Who Fights for Governments?: Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond

By Huseyn Aliyev

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 Ukraine's 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1350498416
• ISBN13: 9781350498419
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"