Russian Volunteers who’ve Fought in Ukraine Feel Betrayed, Putting New Pressure on the Kremlin to Declare Mobilization

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 11 – Alongside regular Russian army units, volunteers, first as part of the so-called army military reserve and then in battalions which have been formed in Russia’s federal subjects, are now beginning to return to their homes. They say they feel betrayed because they haven’t received the benefits they were promised.

            The volunteer veterans say they have been paid according to their rnaks, but they have not been given any of the additional privileges regular army soldiers have and that the families of their fellow volunteers who have died in Ukraine have received death benefits only half as large as regular army victims (idelreal.org/a/31980270.html).

            This is a serious matter, one that the IdelReal portal has documented in a 4,000-word article, because it will make it far more difficult for the regions to raise the volunteer units that the Kremlin has been counting on to allow it to avoid announcing a general mobilization, a move that would almost certainly provoke serious negative reaction.

            If what the portal found in the case of Tatarstan is true for Russia as a whole – and that is likely to be the case – then pressure on the Kremlin to move toward mobilization is going to grow, especially as the Russian army takes more losses and those losses are registered in communities across the Russian Federation.