Brian M Downing
Ukrainian offensives around Kharkiv and Kherson have retaken swathes of land. They’ve also snared tens of thousands of prisoners – a startling and useful development. Several thousand have been recruited into a NATO-backed formation that will fight Russia, effect further territorial fragmentation, and ultimately depose Vladimir Putin.
This new fighting formation is called the Free Russian Army (FRA). It’s rapidly becoming the protégé of British and American intelligence services. Both are helping with money, training, and strategic planning. Operations will begin before the end of the year.
Bases
The FRA draws chiefly from the long and growing ranks of disaffected soldiers – European, Muslim, and Asian. They’re outraged by their superiors’ lies and incompetence, poor training, and abysmal logistics. They’re awed by enemy skill, weaponry, and determination.
Initially, discontent seemed limited to a few dozen POWs but after careful filtration, Ukrainian intelligence found it widespread and intense. Several dozen Russian prisoners, some highly decorated, recruited others. In a few cases, BTG rank and file switched sides en masse and presently stand by with their unit’s armor and engineering equipment. Recruiters have been instrumental in identifying hardliners and perpetrators of war crimes, who are removed for trials.
Presently, the FRA can field about four fully-equipped BTGs. They’ve adopted names from Russian political history such as the Herzen and Plekhanov Battalions. Videos show soldiers jubilantly tearing off their white armbands and taping on blue ones, overspraying the Zs on vehicles with Vs – a nod to that letter used by democratic troops during WW2.
Operations
Ukraine is tight-lipped about impending FRA ops. It’s thought they will not be sent into combat against units still loyal to Putin. Instead, they may be used to cross into Belarus from positions north of Kyiv. They will rally Belarusians to their side, end Lukashenko’s rule, and take Belarus out of the Russian sphere.
A hundred or so FRA soldiers have been handpicked for guerrilla training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They will be deployed to Finland and the Baltic States. They may simply pose threats, though training at the home of US Special Forces suggests raids into Russia are in the works.
Some will make use of cell phones and social media to urge Russian soldiers to desert or at least refuse orders. Others will infiltrate back into Russia and form ties with urban resistance groups, which have strengthened since the mobilization order last month. One such group calls itself the New People’s Will. Another, comprising mostly women, goes by the Zasulich Brigade. A fiercely dedicated cell, the Sons of Nechaev, vows to strike Russian military and industrial targets.
FRA ops could reach beyond Europe. Some Asian troops are thought to be earmarked for Kazakhstan from which they will attack nearby Russian military targets and oil pipelines. Muslims from Dagestan and Chechnya will begin operations in the Caucasus. They are negotiating with rebel groups in Syria to attack Russian bases at Tartus and Latakia.
Goals
The FRA intends to bring down Vladimir Putin and hold fair elections under EU supervision. However, it does not plan to join the EU or enter NATO. It seeks a middle path between the West and China, which it views with suspicion.
Asian and Muslim contingents seek true autonomy for Tatar, Tuvan, and Buryratian homelands stretching into Central Asia. The homelands may form a confederation with Kazakhstan and other independent states. They too will seek to triangulate between the West and China.
The FRA’s greatest secret
It doesn’t exist. That’s not an oblique way of saying it’s hush-hush, clandestine, spook stuff. The FRA simply doesn’t exist. Downing Reports made the whole thing up. Well, most of it. Ukraine has taken tens of thousands of POWs and may haul in a lot more west the Dnipro in coming days. However, there’s no reason to think a large number of them will fight against their homeland.
Kyiv could nonetheless claim to have a sizable FRA at its disposal. And NATO support would hardly be a stretch. The ordinary paranoia of Russian security bureaus has intensified with looming defeat. They labor fearfully beneath a siege mentality. They fear Western intrigues and see them everywhere, and recall Russians fighting for the Reich and before that, for anti-Bolshevik armies.
Belief in the FRA will amplify institutionalized paranoia and murderousness in Putin’s state. The FSB will become even closer to the Cheka and Smersh. Putin will find his Dzerzhinsky and Beria. Purges will expand, army and state will tremble. Resistance will be brutally crushed, but it will grow.
Is Downing Reports giving anything away here by saying the FRA doesn’t exist? Russian hot shots probably don’t read it. If they did, they might never have invaded Ukraine. Anyway, in Putin’s fetid, fretful bureaus, Downing Reports might be interpreted as a cunning disseminator of twisted disinformation, first asserting then denying the FRA’s existence.
Its director is a veteran with known ties to Special Forces personnel dating back to the seventies. He was a protégé of an OSS Russian hand and later a doyen of Cold War strategic studies. (Is it coincidence both were yankee blue bloods?) The director is a product of Georgetown’s Foreign Service School which was founded by a confirmed Russophobe and associate of Joseph McCarthy. His arcane graduate work was done at the University of Chicago, home to Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz, Leo Strauss, and the notoriously reactionary Committee on Social Thought. The implications for the FRA’s existence are obvious.
©2022 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.