Times journalists followed the members of one such group
MARIUPOL, UKRAINE — Paramilitary groups are actively preparing for a Russian invasion near Ukraine’s front line with Russia-backed separatists. The Ukrainian government insists that independent armed groups have no part in its war in the east, and that these fighters don’t exist there. But New York Times journalists recently contacted three paramilitary groups that claim to operate near the front line of the conflict. One allowed us to film them this month. We followed Ruslan Postovoit and Yuriy Ulshin, who first took up arms in 2014 as part of the nationalist volunteer movement that was formed during the protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Square. Now, they are preparing for a possible larger war with Russia and commanding a unit of about a dozen paramilitary fighters. “If a full-scale war breaks out tomorrow in Ukraine, there will be tens if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers, just like me,” said Mr. Postovoit, who goes by the call name “Pauk” or “Spider.” By 2015, the government said it had mostly disarmed all volunteer battalions and integrated the fighters into the official armed forces.
