Dissecting structure behind Russia's "shadow" troops in Ukraine Article by War on the Rocks

Moscow’s reliance on irregular forces has turned its military into a hybrid war apparatus. These formations are now institutionalized under state oversight and deployed on a massive scale, reportedly making up nearly 40 percent of Russian-commanded troops fighting in Ukraine. Frequently assigned to the most lethal and politically deniable missions, this shadow army offers Moscow a flexible tool for attritional warfare and covert mobilization.

“The Nevsky Battalion is accepting volunteers.” This message appeared on Russian social media in summer 2025 — and it was not unique. Replace “Nevsky” (named after Russian Prince Aleksandr Nevskiy, beloved and revered in Russian society for his military achievements like defeating Swedish and German troops) with “Wolves,” “Saint George,” or dozens of other names, and a clear pattern emerges: Russia is increasingly leaning on private military formations to sustain its war effort.

While such units expand Moscow’s manpower without triggering domestic backlash, they erode the professionalism of regular troops, creating vulnerabilities in combined-arms coordination. Still, even after hostilities end, an article recently published by War on the Rocks warns that these forces will continue to blur the line between war and peace in Russian society.

The article notes that media coverage of Russian operations often fails to distinguish between regular and irregular troops. Yet estimates suggest that these formations make up between one-third and one-half of Russia’s deployed ground forces in Ukraine — an extraordinary share by modern standards. Redut alone, which is believed to be run by intelligence officers of the Russian Defense Ministry, reportedly fields more than 25,000 fighters spread across 27 rebranded battalions, making it the largest private military group in Russia.

As the Trump administration engages Moscow in peace talks, the author argues that dismantling and demobilizing these irregular units must be a key condition of any ceasefire agreement.

Who are Russia’s irregular formations?

The article describes Russia’s irregular units as layered and highly adaptable. They include private military companies — such as the group formerly known as Wagner and its state-backed competitor, Redut — as well as regional volunteer battalions like Tatarstan’s Alga and Timer, far-right paramilitary outfits such as Rusich, penal assault units like Storm-Z, and the Ministry of Defence’s Combat Army Reserve.

"Many of these groups operate under the auspices of Russia’s Ministry of Defence or military intelligence. Their personnel typically serve on short-term civilian contracts creating a legal grey zone that blurs the line between formal and informal combatants," the article states.

This network of forces, according to the piece, traces its roots to Russia’s earlier interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Donbas, where covert operatives fought alongside regular troops. During the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), Moscow created indigenous paramilitary units that became a decisive counterinsurgency tool, breaking the backbone of the Chechen rebellion.

The report recalls how Russian-backed militias in South Ossetia and Abkhazia fought alongside regular units during the 2008 war in Georgia. Prior to the assault on Ukraine, Russia had already relied on proxy forces, including Chechen units, Wagner mercenaries, and intelligence-linked “People’s Militias” in Donbas, to destabilize Kyiv and influence its politics.

Both Redut and Wagner trace their origins to an anti-terror training center founded by Chechen war veterans and former spetsnaz operatives in 1998. Redut became a GRU-linked mercenary platform after 2008, but Wagner soon overshadowed it.

Wagner, which gained international notoriety for its role in the initial phases of the war in Ukraine and expeditionary campaigns in Syria and Africa, operated outside formal Ministry of Defense control until its leader's, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s dramatic June 2023 mutiny — the “March on Moscow” — which ended abruptly. Two months later, Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash, splintering Wagner and sending many of its commanders into Redut’s ranks.

Private troops rise as conscription falters

After the partial mobilization crisis in late 2022, the Kremlin ramped up irregular recruitment. Redut evolved into a sprawling network of over 20 formations, drawing from veterans, convicts, migrant workers, and regional militias deployed along the fiercest sectors of the frontline in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions.

As cited by the article, Ukrainian intelligence estimates that between 140,000 and 180,000 convicts had been mobilized via the Russian penal recruitment system by January 2025.

Russia's Combat Army Reserve (BARS), originally created in 2015 as a formal volunteer system, absorbed several militia formations, including Cossack units and private contractors. These forces often fight alongside territorial defence battalions and PMCs, operating within overlapping chains of command, funding streams, and logistics structures.

The piece highlights the Konvoy group, described as the private militia of the head of the annexed Crimean peninsula, Sergey Aksyonov. Konvoy functions both as a private company and as a formal Combat Army Reserve unit, with fighters signing dual contracts — one under Aksyonov’s patronage, another under the Ministry of Defence — creating parallel hierarchies.

In Russia’s western border regions, BARS units such as BARS-Kursk and BARS-Belgorod have been framed as “territorial defence forces” amid repeated Ukrainian strikes. Though nominally defensive, the article asserts that these formations also conduct operations in Ukraine, splitting authority between regional leaders and the military.

"To reinforce these efforts, Russian oligarchs, state enterprises, and members of parliament have sponsored their own combat units, creating parallel channels of force generation. Ultranationalist formations, such as the Rusich sabotage-reconnaissance battalion, went further by leveraging social media to crowdfund equipment, move funds through cryptocurrency, and tap into criminal networks. An openly fascist group composed of ideologically driven Russian and European volunteers, Rusich functions as a compact, special-forces-style company focused on sabotage and assault reconnaissance. Once linked to Wagner, it now operates outside the Redut structure and maintains autonomy," the article reports.

While irregular forces now form a key pillar of Russia’s war strategy, the War on the Rocks piece argues that they cannot fully substitute for conventional armies. At the same time, it acknowledges that such model offers a template for drawn-out or politically sensitive conflicts, enabling the Kremlin to project power, sustain attrition, and operate in the grey zone between war and peace.

By Nazrin Sadigova