Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide.
“The Nevsky Battalion is accepting volunteers.” This recruitment ad appeared on Russian social media in summer 2025 and is hardly a one-off. Swap out “Nevsky” for “Wolves,” “Saint George,” or any of three dozen similar formations and a pattern emerges: Russia is leaning ever harder on irregular forces to sustain its war on Ukraine.
Moscow’s use of irregular units has transformed its military into a hybrid war machine. They are institutionalized under state control and deployed at scale, making up as much as 40 percent of the Russian-commanded troops now arrayed against Ukraine. Often tasked with the deadliest and most politically deniable missions, this shadow force gives Moscow a flexible instrument for attritional warfare and covert mobilization. While they expand Moscow’s manpower without triggering domestic political backlash, they erode the professionalism of regular forces, creating exploitable weaknesses in combined-arms proficiency. Still, even after fighting stops, these formations will blur the lines between war and peace.
U.S. policymakers and defense planners should account for Russia’s irregular formations as a core component of its military capacity, one that complicates Western deterrence strategies, intelligence assessments, and legal frameworks. This requires adapting threat assessment, force posture, and interagency coordination to effectively counter threats by these forces. Policymakers should also prepare for postwar scenarios where these units are deployed abroad under “volunteer” banners and apply diplomatic and economic pressure on host nations to deny basing or commercial cover for ex-Ukraine irregulars. As the Trump administration engages Russia on a path toward a peace deal, identifying, disarming, and demobilizing these irregular formations should be among the key conditions of a ceasefire agreement.
What Are Russia’s Irregular Formations?
Russia’s irregular forces in Ukraine are layered and fluid. They range from private military companies — the group formerly known as Wagner and its state-controlled rival, Redut — to regional volunteer battalions such as Tatarstan’s Alga and Timer, far-right paramilitaries like Rusich, penal assault units such as Storm-Z, and the Ministry of Defense’s Combat Army Reserve. Many of these groups operate under the auspices of Russia’s Ministry of Defense or military intelligence. Their personnel typically serve on short-term civilian contracts creating a legal gray zone that blurs the line between formal and informal combatants.
This ecosystem traces back to Russia’s earlier interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Donbas, where covert operatives and militias operated alongside regular forces. During the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), the Russian government established multiple indigenous paramilitaries in Chechnya, which became the principle counter-insurgency force enabling the Kremlin to break the backbone of the Chechen insurgency. Russia relied on South Ossetian and Abkhaz militias, armed and trained by Russian forces, to help its regular army in Georgia during the August 2008 war. Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia used its proxy forces, including the Chechen formations, Wagner Group mercenaries, and the Russian intelligence-backed “People’s Militias” in Donbas to destabilize Ukraine and influence its politics.
Both Redut and Wagner can trace their lineage to an anti-terrorist training center created by the veterans of the Chechen wars and former special operations (spetsnaz) forces in 1998. Redut evolved into a military intelligence-affiliated mercenary platform after 2008, though it was soon eclipsed by Wagner. The Wagner Group served as an unofficial instrument of Russian power, conducting expeditionary operations in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa while staying formally outside the Ministry of Defense control, until Yevgeny Prigozhin’s 2023 rebellion led to its fragmentation with some commanders joining Redut.
Following the partial mobilization crisis of late 2022, the Kremin accelerated irregular recruitment. Redut expanded into a network of over 20 irregular formations, composed of veterans, convicts, migrant laborers, and members of regional militias, deployed across Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. At the same time, Russia’s 85 regions were tasked with raising their own volunteer battalions. By autumn 2022, between 30 and 50 regions had done so. These regionally branded units were funded through a mix of local budgets, private donors, and political sponsors. With poor standards in training and equipment, they were deployed in high-casualty roles as frontline fillers.
The Ministry of Defense Combat Army Reserve system — originally established in 2015 as a formal volunteer reserve — absorbed some militia units, including Cossack formations and private military companies. These units, though technically affiliated with the Ministry of Defense, often operate alongside territorial defense units and private military companies, navigating overlapping and sometimes conflicting logistics, funding streams, and chains of command. For example, Konvoy — known as the private militia of Sergey Askyonov, the head of temporarily annexed Crimea — operates as both a private military company and a formal Combat Army Reserve unit with fighters signing contracts under both frameworks. This dual status creates parallel chains of command and funding, balancing patronage and regional control with the Ministry of Defense paperwork and benefits. In Russia’s western and southwestern regions bordering Ukraine, Combat Army Reserve units BARS-Kursk and BARS-Belgorod have been framed as “territorial defense units.” While tasked with local defense, these formations also support expeditionary operations in Ukraine, operating under both regional authorities and the Ministry of Defense, splitting funding streams and complicating logistics and reporting.
To reinforce these efforts, Russian oligarchs, state enterprises, and members of parliament have sponsored their own combat units, creating parallel channels of force generation. Ultranationalist formations, such as the Rusich sabotage-reconnaissance battalion, went further by leveraging social media to crowdfund equipment, move funds through cryptocurrency, and tap into criminal networks. An openly fascist group composed of ideologically driven Russian and European volunteers, Rusich functions as a compact, special-forces-style company focused on sabotage and assault reconnaissance. Once linked to Wagner, it now operates outside the Redut structure and maintains autonomy.
Listen to this episode of The Insider featuring author Mariya Y. Omelicheva by becoming a War on the Rocks member here
Scale and Structure of the Russian Irregular Army
Reporting on Russian combat operations often fails to distinguish between regular and irregular forces. Yet, estimates suggest that irregular formations account for between one-third and one-half of Russia’s deployed ground forces in Ukraine, a staggering proportion by any modern standard. Redut alone fields more than 25,000 fighters across 27 rebranded battalions. While precise numbers for all regional volunteer fighters are unknown, Chechnya’s battalions are estimated to total at least 19,000 volunteers, with an additional 10,000 to 15,000 recruits from other regions deployed in 2022. Ukrainian intelligence assesses that between 140,000 to 180,000 convicts had been mobilized as of January 2025 through penal recruitment system. The Ministry of Defense Combat Army Reserve volunteer forces, initially estimated at 10,000 to 30,000 at the start of the war, numbered around 40,000 by mid-2025, according to the Institute for the Study of War. In addition, between 2023 and 2024, Moscow’s centralized recruitment apparatus brought in over 1,500 foreign mercenaries from 48 countries. By far the largest group, with the estimated 603 recruits, came from Nepal. The Central Asian republics, collectively, contributed several hundred fighters, often motivated by economic incentives or promises of citizenship. Several hundred Chinese nationals have fought for Russia as well, despite Beijing’s official denial.
The size of Russia’s active-duty military in or near Ukraine has fluctuated between 580,000 and 700,000 from 2024 to 2025, with Ukrainian military intelligence placing the figure at 620,000 in spring 2025. By this count, irregular forces make up roughly 39.25 percent of Russia’s deployed force.
Efforts to consolidate this fragmented force began in 2023 when Redut and the Union of Donbas Volunteers convened in occupied Mariupol to create the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps,” a loose military intelligence-linked framework uniting dozens of irregular formations. By 2025, this had evolved into Dobrokor (short for Dobrovolcheskii Korpus or “Volunteer Corps”), a state-sanctioned recruitment mechanism for irregulars. Dobrokor channels volunteers through military enlistment offices, granting them nominal legal status and promising social guarantees. The signup bonuses for a one-year contract range from $6,300 to $20,400 depending on the region. While the Ministry of Defense soldiers receive significantly higher signing bonuses, sometimes reaching up to $46,000, these contracts can be inaccessible or undesirable to many potential recruits. The financial incentives offered by Dobrokor are a major motivator for many volunteers, especially when viewed against prevailing wage norms in Russia. Yet, these recruits are often deployed in high-risk, attritional roles. Early in the war, formal Russian army forces were frequently deployed in human wave assaults, with casualty rates especially severe among regional battalions drawn from ethnic minority regions. These tactics led to plummeting morale in the army and public backlash. As the conflict evolved, irregular combatants, especially prisoners, have become the primary force used in frontal assaults aimed at exhausting Ukrainian defenses.
Although Dobrokor volunteers are technically the Ministry of Defense contractors, they have none of the rights, recognition, or protections afforded to career soldiers. Many volunteers are not integrated into regular Russian Armed Forces units. Their battalions comprise prisoners, veterans, ultra-nationalist fighters, and medically unfit recruits. Command structures of volunteer units are fragmented: Some answer to military intelligence and security services handlers, others to regional governors, and still other to battlefield commanders in occupied Ukraine. Early termination of contracts can lead to criminal prosecution and reports of nonpayment and logistical breakdowns are frequent. Therefore, Dobrokor institutionalizes a state-backed model for building an irregular army. It is a legal façade built on financial incentives, deniable leadership structures, and minimal political accountability.
A subset of irregular formations, especially those with extremist or ultra-nationalist affiliations, operate with relative autonomy and without formal ties to the Ministry of Defense or military intelligence, maintaining their own agendas inside the broader war effort. For instance, neo-Nazi group Rusich’s strategic goals broadly align with Russian imperialist ambitions to conquer large swaths of Ukraine. However, their vision of an ethno-Slavic state is compounded by the group’s militant ethos, which glorifies violence as a cleansing force and embraces brutality as a political and psychological weapon. In practice, Rusich has treated the war as a means to purge those it deems “degenerate” or “occupied” Slavs, an ideology that has fueled its notorious cruelty toward prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians. This emphasis on purification has also led to tensions with state authority, exemplified by Rusich’s refusal to comply with official orders to remove social media posts calling for the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Strategic and Operational Implications of Russia’s Irregular Force Model
Russia’s irregular formations are no longer stop-gaps — they are a central pillar of Moscow’s warfighting machine. This patchwork of paramilitaries, mercenaries, veterans, and convicts is ill-suited for decisive maneuver warfare or sustained campaigns without regular forces’ support. Yet, it provides the Kremlin with distinct strategic and operational advantages. Outsourcing warfighting to irregular formations enables Moscow to wage a prolonged war of attrition while insulating itself from domestic backlash. Disproportionally assigned to high-casualty, low-support frontline sectors, these units serve as expendable infantry, absorbing losses ahead of operations by regular or elite Russian forces. Their casualty rates rarely appear in the Ministry of Defense reporting, blunting public awareness of the true human loss. The result is a flexible, high-turnover force that bolsters operational capacity without triggering politically sensitive conscription or exhausting the regular military. Russia’s partial mobilization, announced in September 2022, triggered popular backlash and mass emigration, because it shattered the illusion of a limited “special military operation” (the Russian euphemism for the war), forcing ordinary citizens into the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose grip on power depends in part on maintaining high public approval, has since been reluctant to authorize another mobilization, wary of further undermining his domestic support.
Even if the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow, these structures would likely persist. Irregular formations are now embedded in Russia’s sprawling system of military and security services. In occupied territories, they can act as informal security forces or shadow governance bodies, suppressing dissent, intimidating civilians, and enforcing control without openly violating any peace agreement. Ultranationalist elements like Rusich or remnants of Wagner may continue operating as sanctioned spoilers or autonomous rogue actors, conducting sabotage, assassinations, and targeting attacks under the guise of local resistance. Just as Wagner and Redut fighters were re-routed from Ukraine to Syria, Libya, and Mali, today’s irregulars may become tomorrow’s mercenaries, quietly deployed under commercial, security services, or “volunteer” banners. Hardened in urban assault, sabotage, and drone warfare, these fighters offer the Kremlin a standing force for global hybrid operations.
But this hybrid model carries serious risks. It accelerates the erosion of professionalism within Russia’s regular armed forces, as most volunteers undergo abbreviated training and bypass the medical and psychological vetting required of regular recruits. Furthermore, irregular formations operate under conflicting loyalties. Some answer to military intelligence officers, others to regional powerbrokers like Ramzan Kadyrov or to private sponsors. Overlapping chains of command fuel friction, dilute discipline, and disrupt logistics. As the Wagner mutiny demonstrated, irregulars with ambiguous loyalties can quickly shift from asset to threat.
Russia’s irregular army is the product of unique circumstances: an authoritarian system that has cycled vast numbers of citizens through wars, mobilization constraints, and security-service patronage networks. While it has become a structural pillar of Moscow’s power projection, it cannot fully replace conventional forces. Russia’s own campaigns show that irregular formations function best as supplements to regular units. They also illustrate how states can fuse semi-formal networks, private actors, and digital platforms into hybrid force structures. Though not easily exportable to other contexts, this model provides a playbook for protracted or politically sensitive conflicts allowing governments to project power, sustain attrition, and operate in the gray space between war and peace.
Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Ph.D., is professor of strategy at the National Defense University. She is a leading authority on Russian foreign and security policy, Eurasian regional security, and the crime-terror nexus. Her scholarship spans multiple books and numerous articles that have shaped understanding of informal institutions, hybrid threats, and translational criminal-terrorist linkages in post-Soviet states. All opinions presented herein are her own and do not represent an official policy of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or the National Defense University.
Image: Midjourney
