Russian Volunteer Corps: who joins it and what I ask them about

Updated July 30, 2026

The RVC is made up of russian citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side. I record interviews with them and publish them in full: the open playlist holds 46 conversations, and any of them can be listened to again and checked. Below is how these recordings come about, what is never asked in them and what they are for.

Who joins it

These are people who decided to fight against the army of their own country. They arrive by different routes: one surrendered and asked to go further from there, another crossed the border on his own, a third had been living outside russia for years already. They have less in common than it looks from the outside, and that is exactly why every conversation has to start from scratch.

In russia the RVC is designated a terrorist organization. It is on no terrorist or sanctions list of the United States or the European Union. I state both lines together so that it is clear whose definition each one is — it can be checked against the official lists in a couple of minutes.

How an interview goes

The person agrees himself. Nobody is brought to me, and refusing changes nothing for him — it is not a condition of joining and not a loyalty test.

The conversation runs long, with no script and no questions agreed in advance. It comes out whole: I do not splice an answer so that it sounds different from the way it was said, and nothing is published if a man changes his mind after the filming.

Faces and names are open here — unlike conversations with prisoners, these people fight publicly and gave their names themselves. Anything to do with their families, on the other hand, always stays off camera.

What I never ask about

Where the unit is stationed, where it is going and what it is armed with. Names, addresses and workplaces of relatives left behind in russia. Nothing about what the unit is planning.

There is one reason and it is not about journalism: the person has parents on the other side of the border, and a careless answer costs more than any episode.

Why I publish the RVC interviews

For a viewer in russia this is the only place where a person like this speaks for himself and at length, instead of being retold in somebody else’s words on the news. For a viewer in Ukraine it is evidence that part of russian society is fighting against its own army, and that this is not an abstraction but several hundred specific biographies.

The same conversations explain where the people in other units like this come from — next to them are the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion, where the interviews work the same way. And how these people are exchanged is a separate conversation.