Russian People's Liberation Army

The Russian Liberation People's Army (Russian: Русская освободительная народная армия, РОНА; transcription: Russkaya osvoboditel'naya narodnaya armiya, RONA), also known as the Kaminski Brigade or the Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA, was a collaborationist formation composed of Russian nationals from the territory of the Lokot Autonomy in the German-occupied parts of Soviet Union. It was known for loose discipline, drunkenness and extreme brutality, which shocked even hardened SS veterans.

It was founded in late 1941 as auxiliary police militia with 200 personnel. By mid-1943, it had grown to 10,000–12,000 men, equipped with captured Soviet tanks and artillery, led by Bronislav Kaminski. With a forced mobilization of the locals to his militia in 1942, Kaminski turned it into a sort of a small regular army of the Lokot Autonomy, or the "Lokot Republic", and into a "private" army subordinate personally to him.

After Germany lost the Battle of Kursk in August 1943, RONA personnel retreated to the territory of Byelorussia, especially to the Lepel area of Vitebsk, where they participated in German security operations, committing numerous atrocities against the civilian population. The unit was absorbed into the Waffen-SS in June 1944. After Operation Bagration (June to August 1944), the RONA retreated further west, and by the end of July 1944, the remains of the Kaminski unit (estimated between 3 —4 and 6—7 thousand) assembled at the SS training camp at Neuhammer (now Świętoszów). On the base of the unit, the SS leadership planned to form the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS RONA (1st Russian) (29. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS „RONA” (russische Nr. 1)). The Warsaw Uprising began on the same day that Heinrich Himmler signed an order for the establishment of the division (1 August 1944). The division formation was never implemented and part of the brigade was sent to Warsaw, where the unit again committed numerous atrocities. Kaminski was later executed on the orders of Himmler.

By August 27, 1944, having found the brigade too undisciplined and unreliable, the German commanders removed it from Warsaw. The unit was sent to Slovakia, and deployed against Slovak partisans. After the end of October 1944, the brigade was disbanded and the remaining personnel absorbed into Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army. After the war, some former members of the brigade and supporters of the Lokot Autonomy formed a partisan movement, which slowly degenerated into organized crime groups and was suppressed in 1951.