Moscow Gives Heads of All Federal Subjects Right to Form Regional Detachments, Unwittingly Creating Participants for a Future Russian Civil War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – The Russian government supports a proposal before the Duma to allow the heads of all federal subjects to create their own regional detachments to deal with extraordinary circumstances, thus expanding a right it had earlier given to regions in and adjoining Ukraine and large corporations.

            The new measure is intended to allow regions to deal with extraordinary circumstances both in the event of military conflict and during peacetime, but it has the potential to give regions and republics the kind of armed forces that could be deployed in the event Russia descends into a civil war.

            The Russian government on September 16 approved amendments to laws governing military units that have been proposed by Andrey Kartapolov, an army lieutenant general who is a member of the ruling United Russia Party and heads the Duma’s defense committee (kommersant.ru/doc/7159852).

            Presumably Moscow intends that these units will be trained and armed by the Russian military so as to ensure central control. But the increasingly independent stance of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, shows that units created by a regional leader are more likely to be loyal to him rather than to Moscow.

            At present, that may not matter. But if Russia does have a civil war at the end of Putin’s reign or after his exit from the scene, such units could play a major role in such a conflict. Indeed, some in the regions have indirectly discussed that possibility (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/ukrainian-drone-attack-on-tatarstan.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/06/if-regions-want-moscow-to-meet-their.html).

            According to The Barents Observer, veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine may be the first to be recruited; and it notes this is already happening in Murmansk where the right-wing Russian Community is behind the effort(thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2024/09/lawmakers-green-light-governors-establishment-regional-militias and https://vk.com/wall-222118912_1779).

            Some may assume that drawing on veterans of the Ukrainian war will ensure that these groups will be loyal to the center, but the experience of the Prigozhin revolt shows that may not be the case. And the involvement of the Russian-nationalist Russian Community means they could become something like the German Freikorps groups at the end of World War I.

            On this increasingly active and dangerous group and what it is already doing in the North Caucasus already, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/clashes-between-ethnic-diasporas-and.html.