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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with war veterans in Donbas, court records, war memoirs, and social network data, this paper analyses the informal economy of war and its implication for state formation in Ukraine since 2014.

Paper long abstract:

Since the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014, informal pro-government militias and charities crowdfunding military supplies have been central to the Ukrainian war effort. Mobilizing networks of nationalists and former Maidan revolutionaries, the militias strengthened the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their operations in Donbas, while military charities supplied everything from food and technical gear, to drones, vehicles, ammunition and light weapons, to make up for deficient army logistics. In 2014-15, this informal economy of war increased the efficiency of pro-government forces in Donbas, but also gave militias a certain autonomy from the state even when the state succeeded in regularizing them. The cooperation on which this informal economy of war thrived, created densely interconnected civic networks linking veteran groups with political parties, Western-funded NGOs, and state institutions. By late 2021, even the most anti-government, right-wing networks of volunteer fighters and activists were tightly integrated with Ukrainian political elites and various branches of the executive. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has galvanized these networks anew. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with Donbas war veterans and activists, court records, war memoirs, and social network analysis of author’s database of connections among key players in the political economy of war since February 2022. It describes and analyzes the role of the informal economy of war in the formation of new alliances between armed groups and political patrons, parties and movements on the right since 2014, and their changing relationship to different parts of the Ukrainian state.