In early November, the Civil Council, which includes public figures from nine Russian regions, announced the creation of a mobilization center for Russians who want to fight on the side of Ukraine. Organizers said they were already raising funds for 200 volunteers. One of the representatives of the council, Denis Sokolov, told The Insider about the stages of training volunteers and how Ukrainian special services will check them. A source at the GUR confirmed to The Insider that such work is underway.
It took us several months to agree with the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the recruitment of Russians, and I admire the tenacity of our partners in Ukraine, who were not afraid of failure and responsibility. Isa Akaev, who since 2014 led the “Crimea” battalion, has played a big role, today it has outgrown the scale of the regiment. Many people from the North Caucasus and the Volga region historically fought in this Crimean Tatar unit – this was our bridge of trust.
The creation of a separate unit within the Armed Forces of Ukraine – the Russian Volunteer Corps – helped a lot. His fighters have been in Ukraine since 2014, with their blood they have earned the right to their own flag. Now the guys are ready to accept our volunteers into their ranks. And, of course, they are waiting for trained and motivated recruits, and not an analogue of Russian forced "mobiles".
For volunteers from national regions, special units already exist or will be created in a similar legal form.
Our partners from the Ukrainian military command have always understood that for the security of Ukraine after the victory in the war, it is important what Russia will be like. And the Russians who are ready to fight Putin are not only brothers in arms today, but also future understandable political partners. This helped.
To top it off, the SBU agreed to offer an effective system for checking our volunteers immediately before entering the troops.
After submitting the questionnaire in a safe way for the recruit himself, our employee contacts the candidate, verifying for him his affiliation to the mobilization center and the Civil Council and verifying the candidate for us. Next – a four-stroke check, it does not take much time, but is quite laborious. At this point, even I do not have access to the lists of volunteers. Those who passed the test are then checked by the SBU.
A separate important part of filtering is testing for motivation. In addition to enemy agents, we must protect ourselves from those recruits who want to use us as a means of moving from Russia or nearby countries. It will not work.
Solving the issue of visa support and logistics is one of the main tasks of the Mobilization Center. It was not without difficulties, but it was successfully solved, is being solved and will be solved.
The right to arms, like freedom, must be won. Luckily for us, the Russians — fighters of the Russian Volunteer Corps: Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis from the Sheikh Mansur, Dzhokhar Dudayev, Krym Regiment and other units — did it. Our task is to carefully manage this credit of trust.