In the early morning of September 2, residents in the east of Kyiv were awoken by the sound of gunfire in the streets. While the Ukrainian capital has grown accustomed to the sounds of war such as drone engines, air-raid alerts and distant explosions, the sound of shootouts has remained a rarity.
As it turned out, it wasn't Russian invaders doing the shooting, but Ukraine's own intelligence agencies firing at each other. The country's main domestic intelligence agency, the SBU, and its military intelligence outlet, the HUR, had gotten into an altercation when SBU officials showed up at a local apartment with a suspect they had apprehended days prior.
The HUR had been waiting at the scene, demanding the release of the man it considered to be under its protection. A firefight broke out in which three HUR members were injured. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later took to social media to condemn the actions of both agencies, calling the episode "disgraceful." The man at the centre of it all was Stepan Kaplunov, deputy commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a far-right Russian rebel group fighting against the Kremlin in Ukraine.
Kaplunov was taken by the SBU on August 23. According to the intelligence agency, he had secretly been collaborating with Russia's FSB and was meant to play a part in an allegedly foiled assassination attempt on a Russian opposition leader who had visited Kyiv to mark Ukraine's Independence Day.
Kaplunov appeared in a video confessing that he had been approached by the FSB to work as their agent. His commander, RVC leader Denis Nikitin, hit back at the SBU following the video's release, stating that Kaplunov had admitted to the accusations under duress and that nothing incriminating had been found at his apartment.
Kaplunov was eventually released and took to social media to refute his earlier statement, claiming he had been abducted by the SBU as part of a plot to discredit the former head of the HUR and current Head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Budanov.
Whether the charges against Kaplunov are credible, or whether this is simply a case of inter-agency rivalry between the SBU and HUR spilling into the open, remains to be determined. The incident has nonetheless laid bare a dilemma for Ukraine: can it trust the Russian volunteers fighting on its side? What does Kyiv stand to gain from fostering their presence, and do those gains outweigh the risks of infiltration?
Who Are the Men Fighting for a "Free Russia"?
Although they carry symbolic propaganda value, the number of Russian citizens who have joined the ranks of the Ukrainian military has been hard to narrow down. Most estimates put it at a couple hundred to low thousands at best.
The units' self-presentation as ethnic Russians rebelling against Moscow is central to their propaganda value, though independent verification of every member's citizenship and origin isn't possible: recruitment vetting is opaque, and Ukraine's military intelligence apparatus, which backs these units, has its own interest in emphasising their "Russianness" for information-war purposes.
Several groups have formed over the past years, but only two have risen to prominence: the more moderate Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL) and the right-wing extremist Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC).
