the group is Ilya Ponomarev, a Russian politician in exile
who says the group’s goal is to liberate Russia from Putinism. Whether it has any goals beyond the
removal of Putin from power remains unclear. Numbers are harder to come by for the Russian
Volunteer Corps, which, unlike the Legion, has neo-Nazi leanings. The leader of this group is
a man named Denis Kapustin or Denis Nikitin. He and his group’s members have a goal to create
an ethnostate composed of Russians, something they ironically believed Ukraine was doing a better job
of than their own homeland. The Russian Volunteer Corps also has links to the controversial Azov
Assault Brigade, more commonly known as the Azov Battalion, a group founded in Ukraine in 2014 that
has also been controversial for its supposedly neo-Nazi ideological leanings. As a result,
the existence of the Russian Volunteer Corps within Ukraine’s foreign volunteer units is
something of a problem for Ukraine and its Western allies. Its extremist political leanings provide
assistance to the Kremlin’s propaganda that the full-scale war was launched to “demilitarize and
de-Nazify” Ukraine. Unfortunately, war more often than not presents no choice but to make alliances
of convenience. Ukraine needs all the help it can get and as we will soon see, the Russian
Volunteer Corps has proven a capable fighting force useful for the Ukrainian cause.
Either way, since the appearance of these units alongside the Ukrainian ranks,
the number of strange incidents behind the Russian border has grown. For example,
arson attacks on Russian territory have increased. In December 2022, there was a large fire in the
Moscow region which Russian officials said had been set deliberately. Over 100 arson attacks
have occurred in Russia since the formation of the Freedom of Russia Legion, ones which are
different from the burning of recruitment centers from disgruntled draftees. Unlike those incidents,
these attacks have occurred on higher profile targets. They include burnings of chemical plants,
the home of a governor, fuel depots, military bases, government buildings such as the FSB
building and financial bureaus, the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, the Defense Ministry’s
headquarters, and critical businesses such as the manufacturer for the Russian military’s
night vision equipment. Such targeted attacks suggest that Ukrainian intelligence was in
on the operations, possibly with the help of higher-ups in the Russian regime – inside jobs,
if you will. These two groups may be cooperating with the Legion and Volunteer Corps in the conduct
of such attacks, but obviously the details are secret and we cannot know for sure.
What we do know is that both the Legion and the Volunteer Corps have been hardened by battle in
Ukraine, including in the Battle for the city of Bakhmut, which Russia claimed to fully capture
on May 21st, 2023 after nine months of brutal, World War I-style fighting. Putin and his regime
did not have long to celebrate the “triumph,” though, as the Kremlin could hardly expect the
surprise that would come on its doorstep the next day at the hands of these two groups. They would
take the war to Russian soil in a much more direct way than anything seen before.
Before discussing the raid in May, though, a little elaboration is worthwhile. The Belgorod
raid was not the first time that these two groups had demonstrated an ability to conduct
operations on Russian soil. Earlier in 2023, they were building experience in
small-scale missions across the border. The Volunteer Corps had made a stir in
Russian territory in early March 2023, when it launched an operation in Bryansk Oblast. There,
an attack force that Russia accused of coming from Ukraine took several civilians hostage and
destroyed a car. The Russia Volunteer Corps did not confirm or deny this, but adamantly insisted
they were not Ukrainians and that their attack demonstrated the internal weakness of the Putin
regime. The Volunteer Corps then invited Russians at home to free themselves from Putin’s regime
before withdrawing back across the border. The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine denied
that the March attack ever took place. It claimed that any accusations of its
existence were a propaganda operation on behalf of the “aggressor country.”
The cross-border attacks escalated dramatically on May 22nd, 2023 with a joint operation into
Russian territory between the Legion and the Volunteer Corps. The operation involved
the use of at least one tank and several armored vehicles. The column first stormed past a Russian
border checkpoint into Belgorod Oblast and drove toward the border settlements. Soon afterward,
the two groups then claimed that they had liberated several towns, including Kozinka
and Graivoron, the capital of the district. Once the Legion and Volunteer Corps had penetrated
into Russian territory and captured the towns, the groups announced they were
creating a demilitarized zone. Further, they declared they would continue their operations
with one objective in mind: “the liberation of all of Russia from Putin’s dictates and
the end of the criminal war.” Unlike the raid in early March,
this was a serious, sustained operation that lasted for two days with boots on the ground
behind the Russian border. The local government announced
civilian evacuations, with the Governor of Belgorod Oblast, Vyacheslav Gladkov,
saying that at least one civilian woman born in 1941 had died during the evacuation measures.
The Governor directly blamed Ukraine for the raid, accusing the fighters involved
in it of being a “reconnaissance and sabotage group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
According to the governor, the cross-border raid also included mortar strikes on the village of
Kozinka and a fire in a hay warehouse in a town called Gora-Podol. Additionally,
he said that a fragment of a missile had fallen into the garden of a house
located in the village of Antonovka. In addition to occupying several towns near
the border, the Legion and Volunteer Corps were heading straight for the Belgorod-22 facility,
a base which stores some of Russia’s nuclear weapons. The Russians threw all hands on deck
to remove these weapons from the premises as the most advanced units from the invading force came
within a few miles of the base. No nuclear weapons were unaccounted for, but the incident was a close
call, and ironically had it succeeded, the United States may have had to get involved on behalf of
the Russians to ensure that such weapons of mass destruction did not fall into the hands of unknown
actors. Given the Volunteer Corps’ neo-Nazi sympathies, it could have been particularly
damaging if this group were to secure the leverage that comes from holding nuclear weapons.
After the initial chaos and confusion, Russia launched a counterattack which it called a
“counter-terrorist operation.” The distinction was important, as it allowed local leaders
to more tightly regulate the communications and movement of civilians in the area. Russia claimed
that its counterattack killed 70 enemy fighters, which it says were Ukrainian and not Russian,
since according to the Kremlin, neither the Legion nor the Volunteer Corps exist
despite their official designation as terror groups by the Supreme Court of Russia.
At the end of the aforementioned two days, the Legion and Volunteer Corps retreated back behind
the Ukrainian border, after downing at least one of the helicopters the Russians used in their
counter raid. Their account of losses was vastly different from the Russian casualty figures. Over
the course of the entire two-day raid, the Legion claims it suffered two fatalities with 10 wounded,
while the Volunteer Corps says it suffered no fatalities and two wounded. The groups also
claim to have captured at least one Russian armored vehicle and taken several prisoners
from their enemy’s counterattack force. At the start of June, the Legion and Volunteer
Corps announced they were launching another attack into Russian territory. The Legion put out the
following statement: “We, the Freedom of Russia Legion, are now near the border of our homeland,
very soon we will advance again on the territory of Russia to bring freedom,
peace, and tranquility. Graivoron is only the beginning.”
According to Russian authorities, there was shelling and fighting throughout the night, with
civilians in the area being asked to not leave their homes and remain calm. The local authorities
insisted that “there is no breakthrough of the Armed Forces [of Ukraine].”
On June 5th, 2022, the Legion and Volunteer Corps made yet another announcement. The groups claimed
that they had killed a colonel in the Russian army, Andrey Stesev, in the territory of Belgorod
Oblast. According to their statement: “He died in battle, like an officer with a weapon in
his hands, but we must admit that these hands are covered up to the elbows in blood. On his orders,
he and his subordinates had systematically terrorized the population of Belgorod
Oblast and violated their rights and freedoms. Earlier, Stesev killed civilians in Chechnya,
Yugoslavia, Abkhazia and Ukraine.” Video later surfaced confirming these boasts.
Also at the start of June, the Legion and Volunteer Corps announced that they had captured
Russian prisoners in Belgorod Oblast and wanted to meet with the governor. They offered to free
the prisoners if the governor met with them “to discuss the current situation in the region and,
most importantly, to talk about its future and the future of Russia in general.” The
proposed meeting place was the church in Novaya Tavolzhanka. They did not say whether these were
the prisoners captured on the raid at the end of May, new ones taken from the supposed second
wave of fighting, or another operation. And the role of these groups in the conflict
is far from over. On June 8th, 2023, Newsweek reported that Russian soldiers fighting near
the border town of Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast, had complained about the Legion on the “Pskov
Province” Telegram channel. They said “I would like to see the story of our regiment
being slaughtered in the Shebekino and Graivoron directions and somehow put the matter to rest.”
The soldiers added that they were under constant bombardment by enemy artillery and that “ordinary
soldiers” and their relatives were being killed. They also complained about poor leadership in
their army and a lack of reinforcements. The unit’s message concluded: “We are ready to
defend our homeland, but with proper supplies and to be taken prisoner without arms or with
no possibility to counteract is not defending the homeland. On behalf of the 1009th regiment
we ask you to look into this serious problem and make decisions as soon as possible.”
The unit that made these complaints is reportedly a conscript one, made up of soldiers mobilized in
Putin’s partial draft from last fall. Unverified social media videos published around the same
time showed Russian units in Belgorod Oblast in retreat, claiming that they were being “mowed
down” and needed reinforcements. All of these operations would be in line
with a statement made by Alexei Baranovsky, another of the Legion’s political officials.
He said that “the minimum plan is to create a demilitarized zone on the borders with Ukraine,
so that Putinists cannot fire ground equipment at the territory of Ukraine from here.” This
would be, he said, a preparation for the group’s main objective: “a swift march on Moscow.”
The latter claim is far closer to hyperbole than reality, but the Legion and Volunteer Corps look
set to become even more important as the war enters its next phase after the Battle of Bakhmut.
Every war has irregular forces which can upset the balance of power disproportionally to their size.
The Legion and Volunteer Corps have demonstrated that ability. For example, during the May raid
on Belgorod, the total invasion force from both anti-Putin groups amounted to less than 100 men,
and yet it caused chaos and panic within the Russian ranks far in disproportion to its size.
It was by any objective criteria a spectacular success and another embarrassment for Russia,
proving how vulnerable its homeland really is to a well-coordinated attack. Further raids
are likely. Propaganda about future raids to deceive the Russian war machine are even more
likely. Ukrainian intelligence certainly had a part to play in the Belgorod raid and will be
eager to assist in further raids and deception efforts as part of a much grander design.
Many military observers believe that the attack into Russia at the end of May was
part of a shaping operation for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has supposedly been
coming for months. If Russia needs to divert more forces to protect its own territory,
it will have less on hand in Ukraine to defend the land it now holds there. Causing chaos within the
Russian homeland is also a great way to divert the Kremlin’s attention from what Ukraine is
planning to do on the front, as it must defend its territory and people or risk losing even more face
with a Russian public that has already been under economic stress and which has grown wary after the
botched mobilization in the fall of 2022. Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, substantial
operations on Russian soil have been a taboo since the war began, because their allies in the West
are not keen to let them undertake such efforts. The United States and other NATO countries have
pressured Ukraine to not bring the war to Russian soil, fearing an escalation of the conflict. Such
fears are also why the West has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with long range offensive weapons,
such as certain missiles for HIMARS and advanced fighter jets. Until the start of 2023,
the West was reluctant to provide Ukraine with advanced battle tanks for similar reasons.
This taboo makes sense from the West’s perspective. NATO and other like-minded
countries do not intend to destabilize or overthrow the Putin regime in Moscow,
despite all the Russian propaganda. Rather, their goal is to contain Russian influence
by restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and keeping Kyiv as independent as possible
from Moscow. Both goals will be easier to achieve if Ukraine joins NATO after the war,
which according to its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in April 2023, is an outcome that
all participating countries in NATO have agreed upon. During the war itself, however,
NATO and Ukraine’s interests are not entirely in alignment. This makes sense because for NATO,
there are worse things in the world than Vladimir Putin and his regime. A destabilized Russia,
with its thousands of nuclear weapons, would be a much bigger problem for the West than
even the current invasion of Ukraine. Although this is a remote possibility,
it is too terrible to consider. The raid that came so close to the Belgorod-22 nuclear storage
facility must have strengthened those convictions in the minds of Western leaders. Western goals
are not achieved by bringing the fight to Russia, which they want defeated in Ukraine
but politically stable in its homeland. This divergence of interests has allowed the
Russians to concentrate their military resources on invading and annexing territory in Ukraine.
The lack of ability to retaliate on Russian soil means that Putin and his regime can more
easily carry out their operations without fear of maximum retaliation. Ukraine has been in a bind,
though, because without Western aid, it would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the Russian
military, so it has had no choice but to accede to the wishes of its allies. As a result,
Ukraine’s offensive ability has been limited, despite the successes in the
Kharkhiv and Kherson counteroffensives in the late summer and fall of 2022.
The Legion and Volunteer Corps therefore give Ukraine more options. Their existence allows the
Ukrainian high command to carry out more gray zone and asymmetrical operations. The raid into Russian
territory was not a full scale invasion but it did tie down resources and cause panic in the Russian
high command. More operations like it, potentially with even more men and armor, are therefore likely
as the war moves into its next phase. At the very least, the threat of further attacks into
Russian territory will keep the Kremlin guessing and on its toes, diverting attention from the
Ukrainian high command’s true strategy. The Legion and Volunteer Corps may just prove
to be one more valuable tool in Ukraine’s arsenal if they can be fully unleashed in
this capacity. With the West tacitly accepting the idea of Russians fighting against Putin’s
regime in limited operations on Russian soil, don’t be surprised to see further action over
the border to coincide with the much-anticipated 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. While all eyes
are focusing on Donbas and Zaporizhzhia as the likeliest locations for Ukraine’s next move,
bolder attacks into Russian territory in the near future might just be even less surprising.
But what do you think? Are these Russian partisan groups helping to tip the scale
in the Russo-Ukrainian war and aid in Ukraine’s victory over Putin’s aggression? Let us know in
the comments and don’t forget to subscribe for more military analysis from military experts.