Each “brigade” or “battalion” tends to fight mostly within in its own bailiwick against Ukrainian forces, whether on the defensive or by using long-range artillery offensively. The territorial fragmentation and strong turf-orientation of these armed formations have significant consequences on the military level. This pattern is not observed in the “DPR,” where political and military authority is more centralized and the territory more urbanized, compared with the “LPR.” As a result, the “LPR’s” territory is divided into de facto bailiwicks, each with its own field commander and garrison. Based in the countryside, each of them clings to a well-defined territory, rarely venturing out from its locality or to Luhansk City.
Turf protection is a salient characteristic of these armed formations. More closely in time and place, the commanders’ modus operandi recalls the Makhnovshchina of almost one hundred years ago in this same territory (in the first several years after World War I, the highly decentralized Revolutionary Insurrectionist Anarchist Army militia controlled and operated in this area). This pattern is reminiscent in some ways of the feudal fragmentation of yore. Moreover, the field commanders rule portions of the “LPR’s” territory de facto, in nominal and conditional allegiance to the center. Various armed formations in the “LPR” are operating, as a rule, uncoordinated with Luhansk authorities or with each other and sometimes in rivalry with each other (see accompanying article).įield commanders must, to a certain extent, take orders from their Russian sponsors and from Luhansk military authorities but they tend to be recalcitrant and insubordinate toward the “LPR’s” political leadership. The armistice in Ukraine’s east affords Russia a breathing pause to institutionalize the secessionist Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.” The “Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)” is even less institutionalized and more chaotic than the nearby Donetsk republic (“DPR”).