The self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) and “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LPR) have announced they are creating the “Unified Army of Novorossiya” (OAN), according to a statement on DNR Today, which is said to be “the official site and press center of the Government and Supreme Council of the DPR.”

The statement said the “armies of the DPR and LPR” would merge into the OAN which will “enable the armed forces of Novorosssiya to resolve the most complex tasks in defending their native land from Ukrainian fascism and also help bring liberation to the land which was enslaved by Nazi filth.”

The “Law on the Special Status of Certain Districts in Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” provides for “the establishment of local militias” but it was not clear whether that meant regular police or DPR-style militias, and whether there would be armed forces.

The “Novorossiya” statement is as follows (translation by The Interpreter)

Fulfilling the will of the people, expressed by representatives of the deputies’ corps of Novorissya, and also, taking into account the extreme necessity of creating united armed forces of Novorossiya, enabling the resolution of the task of both defense of the republics of the DPR and LPR, and also the ensuing offensive, in order to liberate the peoples of Novorossiya and Ukraine from the yoke of Nazism and oligarchs,

We, commanders of the voluntary military formations of the peoples’ republics, acting on the basis of the population will, 1) passed a decision to create the United Armed Forces of Novorossiya 2) passed a decision to appoint Lt. Gen. Ivan Anatolyevich Korsun as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; 3) passed a decision to assign Lt. Gen. Ivan Anatolyevich Korsun, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Novorossiya to conduct a complex of necessary organizational activities to implement this resolution in the shortest time possible.

So now the aspirational “Novorossiya” has a united parliament and a united army, but the two “people’s republics” have not merged and remain as distinct “city-states.”

Note that the job of overseeing the reorganization of the forces of “Novorossiya,” once said by Prime Minister Aleksandr Zakharchenko to be offered to Col. Igor Strelkov, is now given to another figure, Lt. Gen. Korsun.

Not much has been heard from him before as the independent Russian news site grani.ru says and yet a recent interview with him in the local media reveals him to be an extreme hardliner not only with aspirations beyond the Lugansk and Donetsk to other western Ukrainian cities, but with determination to install a Soviet-style economy with nationalization of all private industry and draconian police practices to root out corruption, starting in ‘Novorossiya”s own ranks. (See our Russia This Week blog for excerpts.)

The statement on the OAN has been signed by Lt. Gen. Igor Bezler, commander of the Gorlovka Militia, Aleksandr Khodakovsky, commander of the Vostok Battalion, Aleksandr Matyushin, commander of the Varyag Battalion; Konstantin Kuzmin, commander of the Shakhtyorsk Division, and V. Khalin.

The first two are well known to regional and Western media, but the last three much less so. (See our Russia This Week blog for more background and the reaction of deposed Col. Igor Strelkov.)

Nothing is said in the statement about Aleksandr Zakharchenko, who was brought in as “prime minister” or the current commander-in-chief, Vladimir Kononov, who had the nom de guerre “Tsar,” which has interpreted by some to mean that a coup has taken place in “Novorossiya.”