Recruits are mainly Russian citizens who hope that helping Ukraine defeat Vladimir Putin will be a first step towards ending his rule in the Kremlin.
Their numbers aren’t clear, nor their effectiveness as a fighting force.
They have claimed some successes, including a cross-border incursion into Russia earlier this year at the time of Putin’s re-election.
But for Dadin, the experience wasn’t quite as he’d hoped.
He felt that some of the missions his unit were sent on were “pointless” in any military sense.
He described one battle where he ended up pinned down for eight hours by Russian fire in a bomb crater, with a drone trying to drop a grenade on him, whilst a fellow volunteer soldier bled to death.
And like many Ukrainian soldiers, he was exhausted, fighting with barely any days off and limping from a wound to his hip.
I wondered whether he might leave, but Dadin was clear his conscience would not allow him to sit “on the sidelines”.
Not whilst Ukrainians were being killed, as he put it, “by Russian criminals”.
“I tried to stop Russia – but did I do it? No,” he berated himself in one of our last chats. “And thousands of people have been killed because I did not do enough.”
Those who sent him to fight, disagree. “Ildar was strong, brave, principled and honest,” the Civic Council wrote. “That’s how we should remember him.”
