Fighters’ motivations for joining extremist groups: Investigating the attractiveness of the Right Sector's Volunteer Ukrainian Corps

Abstract

In 2014, eight years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian-backed separatists seized parts of the Ukrainian regions Luhansk and Donetsk. Shortly thereafter, thousands of Ukrainians voluntarily enrolled to various paramilitary battalions. Unlike the Right Sector's Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (RS VUC), almost all battalions were incorporated into Ukrainian official defence structures. Applying uncertainty-identity theory and based on interviews, observations, and documents, this study investigates the attractiveness of RS VUC prior to the 2022 war, motivating the fighters to join this organisation and to remain in it. The study found that fighters of RS VUC distrusted society, the wider population, and state authorities. RS VUC, with its high fighting morale, discipline, family-like relationships between fighters, as well as its clear ideology and boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, were attractive to the fighters since its unambiguous group prototypes and high entitativity, reduced the fighters’ self-uncertainty regarding their social identity in an uncertain environment. The findings also revealed that the fighters’ choice to join RS VUC can be understood as a rational decision, since RS VUC's group entitativity provided the fighters with moral and emotional benefits, as well as maximised their chances of survival.

Full text

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Fighters’motivations for joining extremist groups:
Investigating the attractiveness of the Right Sector’s
Volunteer Ukrainian Corps
Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner*
Department of Global Political Studies (GPS), Malmö University, Sweden
*Corresponding author. Email: kristian.steiner@mau.se
(Received 17 July 2021; revised 26 March 2022; accepted 28 March 2022)
Abstract
In 2014, eight years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian-backed separatists seized
parts of the Ukrainian regions Luhansk and Donetsk. Shortly thereafter, thousands of Ukrainians volun-
tarily enrolled to various paramilitary battalions. Unlike the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (RS
VUC), almost all battalions were incorporated into Ukrainian official defence structures. Applying uncer-
tainty-identity theory and based on interviews, observations, and documents, this study investigates the
attractiveness of RS VUC prior to the 2022 war, motivating the fighters to join this organisation and
to remain in it. The study found that fighters of RS VUC distrusted society, the wider population, and
state authorities. RS VUC, with its high fighting morale, discipline, family-like relationships between fight-
ers, as well as its clear ideology and boundaries between ‘us’and ‘them’, were attractive to the fighters since
its unambiguous group prototypes and high entitativity, reduced the fighters’self-uncertainty regarding
their social identity in an uncertain environment. The findings also revealed that the fighters’choice to
join RS VUC can be understood as a rational decision, since RS VUC’s group entitativity provided the
fighters with moral and emotional benefits, as well as maximised their chances of survival.
Keywords: Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps; Motivations; Attractiveness; Self-Uncertainty; Extremism; Ukraine
Introduction
In April 2014, eight years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an armed conflict
in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, broke out between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian gov-
ernment. The conflict was probably due to discontent over the outcome of the Maidan Revolution
(or coup d’état), the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and Russian support of
separatists in Donbas.
1
The ill-organised and poorly equipped Ukrainian army initially made
an ineffective resistance. In the beginning, volunteers in various paramilitary groups accounted for
most of the fighting. Over time, most volunteer paramilitary groups were incorporated into the offi-
cial security structures under Ukrainian state control, and act under the official command of either
the Ministry of Defense (MoD) or the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA).
2
However, the Right
Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (RS VUC) is an exception; it still operates independently.
3
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association. This is an Open
Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which
permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1
Tetyana Malyarenko and David J. Galbreath, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine: Beyond integration and abolition’,
Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 16:1 (2016), p. 113.
2
Rosaria Puglisi, Heroes or Villains? Volunteer Battalions in post-Maidan Ukraine (Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali,
2015, No. 15), p. 4.
3
Ilmari Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms: Control of force, strategy and the Ukrainian volunteer battalions’,
Defence Studies, 18:2 (2018), p. 161.
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Further, despite better social and economic benefits in the Ukrainian army, most of its combatants
decided to remain in the RS VUC. This choice is not unique since globally, there is a growing ten-
dency to join non-state military units.
4
However, there is no academic consensus over combatants’
motivations to join and to fight with such paramilitary groups.
5
Therefore, these motivations make a
compelling research topic.
Groups have numerous functions for the individual. They not only provide individuals with
physical safety
6
but also satisfy emotional needs (such as belonging and inclusion,
7
self-esteem,
8
significance,
9
and meaning)
10
and reduce feelings of uncertainty about one’s self and identity.
11
Since groups are fundamental to individuals, people are motivated to belong to, and be accepted
by, groups that best satisfy the aforementioned needs.
12
Moreover, social psychology suggests a
relationship between extremism, defined as a ‘deviancy from a general pattern of behavior or atti-
tude that prevails in a given social context’,
13
and a person’s experience of self-uncertainty.
14
Several promising studies have focused on self-uncertainty to explain the motivations to join
and to remain in extremist groups.
15
For instance, Michael Hogg argues that when individuals
experience self-uncertainty, extremist groups, and ideologies become attractive partly because
they provide clear structures.
16
This has led us to use uncertainty-identity theory to investigate the attractiveness of RS VUC,
motivating the fighters to join this organisation and to remain in it. Uncertainty-identity theory
provides necessary analytical tools to understand why individuals both join and remain in
extremist groups.
17
Thus, based on this theory, our study aims to advance an in-depth under-
standing of why these fighters find the RS VUC attractive.
We believe that this study will make important contributions in various academic fields. First,
there are only few studies examining individuals who decide to fight in eastern Ukraine, and RS
4
Robert S. Barrett, ‘Interviews with killers: Six types of combatants and their motivations for joining deadly groups’,
Groups, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 34:10 (2011), pp. 749–50.
5
Siniša Maleševićand Niall Ó. Dochartaigh, ‘Why combatants fight: The Irish Republican army and the Bosnian Serb
army compared’,Theory and Society, 47:3 (2018), p. 293.
6
Jerome D. Frank and Andrei Y. Melville, ‘The image of the enemy and the process of change’, in Anatoly Gromyko and
Martin Hellman (eds), Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking (New York, NY: Walker and Company, 1988), p. 199.
7
Vincent Y. Yzerbyt, ‘Motivational processes’, in John F. Dovidio (ed.), The Sage Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and
Discrimination (London, UK: Sage Publications, 2010), pp. 153–4.
8
Jean-Claude Deschamps and Thierry Devos, ‘Regarding the relationship between social identity and personal identity’,in
Stephen Worchel, J. Francisco, Dario Páez, and Jean-Claude Deschamps (eds), Social Identity: International Perspectives
(London, UK: Sage Publications, 1998), p. 6.
9
Katarzyna Jasko, Gary LaFree, and Ariel Kruglanski, ‘Quest for significance and violent extremism: The case of domestic
radicalization’,Political Psychology, 38:5 (2017), pp. 817–18.
10
Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, ‘Rediscovering the later version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Self-transcendence and oppor-
tunities for theory, research, and unification’,Review of General Psychology, 10:4 (2006), p. 303.
11
Michael A. Hogg and Janice Adelman, ‘Uncertainty-identity theory: Extreme groups, radical behavior, and authoritarian
leadership’,Journal of Social Issues, 69:3 (2013), p. 436.
12
Ibid., p. 436.
13
David Webber, Maxim Babush, Noa Schori-Eyal, Anna Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, Malkanthi Hettiarachchi, Jocelyn
J. Bélanger, Manuel Moyano, Humberto M. Trujillo, Rohan Gunaratna, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Michele J. Gelfand, ‘The
road to extremism: field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114:2 (2018), p. 272.
14
Michael A. Hogg, Arie Kruglanski, and Kees van den Bos, ‘Uncertainty and the roots of extremism’,Journal of Social
Issues, 69:3 (2013), p. 413.
15
Liran Goldman, Howard Giles, and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Going to extremes: Social identity and communication processes
associated with gang membership’,Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 17:6 (2014); Bertjan Doosje, Annemarie
Loseman, and Kees van den Bos, ‘Determinants of radicalization of Islamic Youth in the Netherlands: Personal uncertainty,
perceived injustice, and perceived group threat’,Journal of Social Issues, 69:3 (2013); Webber et al., ‘The road to extremism’.
16
Hogg, Kruglanski, and van den Bos, ‘Uncertainty and the roots of extremism’, p. 413.
17
Michael A. Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, in Michael A. Hogg and Danielle
Blaylock (eds), Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
2 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2022.11 Published online by Cambridge University Press

VUC fighters go largely unnoticed and unresearched. This can probably be ascribed to difficulties
attaining reliable primary data and conducting field studies in the area.
18
StudiesontheRightSector
(RS) that do exist are descriptive, focusing on the ideological dimensions of RS’s political party and
its role in the Maidan Revolution.
19
Second, social psychological research on extremism in general
has been quantitative and experimental.
20
On the other hand, this study is a qualitative case study
focusing on how the fighters themselves motivate their decision to join the RS VUC. Third, we
believe that uncertainty-identity theory presents an opportunity to gain a greater understanding
of the fighters’decisions. Hence, sticking to the premises of naturalistic inquiry
21
and using the the-
ory of uncertainty-identity, we claim that this study is a novel and unique contribution to the field.
The analysis will be organised according to four research questions, motivated by the tenets of
uncertainty-identity theory. The first question concerns experiences of self-uncertainty, and the
three following questions concern various coping strategies. These research questions will be dis-
cussed and theoretically contextualised in the theory section.
(1) How do the participants describe their perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviours
(primarily regarding the conflict), and how do the participants experience the ones of
the wider Ukrainian society?
(2) How do the participants describe RS VUC’s group prototypes and their attractiveness for
the participants?
(3) How do the participants describe RS VUC’s entitativity and its attractiveness for the
participants?
(4) How do the participants explain their motivations to participate in RS VUC’s armed
resistance in east Ukraine?
Historical background of the Ukrainian crisis
Since late 2013, Ukraine has experienced events that have profoundly changed its political land-
scape and brought about a conflict in eastern Ukraine.
22
In November of the same year, popular
uprisings in Kiev arose in response to, among other issues, the failure of the government to seek
closer ties with the EU.
23
Within a short period of time, small-scale protests escalated into a
nationwide revolutionary force reacting to corruption and the inadequacy of the Yanukovych
government.
24
The Maidan Revolution quickly turned into violent confrontations between pro-
testers and the police. Activists, mainly with ultranationalist dispositions, swiftly organised and
assisted protesters in fighting the police.
25
These violent confrontations resulted in over one hun-
dred deaths and many injuries, and led to an interim government lacking legitimacy, especially in
the eyes of Russia.
26
Eventually, the protests resulted in the overthrow of the pro-Russian presi-
dent, Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in February 2014.
27
After Maidan, Ukraine became
18
Malyarenko and Galbreath, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine’, p. 117.
19
Vyacheslav Likhachev, ‘The “Right Sector”and others: The behavior and role of radical nationalists in the Ukrainian
political crisis of late 2013 and early 2014’,Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 48:2–3 (2015); Volodymyr
Ishchenko, ‘Far right participation in the Ukrainian Maidan protests: An attempt of systematic estimation’,European
Politics and Society, 17:4 (2016).
20
Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran, Sonya Sachdeva, and Douglas Medin, ‘Psychology out of the laboratory: The challenge of
violent extremism’,American Psychologist, 66:6 (2011), p. 517.
21
Yvonna S. Lincoln and Egon G. Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985), pp. 39–41.
22
Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 148.
23
Serhy Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2015), pp. 3–4.
24
Yuliya Zabyelina, ‘Vigilante justice and informal policing in post-Euromaidan Ukraine’,Post-Soviet Affairs, 35:4 (2019),
p. 277.
25
Ibid., p. 284.
26
Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 148.
27
Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine, pp. 3–4.
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‘politically divided and institutionally fragmented’.
28
The victory of the protesters and the over-
throw of president Yanukovych provoked Russia and contributed to the Russian annexation of
Crimea.
29
Thereafter, Russia actively fuelled separatism in eastern Ukraine.
30
While the annex-
ation of Crimea did not lead to any major Ukrainian resistance, the developments in Donbas
turned into overt hostilities.
31
In April to May 2014, when it became evident that the pro-Russian separatists strived to con-
trol most of Donbas
32
and the Ukrainian army could not perform an effective military resistance,
thousands of individuals, with little or no military experience, enrolled into non-state
pro-Ukrainian battalions to fight the Russian-backed separatists.
33
According to Ukrainian law,
explicit participation in any paramilitary battalion in open military confrontation is prohibited.
34
Nevertheless, far-right nationalist groups acted as guarantors of law and security through para-
military formations that used extra-legal violence.
35
In 2015, Ukraine’s new president, Petro
Poroshenko, signed a decree calling all paramilitary battalions to ‘disarm and subordinate’to
either the MoD or MoIA.
36
Eventually, all but few Ukrainian volunteer paramilitary battalions
were incorporated into formal defence and security structures,
37
making the RS VUC one of
the few major non-state military units left.
38
After this incorporation, some fighters preferred
to leave their now-state-controlled battalions and join the RS VUC.
39
The RS was established during the Maidan Revolution in November 2013 when several nationalist,
some even neo-Nazi, groups were united.
40
According to Vyacheslav Likhachev, during and after the
revolution, the RS’s extremist character was revealed by its hate crimes and attacks,
41
usage of
neo-Nazi symbols,
42
andallegeddestructionsofSovietmonuments.
43
TheRSVUCisoneofthe
three branches of the RS, the other two being the RS political party and the RS Youth Movement.
44
According to the RS, the main objective of the RS VUC is to achieve ‘liberation of Ukraine
from Kremlin’s control’and to ‘clean the Ukrainian government from internal oligarchic
occupation’.
45
Research overview
At the risk of simplification, previous research explaining individuals’tendency to join extremist
groups can be divided into macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis. At macro and meso levels,
28
Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 151.
29
Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine,p.4.
30
Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 148.
31
Malyarenko and Galbreath, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine’, p. 113.
32
Emmanuel Karagiannis, ‘Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the eastern front: Ideas, political-social norms and emotions as
mobilization mechanisms’,Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 16:1 (2016), p. 143.
33
Ibid., p. 140.
34
Malyarenko and Galbreath, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine’, p. 123.
35
Zabyelina, ‘Vigilante justice and informal policing’, p. 277.
36
Decree of the President of Ukraine, ‘Pro zakhodi schodo posilennya borotbi zi zlochinnistyu v Ukraine [On Measures
toward Intensification of Fight against Crimes in Ukraine]’, Document No. 341/2015, 15 June 2015), cited in Malyarenko and
Galbreath, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine’, p. 124.
37
Puglisi, Heroes or Villains, p. 7; Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 159.
38
Puglisi, Heroes or Villains, p. 7; Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 161.
39
Käihkö, ‘A nation-in-the-making, in arms’, p. 162.
40
Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland, ‘The Maidan and beyond: Ukraine’s radical right’,Journal of Democracy, 25:3
(2014), p. 59.
41
Likhachev, ‘The “Right Sector”and others’, p. 265.
42
Ibid., p. 266.
43
Ibid., p. 265.
44
Pravyy Sektor Info, ‘Добровольчий Український Корпус “Правий сектор”’, available at: {https://pravyysektor.info/
dobrovolchyy-ukrayinskyy-korpus-pravyy-sektor} accessed 16 July 2021.
45
Ibid., p. 287. ‘Internal olicarchic occupation’is an ambiguous expression that in anti-Semitic contexts is used as a code
word for leading Ukrainian/Russian business men with Jewish background and possibly reflects anti-Semitic attitudes.
4 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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individuals’motivation to join extremist groups can be explained by ideology,
46
small group soli-
darity,
47
ephemeral gain,
48
cultural dimensions,
49
social pressure,
50
social injustice,
51
collective
emotions generated by external attacks,
52
and the role of social networks.
53
On the other hand,
micro-level factors explain individual predispositions and basic needs, and include need for cog-
nitive closure,
54
desire to attain meaning in one’s life or a sense of personal significance,
55
maxi-
misation of self-interest,
56
and motivation to reduce self-uncertainty through joining high
entitativity groups with clear prototypes.
57
In the following, we will briefly present research within
these two categories.
The role of ideology as a motivational factor to join extremist groups, is contested. In his
research on Wehrmacht soldiers’diaries and letters, Omer Bartov found ideology and extreme
nationalism to be important factors in soldiers’decisions to participate in combat even towards
the end of the Second World War.
58
Siniša Maleševićand Niall Ó. Dochartaigh, on the other
hand, claim that ‘local neighborhood loyalties and identities’are much more important motiva-
tions than ‘abstract ideological commitments to the nation’.
59
Manus I. Midlarsky claims that historical trajectories, such as the threat and fear of reversion
to an earlier state of subordination, can lead to political extremism.
60
The reason is a fear that
the current more prosperous or stable situation is ephemeral (Midlarsky calls it ‘ephemeral
gain’), so a ‘fear of reversion to an earlier subordinate condition’
61
might lead to political extrem-
ism.
62
Further, Michele J. Gelfand et al.
63
have studied the impact of cultural factors that
might have repercussions on extremist behaviour. Their study suggests that participation in
extremism may depend on factors such as: (1) the level of ‘cultural fatalism’; (2) the level of ‘cul-
tural tightness’like ‘solid norms and severe punishment for deviation from social norms’; (3) ‘col-
lectivism at the national level’; and (4) ‘high male dominance and low gender egalitarianism’.
64
Research on collective action suggests that norms of reciprocity, social coercion, and the ensuing
sanctions that may follow for not participating in collective action constitute social pressure,
which instigates individuals to act.
65
Thus, social pressure theory might explain individual
46
Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992).
47
Maleševićand Dochartaigh, ‘Why combatants fight’.
48
Manus I. Midlarsky, Origins of Political Extremism: Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
49
Michele J. Gelfand, Gary LaFree, Susan Fahey, and Emily Feinberg, ‘Culture and extremism’,Journal of Social Issues, 69:3
(2013).
50
Michael Taylor (ed.), Rationality and Revolution (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
51
Susan T. Fiske, ‘A millennial challenge: Extremism in uncertain times’,Journal of Social Issues, 69:3 (2013).
52
Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
53
Arie Kruglanski, Katarzyna Jasko, Marina Chernikova, David Webber, and Michelle Dugas, ‘To the fringe and back:
Violent extremism and the psychology of deviance’,American Psychologist, 72:3 (2017).
54
Arie Kruglanski and Edward Orehek, ‘The need for certainty as a psychological nexus for individuals and society’,in
Hogg and Blaylock (eds), Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty.
55
Simon Cottee and Keith Hayward, ‘Terrorist (e)motives: The existential attractions of terrorism’,Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, 34:12 (2011); Webber et al, ‘The road to extremism’.
56
Mancur Olson, Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1965); Jean-Paul Azam, ‘On thugs and heroes: Why warlords victimize their own civilians’,Economics and
Governance, 7:1 (2006).
57
Hogg, ‘Self-identity, social identity, and the solace of extremism’.
58
Bartov, Hitler’s Army,p.7.
59
Maleševićand Dochartaigh, ‘Why combatants fight’, p. 322.
60
Midlarsky, Origins of Political Extremism, p. 25.
61
Manus I. Midlarsky, ‘Territoriality and the onset of mass violence: The political extremism of Joseph Stalin’,Journal of
Genocide Research, 11:2–3 (2009), p. 270.
62
Midlarsky, Origins of Political Extremism, p. 25.
63
Gelfand et al., ‘Culture and extremism’.
64
Ibid., pp. 498–500.
65
Michael Taylor, ‘Rationality and revolutionary collective action’, in Taylor (ed.), Rationality and Revolution, p. 66.
European Journal of International Security 5
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decisions to participate in collective action if a significant part of society sanctions and approves
such an endeavour.
66
Research has recognised social injustice as a potential trigger of uncertainty. This in turn
boosts the attractiveness of extremist groups, who promise to provide ‘certainty, dignity and
voice’.
67
Born out of inequality and instability, ‘discontent and uncertainty’empower and
make attractive the groups pretending to confront the unjust elites on behalf of ‘the people’.
68
Presenting the people as ‘uncertain and out of control’paves the way for the ‘certainty and con-
trol’offered by ideological groups that contest those in power.
69
Susan T. Fiske explains that lack
of control leads to inefficient prediction of future events (uncertainty) and lack of control over
people`s own destiny (influence).
70
Thus, according to her, ‘seeking epistemic certainty motivates
extremism.’
71
From the perspective of sociology of emotions, Randall Collins emphasises the role of external
attacks, and he suggests that collective emotions that are the product of such attacks, have the
potential to function as a big emotional magnet where the most mobilised parts of society
charged with emotional energy come together to provide protection.
72
Arie W. Kruglanski et al. suggest that social networks can potentially trigger and maintain
extremist behaviour.
73
Social networks accomplish two motivational functions for individuals:
‘informational and normative’.
74
Moreover, David Webber and Kruglanski discuss several factors
that motivate individuals to engage in extremist behaviour: (1) personal motives derived from indi-
vidual needs; (2) ideological narratives embedded within a culture; and (3) group pressure com-
bined with strong social influence,
75
namely the influence within the individual’s social network.
76
Moving on to micro-level factors, individual predispositions to join extremist groups have been
of interest for scholars within the field of social psychology. Kruglanski and Edward Orehek
believe that the threat of uncertainty may generate extreme attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours
due to an elevated ‘epistemic need for closure’since such closure reduces feelings of uncertainty
and ‘quells the associated arousal’.
77
Accordingly, Kruglanski and Orehek propose that the higher
the demand for cognitive closure, the stronger the appeal exerted by certain groups as unity and
consistency providers.
78
Webber et al. suggest that violent extremism may be motivated by an aspiration to reach and
reinstate a meaningful life and a strong self-esteem.
79
The motivational constructs that may give
rise to significance loss and violent extremism involve humiliation, injustice, and dishonour
directed at one’s social group.
80
Such defamation induces significance loss, especially among indi-
viduals who firmly identify with their in-group. For instance, the invasion of one’s motherland
impacts and weakens the shared significance of the whole nation, which can greatly intensify
66
Taylor, ‘Rationality and revolutionary collective action’.
67
Fiske, ‘A millennial change’, p. 608.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid, p. 609.
71
Ibid, p. 608.
72
Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains, p. 80.
73
Kruglanski et al., ‘To the fringe and back’, p. 220.
74
Ibid.
75
David Webber and Arie W. Kruglanski, ‘Psychological factors in radicalization: A ‘3N’approach’, in Gary LaFree and
Joshua D. Freilich (eds), The Handbook of the Criminology of Terrorism (1
st
edn, Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons,
2017), p. 33.
76
Arie W. Kruglanski, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, and Rohan Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization, Needs, Narratives,
and Networks (New York, NY: Oxford, 2019).
77
Kruglanski and Orehek, ‘The need for certainty as a psychological nexus for individuals and society’, p. 12.
78
Ibid., p. 4.
79
Webber et al., ‘The road to extremism’, p. 271.
80
Ibid.
6 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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extremist behaviour.
81
Moreover, numerous case studies have demonstrated that extremism and
enhanced demand for closure are fuelled by experienced sentiments of insignificance.
82
Similarly,
other scholars have underlined the role of significance gain. For example, Simon Cottee and Keith
Hayward suggest that joining extremist groups alleviates feelings of ‘existential frustration’in the
midst of a boring and meaningless world.
83
The quest for violence and self-sacrifice becomes an
opportunity for personal self-elevation, for instance, the attainment of a place in history as hero
or martyr.
84
Research on incentives to participate in collective action could also base its analysis on
rational choice theory (RCT). Mancur Olson used RCT and argued that individuals are moti-
vated to participate in collective action if it satisfies their self-interest.
85
Thus, individuals make
rational decisions where they carefully contemplate about the advantages and disadvantages of
their choice to participate,
86
and ‘will engage in collective action only when they estimate that
by doing so they will receive a net individual benefit’.
87
Also Jean-Paul Azam based his analysis
on RCT and claimed that members of armed groups are motivated to participate in combat due
to financial gains obtained through looting and plundering civilians.
88
Stathis Kalyvas and
Matthew Kocher, on the other hand, argued thatjoininganarmedgroupduringcrisisand
civil confrontation is a rational decision since it raises chances of survival.
89
Thus, RCT pre-
supposes that ‘human beings are rational and motivated by self-interest in their everyday
actions.’
90
Lastly, when individuals experience extreme uncertainty, their need for high entitativity
groups, clear prototypes, and promotive and protective behaviours is enhanced.
91
In their quan-
titative study of Muslim Dutch adolescents, Bertjan Doosje, Annemarie Loseman, and Kees van
den Bos have found a causal relationship between ‘personal uncertainty’and ‘radical belief
system’.
92
Another study of convicted religious extremists in the Philippines demonstrates that
‘significance loss’weakened ‘individual self-confidence’, which in turn elevated the attractiveness
of ‘extreme ideologies that offer simplistic, certainty-affording worldviews’.
93
Thus, this research
suggests that feelings of self-uncertainty can be reduced if an individual identifies with strongly
entitative groups and that conditions of uncertainty can motivate individuals to participate in
extremism.
94
To summarise, it is reasonable to believe that the Ukrainian fighters’motivations to join
extremist groups are affected by the macro, meso, and micro level factors discussed above.
However, our study of RS VUC’s attractiveness in the midst of Ukrainian identity crisis and
social and political divisions,
95
focuses on social psychological factors, since we believe that
81
Ibid.
82
Ibid., p. 280.
83
Cottee and Hayward, ‘Terrorist (e)motives’, pp. 978–9.
84
Jerrold M. Post, The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to Al Qaeda (New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
85
Olson, Logic of Collective Action.
86
Ibid.
87
Michael Hechter, ‘Rational choice theory and the study of race and ethnic relations’, in John Rex and David Mason (eds),
Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 271.
88
Azam, ‘On thugs and heroes’.
89
Stathis Kalyvas and Matthew Kocher, ‘How “free”is free riding in civil wars? Violence, insurgency and the collective
action problem’,World Politics, 59:2 (2007).
90
Siniša Maleševic, The Sociology of Ethnicity (London, UK: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 95.
91
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 29.
92
Doosje, Loseman, and van den Bos, ‘Determinants of radicalization of Islamic Youth in the Netherlands’, pp. 589–90.
93
Webber et al., ‘The road to extremism’, p. 274.
94
Michael A. Hogg, Janice R. Adelman, and Robert D. Blagg, ‘Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity
theory account of religiousness’,Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14:1 (2010), p. 79.
95
Tatiana Zhurzhenko, ‘A divided nation? Reconsidering the role of identity politics in the Ukrainian crisis’,Die
Friedens-Warte, 89:1/2 (2014).
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such a study will produce new and relevant knowledge on fighters’motivations to join extremist
groups.
Methodology
In this study, we used a constructivist and qualitative case study approach
96
since it enabled us to
be flexible in the data collection process and analysis.
97
In the following, we will discuss selection
of research participants, data allocation, analytical method, and research ethics.
Research participants
The research participants in this study are nine fighters of the RS VUC, seven males and two
females. All were paramilitary combatants except one young woman, who served as an armed
paramedic. Five of the research participants joined RS VUC in 2014, four of them joined
between 2017 and 2019. The age of the research participants ranges from 19 to 50. One inter-
viewee was from Kiev, two from Donetsk, and the rest were from the Odesa region. Although
five of the research particpants came from mixed Russian-Ukrainian families, all of them con-
sidered Ukrainian as their mother tongue. The educational level of the research participants
varied. Four had completed undergraduate degrees, and one had left university without com-
pleting, when the war started. The rest had high school degrees. Access to research participants
was not without challenges, and it required time in the field to gain their trust. The strategy
was to establish contact with gatekeepers and key informants long before departing to the
field.
98
For a case study of a limited group, purposeful and snowball sampling of participants
were relevant.
99
Accordingly, the interviewed fighters advised and assisted in contacting other
relevant fighters.
Data collection
The premises of uncertainty-identity theory guided the data collection, which was conducted
during two months of fieldwork in Ukraine between 19 March and 21 May 2019 and online
in December 2020. This means that most of the interviews took place after the Minsk II agree-
ment in 2015, and at that time there was a fragile ceasefire negotiated under the auspicies of
OSCE Minsk Group. Since Khalil Mutallimzada (KM) speaks Russian (his first language) and
has a personal experience of post-Soviet and war-torn Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, he col-
lected the data. Most of the research participants were aware that Azerbaijan, just like
Ukraine, experienced Russian-backed separatism. Consequently, KM’s ethnic background
made the relationship between him and the research participants more open and trustful.
Moreover, KM’s fluency in Russian increased trust, which made the research participants com-
fortable to speak freely. Still, we cannot deny that KM’s Caucasian background might have
influenced the research participants, and made them less willing to express racist or
anti-Semitic attitudes in his presence.
96
Bedrettin Yazan, ‘Three approaches to case study methods in education: Yin, Merriam, and Stake’,The Qualitative
Report, 20:2 (2015), pp. 137, 142.
97
Robert E. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), p. 9; Sharan B. Merriam,
Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 28.
98
John W. Creswell and Cheryl N. Poth, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (4
th
edn, Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2017), p. 150.
99
Daniel F. Chambliss and Russell K. Schutt, Making Sense of the Social World: Methods of Investigation (5
th
edn, Los
Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016), p. 105.
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Primary data was collected through in-depth, open-ended, semi-structured interviews,
100
which
provided the opportunity to askboth predetermined and follow-up questions.
101
In total, ten, approxi-
mately one-hour-long interviews were conducted and recorded. Research participant 1 was inter-
viewed twice. The interviews focused on key themes related to the research questions of this study.
Primary data was also derived from direct observations (61 hours altogether) during daily
interactions with the research participants, where KM’s role was more of an observer than a par-
ticipant. KM’s presence in the events and activities of the RS VUC gave him access to the fighters
of this volunteer battalion and its different paramilitary corps.
The data triangulation essential for case-study research
102
was completed through document
review, namely information about the RS VUC in the RS organisational newspaper, Pravyi
Sektor, brochures, and websites.
Research sites
Initially, we planned to conduct this study only in the city of Odesa. The choice of a second
research site and the eventual trip to the Donetsk region were driven by the need to observe
and interview fighters in the war zone. Consequently, relying on the emergent design of the quali-
tative case study,
103
KM observed and interviewed some RS VUC fighters in Karlivka, a town in
the Donetsk region. Five interviews were conducted in Odesa, two in Karlivka, and three online.
Qualitative content analysis
Unlike most research using uncertainty-identity theory, this study used qualitative content ana-
lysis to interpret the data. Qualitative content analysis is ‘a research method for the subjective
interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding
and identifying themes or patterns.’
104
This analysis applied a ‘directed approach’
105
and ‘open
coding’, where the goal was to identify data with words and utterances that addressed the issues
related to the theoretical framework and research questions.
106
This kind of coding allowed the
categories to derive from the theory.
107
However, along with predetermined codes, codes also
emerged from the data, which made the analysis flexible.
108
We coded the data into appropriate
clusters of information, from which we developed further categories into thematic patterns.
109
Dependability, credibility, and transferability
We have undertaken a few measures to ensure academic rigour. First, we used transparent data
allocation and peer debriefing to warrant consistency
110
and dependability.
111
Second, we ensured
100
Karen Brounéus, ‘In-depth interviewing: The process, skill and ethics of interviews in peace research’, in Karen Höglund
and Magnus Öberg (eds), Understanding Peace Research: Methods and Challenges (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), p. 130.
101
Merriam, Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education, p. 28.
102
Stake, The Art of Case Study Research, p. 107.
103
Ibid., p. 9.
104
Hsiu-Fang Hsieh and Sarah E. Shannon, ‘Three approaches to qualitative content analysis’,Qualitative Health Research,
15:9 (2005), p. 1278.
105
Ibid., pp. 1281–3.
106
Sharan B. Merriam and Elizabeth J. Tisdell, Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2015), p. 208.
107
Hsieh and Shannon, ‘Three approaches to qualitative content analysis’, p. 1281.
108
Ibid., pp. 1281–2.
109
David L. Morgan, ‘Qualitative content analysis: A guide to paths not taken’,Qualitative Health Research, 3:1 (1993),
pp. 114–16; Merriam and Tisdell, Qualitative Research, p. 187.
110
Helen Noble and Joanna Smith, ‘Issues of validity and reliability in qualitative research’,Evidence-Based Nursing, 18:2
(2015), p. 34.
111
Andrew K. Shenton, ‘Strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects’,Education for Information,
22:2 (2004), p. 64.
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confirmability through data triangulation, thick and rich description, as well as researcher reflex-
ivity. To enhance credibility, we provided the research participants with the raw interview tran-
scripts and the draft of the preliminary analysis of themes.
Transferability is generally problematic in qualitative research, since ‘the findings of a qualita-
tive study are specific to a small number of particular environments and individuals.’
112
Yet, we
ensure transferability through ‘rich and thick description of the phenomenon under investiga-
tion’, which will enable the juxtaposition of our findings with readers’experiences in other
contexts.
113
Research ethics
Since the research participants were all fighters in the RS VUC, identifying them by their names
or even their combat pseudonyms may endanger and harm their lives. Therefore, we refer to the
research participants as participants 1, 2, 3, and so on.
During the fieldwork, KM was aware of power imbalances between the researcher and the
research participants. Therefore, he made all efforts to be polite, honest, sincere, respectful,
and reciprocal with the research participants.
114
Permissions were gained before an interview
or participant observation, and everything was agreed upon in advance with the gatekeepers.
KM let the research participants speak for themselves in a comfortable and non-coercive envir-
onment. During the observations, KM tried not to disrupt the activities of the research partici-
pants to better understand their experiences in the real-life setting.
Analytical framework
Deriving from social identity theory and social-categorisation theory,
115
uncertainty-identity theory
is ‘a social psychological theory on the motivational role played by self-uncertainty in group pro-
cesses and intergroup relations’.
116
This theory explains how social identity processes are motivated
by peoples’need to reduce uncertainty about themselves
117
and how these processes, under certain
conditions, promote extreme behaviour and attachment to extremist groups.
118
A key assumption is
that feelings of uncertainty are heinous because they make people uncertain about things related to
self, identity,
119
and behaviour.
120
Therefore, uncertainty has ‘a powerful motivational effect’,
121
prompting people to ‘behavior aimed at reducing uncertainty’.
122
Extremist groups are often attract-
ive since identification with such groups might reduce uncertainty,
123
and group identification in
extreme groups serves as a powerful motivational force.
124
Identification with groups is certainly
112
Ibid., p. 69.
113
Ibid., p. 70; Lincoln and Guba, Naturalistic, p. 125.
114
John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches (Los Angeles, CA:Sage
Publications, 2014), pp. 98–100.
115
Henri Tajfel, ‘Cognitive aspects of prejudice’,Journal of Social Issues, 25:4 (1969); Henri Tajfel, ‘Social identity and
intergroup behavior’,Social Science Information, 13:2 (1974).
116
Joseph A. Wagoner and Michael A. Hogg, ‘Uncertainty-identity theory’, in Virgil Zeigler-Hill and Todd K. Shackelford
(eds), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publisher, 2017),
p. 1.
117
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 20.
118
Ibid., pp. 27–8.
119
Ibid., p. 21.
120
Ibid., pp. 20–1.
121
Michael A. Hogg, ‘Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity
processes’,European Review of Social Psychology, 11:1 (2000), p. 227.
122
Hogg and Adelman, ‘Uncertainty-identity theory’, p. 438.
123
Viviane Seyranian, ‘Constructing extremism uncertainty provocation and reduction by extremist leaders’, in Hogg and
Blaylock (eds), Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty, pp. 238–9.
124
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 19.
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not a panacea for reducing uncertainty, but it is remarkably efficient to reduce feelings of
self-uncertainty.
125
Uncertainty-identity theory stipulates that uncertainty can emerge for different reasons.
Economic crisis, immigration, regime collapse, civil war, and climate change can all provoke
intense and lasting feelings of uncertainty.
126
It can also develop if people find that their percep-
tions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviours are in sharp contrast with the rest of society.
127
Consequently, our first research question concerns how the participants describe their percep-
tions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviours primarily regarding the conflict and how the participants
experience the ones of the wider Ukrainian society.
Our second and third research questions concern the attractiveness of the RS VUC. According
to uncertainty-identity theory, groups with clear prototypes and high entitativity (these concepts
will be discussed below) are usually very attractive since they tend to have strong
uncertainty-reducing effects. Hence, through our second research question, we will analyse
how the participants describe the RS VUC’s group prototypes and their attractiveness for the par-
ticipants. Human groups are cognitively represented by group prototypes or features such as atti-
tudes, beliefs, perceptions, values, feelings, and behaviours.
128
Group prototypes have the
following main functions: they define a category and differentiate it from other categories and
they prescribe group members’behaviour.
129
Typical prescribed behaviour is intergroup discrim-
ination, in-group favouritism, in-group solidarity, and social cohesion.
130
Most importantly,
groups with clear prototypes have strong uncertainty-reducing effects, in at least two ways:
First, a group characterised by straightforward, clearly articulated, and explicit normative proto-
types is more effective in reducing uncertainty than a group characterised by intricate, ambigu-
ous, and prescriptively vague prototypes since group members know the boundaries of the group
and can easily distinguish group members from individuals belonging to out-groups.
131
Second, the
uncertainty-reducing effect of clear group prototypes is enhanced if they instruct the individual how
to behave and if they reshape self-conception by assimilating the individual’s‘attitudes, feelings and
behaviors to the in-group prototype’,
132
so the self becomes altered to suit the prototypical qualities
of a group.
133
Such an assimilation of the self to the in-group prototype is one ‘mechanism of
uncertainty reduction’,
134
and cohesive groups with clear prototypes facilitate this process.
135
Moreover, the motivational role of prototypes also urges people to look for groups sharing
their values
136
since uncertainty motivates them to identify with like-minded people and to
join cohesive social groups.
137
Likewise, under normal conditions, rigidly and hierarchically struc-
tured groups with intolerance of internal dissent and criticism
138
can appear as unappealing since
authoritarian groups control almost every aspect of one’s life and identity. However, for the same
reason, they may be attractive under conditions of extreme and enduring uncertainty.
139
Under
125
Ibid., p. 22.
126
Wagoner and Hogg, ‘Uncertainty-identity thoery’, pp. 4–5.
127
Hogg, ‘Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization’, p. 233.
128
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 22.
129
Ibid.
130
Michael A. Hogg, ‘Uncertainty and extremism: Identification with high entitativity groups under conditions of uncer-
tainty’, in Vincent Yzerbyt, Charles M. Judd, and Olivier Corneille (eds), The Psychology of Group Perception (New York, NY:
Psychology Press, 2004), p. 264.
131
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 24.
132
Hogg, ‘Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization’, p. 227.
133
Ibid., p. 233.
134
Hogg, ‘Uncertainty and extremism’, p. 266.
135
Hogg, ‘Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization’, p, 224.
136
Hogg, Kruglanski, and van den Bos, ‘Uncertainty and the roots of extremism’p. 410.
137
Ibid.
138
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 25.
139
Ibid.
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these circumstances, extremist groups do an excellent job of reducing self-uncertainty because,
140
as a member, you know exactly who you are and how you should behave and how others are
expected to behave.
141
Before dealing with the third research question, we need to elaborate on the concept entitativ-
ity. Entitativity refers to the unity and coherence of a group. High entitativity groups typically
demonstrate in-group loyalty, unambiguous ideological belief systems, low levels of in-group dis-
sent, and us versus them mentality, and they view out-groups as fundamentally wrong, perhaps
evil and immoral.
142
The greater the consensus among group members regarding the above, the
greater is the group’s entitativity.
143
Belonging to a high entitativity group may be attractive, since
it has a strong uncertainty-reducing effect.
144
Moreover, it seems that such groups are best at
reducing uncertainty in extreme situations,
145
as well as in times of uncertainty.
146
Extremist
groups are highly entitative and therefore appealing for people experiencing extreme uncer-
tainty.
147
Therefore, our third research question deals with entitativity within the RS VUC, namely
how the participants describe the RS VUC’s entitativity and its attractiveness for them.
Lastly, and leading to our fourth research question, another uncertainty-reducing strategy is to
join extremist groups,
148
since uncertainty urges people ‘to defend their in-group from threaten-
ing out-groups’.
149
We deem the choice to join a paramilitary group such as RS VUC as extreme
behaviour since this is to deviate from a general pattern of behaviour or attitude in the Ukrainian
context.
150
In times of uncertainty, the need for cognitive closure, defined as ‘the desire for firm,
unambiguous worldviews’
151
is aroused.
152
In this situation, people are more likely to view out-
groups negatively; more likely to favour harsh treatment of out-groups in conflict manage-
ment;
153
and more willing to take part in antisocial, disruptive, and aggressive actions.
154
Findings
The analysis is divided into four parts corresponding to the research questions and the theoretical
framework discussed above.
Experiencing contrasting understandings of the conflict
In the data where the fighters describe their relationship to different parts of the Ukrainian soci-
ety, the fighters clearly experience that their perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviour regard-
ing the conflict sharply contrast with various segments of society. A first sharp contrast concerns
perceptions regarding the current situation at the frontline. In the summer of 2020, a comprehen-
sive ceasfire and truce were reached between Russia and Ukraine. Relying on media outlets, many
Ukrainians believe that the hostilities have ceased. However, the interviews from December 2020
show that participants 1 and 9 have deviating experiences from the war zone. They underline that
140
Ibid., pp. 25–6.
141
Ibid., p. 26.
142
Michael A. Hogg, ‘Uncertainty, social identity, and ideology’, in Shane R. Thye and Edward J. Lawler (eds), Social
Identification in Groups, vol. 22 (Amsterdam: JAI Press Inc., 2005), p. 215.
143
Kruglanski and Orehek, ‘The need for certainty as a psychological nexus for individuals and society’,p.4.
144
Hogg, ‘Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization’, p. 248.
145
Hogg, ‘Uncertainty, social identity, and ideology’, p. 206.
146
Ibid., p. 216; Hogg, ‘Uncertainty and extremism’, p. 271.
147
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, pp. 25–6.
148
Ibid., pp. 29–30.
149
Wagoner and Hogg, ‘Uncertainty-identity theory’, pp. 4–5.
150
Webber et al., ‘The road to extremism’, p. 272.
151
Kruglanski, Bélanger, and Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization, p. 47.
152
Kruglanski and Orehek, ‘The need for certainty as a psychological nexus for individuals and society’, p. 15.
153
Ibid.
154
Hogg, Kruglanski, and van den Bos, ‘Uncertainty and the roots of extremism’, p. 413.
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‘in real life there is no ceasefire’
155
and ‘what they tell us on TV and what people read in the infor-
mation channels is not true.’
156
Other contrasts regarding the understanding of the conflict concern attitudes. First, in the inter-
action with ordinary citizens, some fighters experience a lack of Ukrainian consensus regarding
the conflict, as well as unclear boundaries between Ukraine and its enemies. For instance, partici-
pant 2 compares ordinary Ukrainians to people in the war zone:
Everything was simple in the war zone. There is a clear delimitation between the enemy and
us. …But in general, it’s easier there. Everything is clear there. …Here, I am surrounded by
unpleasant people, and in fact, there is nothing you can do about it. …But in the war zone,
basically it would be possible to do something about it.
157
Participant 2 evidently prefers the war zone, where she is surrounded by people who share her
understanding of the conflict, to the more complex Ukrainian society. The ‘unpleasant people’are
probably people whom she suspects support ‘the enemy’and whose understanding of the conflict
differs from hers. Participant 6, in Karlivka, shares this understanding, but goes further. He
describes his relationship with internal enemies and Ukrainian citizens, at least occasionally, as
problematic:
People have become terrible. …Firstly, there are many refugees, and among them there are
separatists who fought on the other side. …Here [in the war zone], I have a weapon and the
sworn brothers. I feel more confident and calm here. But this situation needs somehow to be
changed. The more we are [ideologically united] the more chances we have to change some-
thing. …They will say that there is no war and that nobody has sent us here. We are dying
here so that people in the civilian life could live in peace, and they hate us.
158
This experience of belonging to an ideological minority is probably more evident when the
participants wear their uniform publicly. Participant 1 says:
Let’s compare Odesa with Dnipro. When I was in the military hospital in Dnipro, people
used to approach and thank me when they saw my uniform with RS VUC insignia.
When I came to Odesa in uniform, people looked at me like as I was going to rob someone.
…I try not to wear my uniform in Odesa. They treat us differently in Odesa.
159
Participant 2 also describes her experiences wearing a uniform in Odesa. Not only does she
describe lacking entitativity in the Ukrainian society, where the boundary between ‘enemies’
and ‘friends’is blurred. She also experiences that many Odessites, perhaps a majority, perceive
the conflict differently to her. This made her long for the frontline when she returned to Odesa:
I wanted to go back [after the first rotation] to the frontline because I felt morally comfort-
able there. Back then, when people in Ukraine saw me in military uniform, they looked at me
angry like a wolf. It was especially the case in Odesa, where people have different views about
the conflict. …There is a bunch of local separatists, many of whom did not understand what
we were doing. People had different reactions when they saw me in military uniform. I tried
not to pay attention. There were unpleasant looks. …There were people who came up and
155
Participant 1, online, 17 December 2020.
156
Participant 9, online, 22 December 2020.
157
Participant 2, Odesa, Ukraine, 26 April 2019.
158
Participant 6, Karlivka, Ukraine, 5 May 2019.
159
Participant 1, Odesa, Ukraine, 8 April 2019.
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thanked me. Once I was even offered a free coffee. The reaction of people differed in Odesa.
Yet, I think here in Odesa many would be glad either to war or for the arrival of the Russian
world. For example, in Odesa, we can say that I am not a Russian and not a Ukrainian but
Odessit. This is how people separate themselves from Ukraine.
160
Also participant 9 is very troubled by the fact that a vast majority of the Ukrainian electorate
(73 per cent he claims) elected a pro-Russian president, and he is referring to those voters as
‘dumbfuckers’(dolboyebi).
161
His conviction that only a small minority shares his perception
of the conflict, indicates that he experiences not only a lack of Ukrainian entitativity but also a
clear minority status and believes that a vast majority has views regarding the conflict that are
in sharp contrast to his. Participant 8 goes even further, he encounters Ukrainians who do not
understand this war as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but rather as a civil war, where
RS VUC is shooting at fellow Ukrainians.
162
RS VUC fighters’experiences are similarly confirmed by KM’s observations, previous research,
and public opinion polls. KM observed a posthumous reward ceremony held at Donetsk National
Technical University in commemoration of a fallen RS VUC fighter. When KM arrived, he could
not find the place where the event was held and had to ask a charwoman for directions. When
asked for directions, she replied with an arrogant tone, ‘they do not deserve to be rewarded.’KM
observed another incident when he took a bus with participant 1 in Odesa. Despite the legal pri-
vileges that volunteer fighters enjoy from the Ukrainian state, including free public transporta-
tion, participant 1 still paid for his bus ticket. When KM asked why he did not make use of
his privilege, he answered, ‘once I showed my military passport to the bus driver in Odesa,
and I was publicly ridiculed and mocked for not having seven hryvnia to pay for my bus ticket.
Since that incident, I don’t use my military passport in public transportation any more.’
163
Also
participant 9 experienced unpleasant attitudes on public transportation, where he experienced
criticism and humiliation for being a combatant: ‘They told me …that if I am a combatant,
then I am bad, that I am a khokhol, that I am Ukrainian.’
164
Moreover, a study by Tatiana Zhurzhenko confirms that our participants regularly encounter
Ukrainians who perceive the conflict differently to them. According to her, Ukraine is a ‘divided
nation’, lacking social cohesion
165
and the dividing lines in Ukrainian society have deepened as a
result of the conflict.
166
And lastly, a few polls regarding the attitudes of Ukrainians confirm that
the views regarding the status of Donbas are in contrast with our research participants. One poll
concludes that only a small percentage (17–23 per cent) in the years 2017–19 support armed
resistance until full Ukrainian control of Donbas is regained.
167
Likewise, a few participants experience that judicial, military, and political systems as well as
some high-ranking politicians and other people with influence also do not share their under-
standing of the conflict. In addition to experiencing a rejection from the Ukrainian military, par-
ticipant 1 claims that ‘oligarchs’
168
and parts of the judicial system work against his beliefs and
constitute an ‘invisible’internal enemy:
160
Participant 2.
161
Participant 9.
162
Participant 8, online, 22 December 2020.
163
Participant 1, 2019.
164
Participant 9. Khokhols are often depicted as illiterate peasants with primitive manners and peculiar local dialect, and
are subjected to ethnic and social othering. See Mykola Riabchuk, ‘Ukrainians as Russia’s negative “other”: History comes full
circle’,Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 49 (2016), p. 77.
165
Zhurzhenko, ‘A divided nation?’, p. 249.
166
Ibid., p. 263.
167
Rating Group Ukraine, ‘Ставлення українців до вирішення питання окупованих територій’(October 2019), avail-
able at: {http://ratinggroup.ua/files/ratinggroup/reg_files/rg_donbas_102019.pdf} accessed 16 July 2021.
168
See comment in fn. 43.
14 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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We have an external enemy with whom we are at war at the moment. There are also a lot of
internal enemies. There are all sorts of pro-Russian people and oligarchs. …I would say that
it is even more complicated with internal enemies than it is in the trenches. I feel more con-
fident in the war zone. There, you know where the enemy is. Here in the civilian life, every-
thing is much more complicated, and the law is sometimes against us here. In the civilian
life, there seems to be an enemy, but an invisible one.
169
Moreover, participant 6 experiences how the values of the judicial system contrast his own and
is particularly frustrated that ‘most of them (separatists) were simply amnestied.’
170
Participant 3
indicates that political attitudes of high-ranking politicians added to his experience of not seeing
the conflict in the same way as the rest of society. In a discussion about the 2019 presidential
elections, this participant was very sceptical about the candidates’attitudes to the conflict:
We will soon have presidential elections, and we have to choose between a clown and a
moron. Well, is it serious to choose a clown and a moron? …If Zelensky is elected, we
will have a country of clowns. Zelensky is not a man who can even be put close to Putin.
It becomes clear that we will not have a real ruler in this country.
171
Lastly, a third and important relationship is the fighters’ties to their families and close friends.
If not even close relationships are always trustful, and if the fighters do not experience a harmony
of attitudes regarding the conflict even from friends and family, this will probably contribute to
intense and lasting feelings of uncertainty. Participant 9 has ‘deleted’many old friends from his
life, people who now called RS VUC fighters ‘Banderites, Nazis, fascists and so on.’
172
Participant
3 has a similar experience:
People cannot be trusted here, and you never know what to expect. …I would like to trust
other people, even my relatives. But I don’t know how I can trust them! Because when I said
that I was going to war, everyone became cold with me. I then realised that I cannot rely on
these people. It is not good! I would like to have support, but I do not see a drop of it. They
think that it is wrong, that I’m going to protect my country. They begin to treat you differ-
ently. …When you feel and understand that you are treated differently, that feeling
encourages aggressive behaviour.
173
Nevertheless, not all participants experience this kind of disharmony with friends and family. For
instance, participants 6 and 8 were accompanied in the war zone by their wives, who shared their
understanding of the conflict. Likewise, participant 5, the paramedic, underlines that there were
other fighters in her family: her uncle, younger brother, and ex-boyfriend. She even claims that
she was convinced to join the RS VUC in order to support them and to contribute to the war effort.
The attractiveness of group prototypes
This section and the next one concern the attractiveness of the RS VUC. In the present one, we
will analyse how the participants describe the RS VUC’s group prototypes and the motivational
role prototypes have for them.
A first function of group prototypes concerns intergroup discrimination and in-group favour-
itism. Along with pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens mentioned in the previous section, another
169
Participant 1, 2019.
170
Participant 6.
171
Participant 3, Odesa, Ukraine, 9 April 2019.
172
Participant 9.
173
Ibid.
European Journal of International Security 15
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discriminated outgroup is, unexpectedly, not pro-Russian separatists but the regular Ukrainian
army.
174
Most of the participants divide the combatants into ‘us’–the ‘volunteers’, who are ‘a
new model army’, free from ‘Soviet idiocy’,
175
‘morally motivated’,
176
‘more decisive and ideo-
logically committed’,
177
supposedly dedicated to their country and ‘make a conscious decision
when they join a volunteer battalion’,
178
who ‘risk their lives not for the sake of money’
179
–
and ‘them’the ‘regular soldiers [who] saw the fighting as a job’
180
the ‘money-makers’who
join the regular army to ‘receive salaries’
181
or other privileges. Participant 7 develops the differ-
ence between the regular army and the RS VUC further:
So many ‘are present’…I repeat, just ‘present’in this war to just receive salaries. They just
want to spend their time and get their payment until their contract ends. In a volunteer bat-
talion like this, everything is different. We have never been paid for our duty. Volunteer bat-
talions always fought and are fighting on an ideological basis, and not for receiving
benefits.
182
This division between the alleged superior volunteers and the inferior Ukrainian army was
confirmed during an observation made when KM was on his way to the frontline village
Karlivka. KM saw military check points with trenches every ten kilometres. KM’s gatekeeper
and participants 6 and 7 explained that there are three lines of defence. The first and most dan-
gerous one, lies at the frontline, 1–2 km from the enemy. This line of defence mainly consists of
RS VUC fighters. The second and third ones are relatively safe and consist of the regular
Ukrainian army soldiers.
Participant 6 left the regular army and joined the RS VUC. While telling the history of his
enrolment process, he also expresses in-group favouritism. According to him, the fighting morale
is at the lowest level in the regular army, unlike in the RS VUC:
At the end of 2014, I signed a contract with the regular army that lasted until 2016. …Iwas
tired of the lawlessness in the army. Eventually I decided to join RS VUC. …In RS VUC,
there is a great freedom. I know that the people who surround me here are like-minded and
if there is an open fight no one will hide in the trenches as the regular combatants would
usually do …RS VUC fighters are the true patriots!
183
In the above utterance, participant 6 expresses not only in-group favouritism (patriotism and
freedom instead of lawlessness and cowardness) but also group sharing prototypes (being like-
minded) that instruct the individual how to behave (not hiding in the trenches). Participant 1,
below, also combines in-group favouritism (no mess and no irrelevant orders) and shared
group prototypes (relevant orders) that dictate behaviour:
174
The status of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported by our research participants is confirmed by external sources.
According to Malyarenko and Galbreat, the army suffered from widespread corruption, acts of betrayal, and inadequacy.
See Malyarenko and Galbreat, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine’, p. 120.
175
Participant 8. Participant 9, added flawed ‘Soviet structures’.
176
Participant 9.
177
Participant 1, 2019.
178
Participant 6.
179
Participant 7, Karlivka, Ukraine, 6 May 2019. Also Participant 1, 2019 and participant 8 underline that RS VUC fighters
are not motivated by financial rewards.
180
Participant 2.
181
Participant 6.
182
Participant 7.
183
Participant 6. Similar claims were made by Participants 8 and 9.
16 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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The most important thing about RS VUC is that here there is no such mess as in the army.
On the contrary, I liked everything and wanted to continue my duty. Fighters of RS VUC are
more ideological and are less afraid. In RS VUC, there are no irrelevant orders as in the regu-
lar army. There is only one order, and it is the victory!
184
In fact, the aversion towards the regular army is of such a magnitude that the RS VUC’s com-
mander in chief, Andriy Stempitskiy, is sceptical about future legalisation and incorporation of
his paramilitary group since that would ‘repeat the fate of dozens of other volunteer units that
eventually joined the ranks of the Armed Forces and other law enforcement structures. …all
these battalions ceased to exist as volunteer groups.’
185
The attractiveness of group entitativity
Group entitativity had an important motivational role for the fighters’decision to join and
remain in the RS VUC. The participants unanimously depict the RS VUC as a high entitativity
group. In the quotes below, they label their paramilitary group members as ‘true friends’,‘family’,
and ‘brothers and sisters’and claim that the RS VUC provides protection, trust, and safety:
I can’t imagine my life without RS VUC. I think this feeling is forever. Thanks to my experi-
ence in the war zone, I now have friends all over Ukraine. …These are the ones I can rely on.
…True friends, not those who just want to drink beer and spend some time with you.
186
There are so many things that I have experienced which I cannot explain to my mother, my
daughter, because they simply will not understand …My pobratimi and I are people who have
seen and experienced death together. They are dearer to me than my own family.
187
When I spent the first three months with the members of RS VUC, it was just like a family,
everyone treated each other like they were brothers and sisters. …I have a 100 per cent con-
fidence and devotion to RS VUC because I saw how they live and what they do to live freely.
…Of course, I trust pobratimi in RS VUC more. I know that they will not leave me, that I have
protection, in case something bad happens with me. …IhavemoreconfidenceinRSVUC
than my family and friends.
188
Participant 3 above is not alone in trusting RS VUC’s protection. Participant 4 is also con-
vinced that the RS VUC will protect him, both now and after military service:
The most important thing is of course the support of the organisation. God forbid, if some-
thing happens, there is a support. …Here, everyone is responsible for each other. …It
works like one for all and all for one. The organisation even helps homeless and unemployed
fighters. When volunteer fighters return from the war zone, the organisation supports them
both mentally and physically.
189
Moreover, we claim that the entitativity in the RS VUC was enhanced not only through the
horizontal bonds between the fighters but also through the experience of justice and equality
in vertical relations with the commanders:
184
Participant 1, 2019. Also Participants 8 and 9 agree that there are no ‘foolish’orders in RS VUC.
185
Andriy Stempitskiy, interviewed in Командир ДУК ПС Андрій Стемпіцький ‘Скільки Буде Тривати Війна –
Стільки Будет Діяти ДУК “Правий Сектор”’,Правий Сектор:Інформаційний Бюлетень, 5:21 (2018).
186
Participant 1, 2019.
187
Participant 9.
188
Participant 3.
189
Participant 4, Odesa, Ukraine, 4 April 2019.
European Journal of International Security 17
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For all the time that I was on the frontline, I did not quarrel with anyone. Everything felt so
fraternal, …we shared everything we had. There was a commander, but everyone was treated
equally.
190
The RS VUC’s high entitativity likely also affects attitudes and behaviour patterns within this
paramilitary group, namely, how the fighters are treated and treat each other. Some partici-
pants
191
emphasise the prevalence of hazing and abuse of power in the regular army as a reason
for enroling in the RS VUC. Participant 1 claims that ‘unlike the regular army, we do not have
such thing as hazing in RS VUC. Many drop out from the army for this reason. They join us after
their contract ends.’
192
Participant 2 agrees:
The act of hazing is absent in volunteer battalions. We are as family here. Even the com-
mander communicates with his subordinates on equal terms. Everything is built on trust,
not submission. This is one team where everyone trusts each other.
193
Entitativity was expressed even clearer in KM’s observations of the participants’interactions.
KM observed that the fighters were not referring to each other as friends or comrades. They called
each other ‘sworn brothers’–pobratimi in Ukrainian. KM heard the fighters pronounce these or
similar terms very often in their habitat. Participant 3, who lost his parents in childhood and was
raised in an orphanage, captures the core of the miraculous power of brotherhood:
I have no fear when I understand that I belong to the brotherhood! …Seriously! I had fear
before, but now I am getting rid of this fear. I’m no longer afraid of loneliness. I’m not afraid
that if something happens to me, no one will know about it.
194
Similarly, participant 4 describes the necessity of sharing the same understanding of the con-
flict (common language) and the attractiveness of belonging to pobratimi:
The most important thing is to find a common language with the pobratimi …I am proud
to be a member of the RS VUC. This is very appealing since everyone has one idea! To
defend the fatherland. But the most attractive thing is the idea of brotherhood.
195
It is also likely that high entitativity indeed had uncertainty-reducing effects on the partici-
pants. In his observations, KM was told that the fighters were sure that, unlike other people in
their surroundings, their comrades in the battalion will never abandon or betray them. This con-
fidence reduced their feelings of self-uncertainty. Participant 3, above, clearly connects reduction
of fear to his experience of brotherhood. Participant 1, below, also underlines that his group
makes him feel safe in this time of uncertainty, and he believes that ‘he will not be abandoned’:
RS VUC does not offer mountains of gold. I only know that if a person returns crippled or
wounded, he will not be abandoned. It’s probably like a family, a brotherhood. Anyone here
will be supported to the end, because he is one of us! …He was with us and fought with us
for our land.
196
190
Participant 1, 2019.
191
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2 and 6.
192
Participant 1, 2019.
193
Participant 2, 2019.
194
Participant 3.
195
Participant 4.
196
Participant 1, 2019.
18 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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Participant 6 also connects entitativity and reduction of uncertainty. He recalls that despite the
fear he had, the fact that he was surrounded by people who in no circumstances would betray him
made him more courageous: ‘there was a fear, but you still feel that it’s your duty to remain loyal
to people who treat you as a brother. Your body says no, but your soul says yes.’
197
RS VUC’s group entitativity was also evident in their in-group behaviour and in the meaning
members ascribed this behaviour. For instance, during KM’s observation of the RS VUC base in
Karlivka, an ambulance arrived with a wounded fighter in need of a blood transfusion before
transport to the military hospital in Dnipro in the neighbouring region. There was another fighter
with same blood type who immediately agreed to help. He gave approximately 500 milliliters of
blood. KM was around when this happened, and the fighter who was about to donate blood said,
‘Before we were brothers in words, but now we are crowned to be brothers, because he will have
my blood flowing in his veins.’KM recalls that those fighters whose blood did not match became
somewhat envious for not being able to contribute.
Likewise, in Odesa, when fighters faced difficulties in their everyday lives, KM observed that
they turned to the pobratimi as their social safety network. The difficulties in question ranged
from bureaucratic procedures to private issues, such as renovating or building a house or giving
emotional support:
If my pobratim calls me at 3 o’clock, at 4 o’clock or at 5 in the morning and asks me to come
because he feels bad, I won’t even ask why he feels bad. I’ll just go to him. Maybe he just
wanted to smoke a cigarette with me, or maybe he has got a problem. No matter what,
we will solve it together. And in the same way, I know that if for some reason it becomes
difficult for me, then I can rely on my pobratimi.
198
When asked why they did not ask their family or relatives for help, the fighters referred to the
level of trust. One of them said:
My family members didn’t understand the rationale of my war effort and accused me for
joining the so called ‘fascist’group. But members of this demonised group risked their
lives with me. We were side by side and supported each other, and are still supporting
each other, even though we are not at the frontline any more.
199
Every time KM visited a posthumous reward ceremony or some other kind of commemor-
ation, he witnessed a family-like social structure, an environment characterised by brotherhood.
Despite their suspicion and distrust towards outsiders, they welcomed KM to these events and
treated him with respect since he came with several pobratimi who interceded on his behalf.
During meals at these events, KM had an impression that there was a sense of belonging
among pobratimi. The fighters behaved in concert; they stood up jointly when they drank
vodka and commemorated fallen fighters or when they gave toasts or pronounced a slogan.
KM saw the RS VUC as a group of people communicating without words. Participant 7 in
Donetsk summarises it very well:
It feels perfect here because we have very cohesive relationship. It is like a small family.
When one needs something, all battalions unite to achieve the aim or to solve the issue.
…Here, we know that any fighter will do everything to make his comrade feel good.
200
197
Participant 6.
198
Participant 9.
199
Participant 1, 2019.
200
Participant 7.
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Moreover, we believe that some fighters, having experienced a high entitativity group, reflected
on, or expressed fear, to return to civilian life. For example, participant 1 describes that he never
got the support he needed from anyone except his pobratimi:
I didn’t expect the help and support I received from pobratimi when I was in the hospital.
People I knew whole my life didn’t come to see me. But my pobratimi, whom I have known
just more than a year, were there for me and supported me in that difficult period of my
life.
201
The feeling of being safe within the RS VUC and unsafe outside in the civilian life was con-
firmed by several fighters. They told KM that they felt confident at the frontline with pobratimi
but felt somewhat uncertain in the civilian life –even with their friends, relatives, and closest fam-
ily members –due to the diverging views about their choice to be RS VUC fighters. According to
participant 2, 8, and 9, this dissent in Ukrainian society was an outcome of Ukrainian consump-
tion of Russian media outlets, which were later banned by the Poroshenko administration.
According to Participants 7, 8, and 9, even when the relationship between a fighter and his or
her family members was good, nothing could replace the brotherlike relationship within the bat-
talion. As one fighter explains:
Family is family, but here in the battalion we have another kind of family that cannot be
found anywhere else. In this kind of family, there is no dissent, and there is high level of
cohesion, loyalty, fidelity, mutual understanding, and respect. This brings me a feeling
that people in my battalion are closer to me than …let’s say my schoolmates, my cousins
or even the family I was raised in.
202
The data above indicates that RS VUC’s high entitativity indeed has an uncertainty-reducing
effect. Nevertheless, there is reason for caution. Along with uncertainty relating to self-identity,
the participants also express uncertainty regarding physical security in war zones and social
safety. On the other hand, uncertainty-identity theory concerns uncertainty about themselves,
things related to self and identity in group processes. It is therefore doubtful whether all our find-
ings are supported by the theory.
Lastly, it has to be underlined that not all the fighters’motivations to join the RS VUC can be
attributed to group prototypes or group entitativity. A few participants mention practical reasons.
For instance, the regular army placed Participant 8 in the reserve and was not in need of his ser-
vices. Similarly, participant 4 explains that he, being raised in an orphanage, could not join the
regular army since he did not have the required documents. Similarly, other participants
203
point
to the bureaucracy in state structures:
I did not serve in the army through compulsory military service. Therefore, my case was lost.
While I was recovering some lost papers, I was longing to enrol as a volunteer fighter.
Regular army’s recruitment office rejected my application and told me that I have first to
serve the compulsory military service. I don’t know whether they wanted money, or they
were just fools …Honestly, from the beginning, I wanted to join RS VUC because it is
much cooler to be here than in the army.
204
201
Participant 1, 2019.
202
Participant 7.
203
Participant 1, 2019; participant 2.
204
Participant 1, 2019.
20 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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Motivations to engage in extreme behaviour in East Ukraine
In this last section, we will analyse how the fighters explain their motivations to participate in RS
VUC’s armed resistance. According to the data, the fighters claim to participate in this military
effort out of duty, to defend Ukraine, and to save it from Russian violence.
205
Most frequently, the
fighters emphasise the need to protect Ukraine from foreign occupants.
206
The fighters’behav-
iour and these motivations might indicate a need for cognitive closure, which is in accordance
with the uncertainty-identity theory. One participant explains his motivation to fight by referring
to the enemy that invaded Ukraine:
The enemy has invaded our land …and to somehow prevent the advance of this enemy, we
nationalists should go to war. …Our purpose is to protect the country from separatists.
207
One fighter claims that without the contribution of volunteer fighters,
208
the separatists could
spread to other regions of Ukraine: ‘Without volunteers, it would have started in both Nikolaev
and Odesa. So, all Ukraine would be taken away!’
209
Participant 2 also explained her war effort by the need to protect the country: ‘At the frontline
we were all motivated to liberate Ukraine and to defend our lands.’
210
Similarly, participant 1
claims:
The enemy has attacked our territory. I do not want a different flag, or to follow other laws
and traditions. I want to live in Ukraine. We don’t need someone else’s land, but we don’t
want to give our own either.
211
Similar motivations are also verbalised in an interview with RS VUC’s commander in chief:
‘the RS VUC will exist until all threats to the Ukrainian nation are neutralised and all
Ukrainian territories are returned.’
212
When fighters were asked what motivates them to choose RS VUC over the regular
Ukrainian army, they underlined ‘trust’,
213
‘reciprocity’,
214
‘high combat discipline and perform-
ance’,
215
‘reliance on co-fighters’,
216
and ‘higher chances of survival’.
217
Moreover, as indicated in the theoretical framework, the need for cognitive closure might
make people more likely to view out-groups negatively. Participant 7 and 9, not only see the
pro-Russian separatism as an imminent threat but dehumanise the separatists,
218
and in one
case calling them a ‘contagion’, stressing the need ‘to prevent the advance of this infection
further’.
219
Although Ukraine (that is, its political and military leaderships and most of its population)
seems to disown RS VUC’s fighters and their war efforts, the participants maintain that they
205
Participant 1, 2019; participants 3, 7, 8, and 9.
206
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 3, 4, and 7.
207
Participant 3.
208
Participant 4.
209
Ibid.
210
Participant 2.
211
Participant 1, 2019.
212
Stempitskiy, interviewed in Правий Сектор:Інформаційний Бюлетен.
213
Participant 1, 2020; and participant 2.
214
Participant 5, Odesa, Ukraine, 4 April 2019, and participant 6.
215
Participant 1, 2019; participants 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
216
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 3,5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
217
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9.
218
Participant 9.
219
Participant 7.
European Journal of International Security 21
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fight for ‘the land that feeds them’,
220
‘the father land’,
221
their loved ones,
222
and ‘future
generations’.
223
Thus, the participants do not construct Ukraine in terms of its disowning major-
ity or its distrustful governmental structures. In this way, the fighters found a different source of
motivations for their war effort.
Conclusions
As stated in the introduction, the purpose of this study is to advance an in-depth understanding
of the RS VUC’s attractiveness from the point of view of its fighters. Foremost, the study has
revealed a variability and complexity of accounts relating to fighters’motivations. Participants
in this study experience distrust towards the wider Ukrainian society, as well as its politicians
and the military command of the regular army. From the perspective of uncertainty-identity the-
ory, the fighters’self-uncertainty is arguably caused by contested social identities experienced in
an uncertain Ukrainian environment. This experience of self-uncertainty is an effect of the ideo-
logical split that the conflict has entailed in the fighters’relationship to other citizens and even to
family and friends, and it appears in encounters with the so-called ‘internal enemies’in everyday
life.
In this light, membership in the RS VUC, a group with unambiguous and clearly articulated
group prototypes as well as high entitativity, offers an opportunity where ‘genuine’Ukrainians
can confirm their social identity through their membership in the group. Through a process
of social categorisation, this study’s participants identify themselves in accordance with the RS
VUC’s group prototypes. According to uncertainty-identity theory,
224
this self-categorisation
and high entitativity leads to in-group favouritism, internalisation of in-group attitudes, and hos-
tile attitudes and behaviour towards threatening others.
225
Amid a precarious social setting characterised by an ‘unreliable’government, weak state insti-
tutions, and most importantly ‘internal enemies’, the RS VUC stands as an ideal solution to
reduce feelings of self-uncertainty. We believe this explains some of its attractiveness.
Nevertheless, the study does not ascribe the reasons for joining RS VUC exclusively to the
need to reduce self-uncertainty; rather, it seeks to emphasise the importance of this social psycho-
logical process in relation to other factors. Our findings also reflect the rational choice theory and
demonstrate that in the face of ideological and political divisions within the society, research par-
ticipants described their group membership as one that provided them with protection, helped
them to conform their identities, and to gain moral and emotional benefits that they could
not enjoy anywhere else. Moreover, RCT may partly explain individual motivations to join
and remain in RS VUC, since participants describe RS VUC as a military unit where they
could rely on their comrades during combat and deal more effectively with the combat related
risks and shared danger. Hence, some participants describe their choice to join RS VUC as a
rational decision where individuals weigh the costs and benefits, and they join RS VUC because
it maximises their chances of survival. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that fighters also
acquired ‘friends for life’who served as social capital after their return to the civilian life.
Yet, most importantly, this case study has revealed that the participants interpret their deci-
sions to join the RS VUC not only in terms of ideological beliefs and the conflict in east
Ukraine but also because membership in the RS VUC offers them a unique opportunity to deter-
mine their social identity in an uncertain environment. Unlike Emmanuel Karagiannis’study on
220
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 3, 4, and 7.
221
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 3, 4, and 5.
222
Participants 8 and 9.
223
Participant 1, 2019; participants 2, 5, and 6.
224
Hogg, ‘Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism’, p. 22.
225
Ibid., pp. 24–5.
22 Khalil Mutallimzada and Kristian Steiner
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volunteer fighters’motivations for joining various Ukrainian battalions,
226
our study has found
that ideology, political-social norms, and emotional attachment serve as appealing motivational
mechanisms due to the perceived self-uncertainty in the wider Ukrainian context. We argue that
social psychological factors should not be neglected, since they prove to be crucial in a society
torn by conflicting beliefs and attitudes, which may lead to identity uncertainty in micro-level
interactions. Hence, our study demonstrates that motivational factors such as ideology, political-
social norms, and emotions can not be fully grasped in isolation from social psychological factors.
Lastly, our research has raised additional research questions demanding further clarification.
Firstly, this study has challenged us to analyse the attractiveness of RS VUC by using theories
dealing with rational choice, social pressure, and emotional energy. Secondly, since also other
armed groups can be said to possess the same qualities as RS VUC, it could be of relevance to
conduct a comparative study, where individual motivations to join other armed groups in
Ukraine are explored. Thirdly, the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, starting in February
2022, and Western military and economic support to Ukraine, have raised research questions
about RS VUC’s and other extremist groups’possible access to heavy weaponry and its conse-
quences in postwar Ukraine.
Acknowledgements. We would like to thank the gatekeepers and key informants who facilitated Khalil Mutallimzada’s
fieldwork. We are also grateful to our research participants for willingly allowing Khalil Mutallimzada to interview them
and for sharing their experiences as fighters. Without their participation, this project would not be possible. Lastly, the
data used in this article has previously been used in Khalil Mutallimzada’s thesis in Peace and Conflict Studies at Malmö
University, Sweden. Khalil Mutallimzada’s fieldwork in Ukraine in 2019 was financially supported by the Swedish
International Development Association (SIDA) under scholarship Dnr. STUD 2018/630.
Disclosure statement. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Neither financial interest nor benefit
has arisen from the direct applications of our research.
Dr Kristian Steiner is Associate Professor in peace and conflict studies in the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö
University, Sweden.
Khalil Mutallimzada is active in the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Sweden.
226
Karagiannis, ‘Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the eastern front’.
Cite this article: Mutallimzada, K., Steiner, K. 2022. Fighters’motivations for joining extremist groups: Investigating the
attractiveness of the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. European Journal of International Security X: 1–23.
https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2022.11
European Journal of International Security 23
https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2022.11 Published online by Cambridge University Press