Abstract
Why the established political parties in Ukraine failed to create party militias in the war in Donbas? Even the delegated wars, when the external actor empowers the rebel proxies against the incumbent, are regularly fought by the domestic political parties' militias, which often constitute the main rebel groups in the war. On the other hand, the political parties loyal to the state form pro-government militias.
That was the case in Lebanon, Bosnia, and many other armed conflicts. The party militias on both sides of the conflict are frequently the primary agents of political violence.
However, the situation in Ukraine had been different. The populist political parties supporting the Russian-backed anti-Ukrainian rebellion, such as the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) or Progressive Socialists (PSPU), failed to create rebel groups despite their political support to the rebel cause and attempts to mobilize its sympathizers.
The same failure concerned the pro-Ukrainian political parties, such as the nationalist-populist Svoboda ("Freedom") party that mobilized the Ukrainian activists to the voluntary battalions fighting the Russian proxies in Donbas since April 2014. This paper contributes to the discussion on the mobilization of populist political parties to large-scale political violence and the reasons for their failure.