Who Fights for Governments: Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond
By (Author) Dr Huseyn Aliyev
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
26th June 2025
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Political science and theory
Cold wars and proxy conflicts
Military and defence strategy
Hardback
264
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Exploring why, when and under which circumstances individuals decide to take up arms mobilizing for pro-government militias, Huseyn Aliyev draws on insights from long-standing ethnographic fieldwork among former and active members of Ukraines pro-government volunteer battalions, and an original database of militias obituaries, to offer this complex and in-depth explanation of the phenomenon of pro-government mobilization. Revealing the patterns and dynamics of individual mobilization into pro-government militias, this study is critical to understanding how the Ukrainian nation succeeded in repelling Russian aggression both in 2014-15 and in 2022, but also essential to explaining how and why hundreds of pro-government militias emerge in the context of armed conflicts in different parts of the world.
Huseyn Aliyev is a Lecturer of Central & East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.