ABSTRACT
It is a largely unknown or underappreciated fact that the Russians, present on both sides, constitute the biggest group of foreign fighters in the war in Ukraine. Thus, a monograph on the conflict's Western foreign fighters should feature a chapter devoted to such fighters, and not the presence of the Russian armed forces in the conflict zone or the Russian mercenaries deployed there as members of different security companies. This chapter will discuss the Russian volunteer mobilization for the war in general, and its far- right component in particular. It will brought to light the little known fact that the Russian foreign fighter mobilization for the war was both a bottom-up effort run by seemingly independent organizations but their actions were overseen, sanctioned and assisted by the state which allowed for this mobilization and then actively involved itself in directing and organizing it. What is more, the chapter will also discuss how the Russian far-right forces effectively split over the war in Ukraine and how their members ended up fighting each other while in Donbas. This under researched development related to a vibrant and violent far-right milieu, which saw its fortunes decline in the second decade of the twenty-first century, provides a fascinating context to the Western mobilizations for the conflict, and a case study in how a belligerent deniably mobilizes its own citizens to join a seemingly foreign war.
