#Putin’s October 19 decrees on martial law made an unusual reference to “territorial defense.” #Russia has no history of Territorial Defense Forces. What might Putin intend? Oddly, perhaps the #Ukraine-ization of the Russian armed forces. 🧵from @TheStudyofWar's Wednesday report. 
2/ Putin ordered local authorities to create a “territorial defense headquarters” in 4 occupied Ukrainian oblasts & empowered governors to undertake unspecified “territorial defense activities” in territories that border or are near #Ukraine. His orders were intentionally vague.
3/ However, this preparation likely serves at least two purposes: creating a legal framework for the forcible mobilization of Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied territories, & (at least experimenting with) a new kind of Russian military force.
4/ #Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces played a critical role in the defense of Kyiv and the recapture of other key Ukrainian cities. They are composed of a core of veterans and part-time reservists but can be built out by civilian volunteers in wartime.
5/ Russian occupation authorities may draw on that model to forcibly conscript Ukrainian civilians, as @TheStudyofWar team has repeatedly warned.
6/ That kind of decentralized military force has never appealed to #Russia though–not the Tsars, not the Soviets, and not #Putin. They all sought centralized control of their armed forces to prevent localized rebellions.
7/ But #Russia’s disastrous invasion of #Ukraine has allowed for the creation of some decentralized power centers –forces like the #Wagner Group and #Kadyrov’s Chechen battalions. And Ukraine’s model is demonstrably more effective than whatever Russian forces are doing.
8/ #Wagner financier #Prigozhin has his own idea of how this should go: a “people’s militia,” or narodnoe opolcheniye. The people’s militia has a long history in Russia, dating back to the Russo-Polish wars of the early 1600s.
9/ The people’s militia is basically an irregular/untrained force that fights behind the frontlines or beside a conventional army. (The team doesn’t love this translation–it could also be translated as “national popular army” or “home guard” but w/o the organization those imply).
10/ Most recently, the Soviet Union called up dozens of narodnoe opolcheniye divisions to fight alongside the Red Army in the second world war.
11/ So when #Prigozhin announced this week that he sent a senior #Wagner commander to train a narodnoe opolcheniye in #Belgorod Oblast two weeks ago, we paid attention.
12/ #Prigozhin may be attempting to draw upon the historical notion of a people’s militia fighting a great patriotic war to reinvigorate Russian enthusiasm for the invasion of #Ukraine, a notion that may appeal to the historically-minded #Putin.
13/ However, #Prigozhin’s proposed #Belgorod People’s Militia is not apparently similar to the more structured Territorial Defense Forces and uses different language, suggesting at least rhetorical tension between the #Kremlin’s and Prigozhin’s visions. isw.pub/RusCampaignOct…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
