Russian Liberation Army

The Russian Liberation Army (German: Russische Befreiungsarmee; Russian: Русская освободительная армия, romanized: Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya, abbr. РОА, ROA), also known as the Vlasov army (Власовская армия, Vlasovskaya armiya) was a collaborationist formation, primarily composed of Soviet defectors, that fought under German command during World War II. From January 1945, the army was led by Andrey Vlasov, a Red Army general who had defected, and members of the army are often referred to as Vlasovtsy (Russian: Власовцы, lit. 'Vlasovites'). In 1944, it became known as the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (Russian: Вооружённые силы Комитета освобождения народов России, romanized: Vooruzhonnyye sily Komiteta osvobozhdeniya narodov Rossii, abbreviated as Russian: ВС КОНР, romanized: VS KONR).

Vlasov agreed to collaborate with Nazi Germany after having been captured on the Eastern Front. The soldiers of the ROA command were mostly former Soviet prisoners of war but also included some White Russian émigrés, some of whom were veterans of the anti-communist White Army from the Russian Civil War (1917–23) and previously served on the Eastern Front. The political platform of the ROA was formulated mainly by Vlasov and his associates, who were products of Soviet society, so the declared principles of the Vlasovites were anti-capitalist, right of the nations to self-determination and devotion to the ideals of the Russian Revolution of 1917, while they tried to avoid Nazi antisemitism and chauvinism and form a political movement independent of the Nazi control.