Engagés volontaires de la guerre du Donbass. Les motivations pour combattre des deux côtés de la ligne de front

From the accounts of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian volunteers, the sociological portrait is drawn of these combatants with a focus on the similarities and differences of their backgrounds. Attention is paid to the feelings of belonging that characterize these two groups; a deep attachment to Ukraine for the first, and a vague, regional sense of identity for the second. Light is shed on the perceptions of the conflict that motivated the decision to volunteer. Whereas the pro-Ukrainian combatants share the perception of Russia as an aggressor, the pro-Russian combatants see the war in geopolitical terms as a global confrontation with the West, in which Russia was ?forced? to intervene in Ukraine. The members of both groups tend to describe their participation as the accomplishment of a patriotic duty in a purely idealistic sense, but they disqualify however the participation of their fellow combatants, and even more that of members of the «enemy» group who are dehumanized and presented as being blinded by propaganda, and tend to attribute their participation to primarily economic motives.