{"id":89094,"date":"2025-05-10T03:52:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T03:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/89094\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T03:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T03:52:18","slug":"ukrainian-partisans-behind-russian-lives-wont-stop-fighting-if-theres-a-ceasefire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/89094\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian Partisans Behind Russian Lives Won’t Stop Fighting if There’s a Ceasefire"},"content":{"rendered":"

KYIV, Ukraine\u2014On April 26,<\/a> Ukrainian partisans operating in the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine knocked out a railway transformer near Stanytsia Luhanska, a Russian-captured town in easternmost Ukraine that intersects a critical Russian supply line. On April 16, more railway hardware was set afire<\/a> in occupied Melitopol in\u00a0the Zaporizhzhia region, a\u00a0key transport hub for Russian troops and transit point for ammunition, fuel, and other military kit heading to the front near Robotyne and Kamianske. And, on April 13<\/a>, a pro-Ukraine partisan cell sabotaged a Russian tank in Donetsk oblast by setting it on fire.<\/p>\n

On its Telegram channel<\/a>, the pro-Ukrainian underground movement called Atesh (\u201cfire\u201d in Ukrainian and Russian) claimed responsibility<\/a> for all three attacks. It\u2019s further proof that Ukrainian operatives are more engaged and efficacious than ever in the \u201ctemporarily occupied territories,\u201d as Ukraine refers to Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Their goal: to snarl the workings of Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s war machine by wrecking its infrastructure, murdering its officers, and tying down occupation personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout every other day there\u2019s an act of sabotage carried out by pro-Ukraine forces,\u201d Yuriy Matsiyevsky, a professor at Ukraine\u2019s Ostroh Academy National University who studies<\/a> Ukraine\u2019s resistance movement, told\u00a0Foreign Policy. He cited assassinations, ambushes, arson, poisonings, kidnappings, and bombings of communication and energy infrastructure. \u201cEven though Russian control has become ever tighter, the Ukrainian underground applies consistent pressure. They make it harder for Russia to communicate, to move and transport people and supplies to the front,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the event of a cease-fire that cedes these territories to Russia, Matsiyevsky believes that these forces would fight on. \u201cThe territories occupied by Russia are already under its de facto control,\u201d he wrote to Foreign Policy in an email. \u201cRussia is pursuing a genocidal policy against Ukrainians in those areas. The recognition of its de facto control does not change the reality on the ground for Ukrainians, which is why resistance will continue\u2014either until Ukraine regains these territories, or, as was the case with the occupation of western Ukraine in 1939, until the resistance is forcibly suppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s guerrilla warfare, which Ukrainians know from World War II,\u201d said Vladimir Zhemchugov, a Kyiv-based agent of the Ukrainian Armed Forces\u2019 special operations branch, who had been active in the Luhansk partisan movement after the 2014 invasion of the Donbas. He said there are about a dozen groups, including Atesh, that are regularly disrupting Russian operations behind enemy lines\u2014and, ever more so, reaching deep into the hinterland of Russia proper.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s covert resistance in the occupied regions constitutes yet another theater of warfare beyond the dug-in southern and eastern fronts, in addition to, for example, the Black Sea theater, the technology race, and the public relations rivalry in the world beyond Ukraine and Russia. Like so much of Ukraine\u2019s defense, it is self-organized, young, tech-savvy, and includes many women. Ukraine\u2019s covert operations sporadically upend Russian logistics and cause delays in Moscow\u2019s deliveries of equipment and spare parts, as well as divert Russian occupation personnel from duties elsewhere. They carry out hits and\u2014just as critically\u2014pass along intelligence that Ukrainian drone units use to target Russian military assets, including radars<\/a>, anti-aircraft systems, helicopters, and ships.<\/p>\n

Since so much about the covert partisans is necessarily restricted\u2014for obvious reasons of operatives\u2019 safety\u2014Ukraine\u2019s security services rely on informal sources, like Zhemchugov, to tell their story to Ukrainians. Zhemchugov isn\u2019t just anybody in the world of the Ukrainian underground; he\u2019s known as \u201cUkraine\u2019s first partisan.\u201d An ethnic Russian born in Luhansk, he experienced the Russian military\u2019s terror firsthand when it took his city in the summer of 2014. The Ukrainian army retreated, but smatterings of then-unorganized resisters remained behind. Zhemchugov, 43 years old at the time, sold his plastics company in Georgia to buy weaponry from Russians on the black market and proceeded, with a handful of like-minded fighters, to harass the Russian forces: with sniper fire, mines, and the sabotage of supplies.<\/p>\n

Only in late 2014 did Ukrainian authorities accept the autonomous saboteurs as their own and begin handling them as agents. Zhemchugov\u2019s cell completed 25 operations before he stumbled on a land mine in 2015, which blew off both of his arms and blinded him. In Russian captivity for months, Zhemchugov experienced the grim fate of captured partisans: beatings, starvation, torture. Eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange, he underwent surgery after surgery in German hospitals, where he ultimately regained his eyesight. Today, he wears prosthetic arms. Upon his return to Ukraine, he assisted Ukrainian special operations to grow its portfolio of agents and foment civilian resistance to the occupation.<\/p>\n

Today, Zhemchugov said, the armed partisan movement includes roughly 3,000 operatives, while the civilian resisters waging disobedience number about 10,000 (the latter write anti-Russian graffiti, post Ukrainian flags in public places, burn Russian propaganda, and, in any way they can, slow the processes of Russification). Three branches of the Ukrainian state run agents: Ukraine\u2019s main internal security agency, the military intelligence service, and Rukh Oporu<\/a> of the Special Operations Forces Command. Some of the movements have names\u2014such as, in addition to Atesh, the Donetsk Partisans, Luhansk Partisans, Crimea Combat Seagulls, Mariupol Resistance<\/a>, Yellow Ribbon Movement, SROK, and Zla Mavka\u2014while others are entirely covert and unnamed.<\/p>\n

Atesh is\u00a0the largest single force behind the front. Born in\u00a0September 2022 in Crimea,\u00a0it began operations with the following proclamation<\/a> on Telegram: \u201cWe\u00a0are Atesh, an\u00a0underground movement made up\u00a0of\u00a0Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, and Russians. We\u00a0have infiltrated the Russian army and are working to\u00a0destroy it\u00a0from within. We\u00a0will expose coordinates and data on\u00a0supply depots, soldiers, and equipment. We\u00a0will sabotage warehouses and command centers.\u201d Atesh\u2019s Telegram channel now has around 45,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n

Another unit is the all-female Zla Mavka movement that emerged in the occupied city of Melitopol in early 2023, and is named after a female spirit from Ukrainian folk mythology. The members\u2014called mavkas\u2014operate anonymously and independently of one another. They paste up posters and leaflets, counter Russian propaganda, and do whatever else they can to keep the occupiers on edge, ensuring that they never feel completely secure. But that\u2019s not all. The women lace Russian food with poisons: One such event killed 12 Russian<\/a> troops. Yet another group, the Crimean Combat Seagulls, poisoned and killed<\/a> 24 Russian soldiers by lacing arsenic and strychnine into their vodka.<\/p>\n

The on-the-ground operatives say that Russian security is omnipresent<\/a> and that their movements are highly proscribed. But this doesn\u2019t stop the intelligence gathering that happens constantly, they say. Ukraine\u2019s digital ministry created<\/a> the chatbot eVorog (\u201ceEnemy\u201d) in Telegram to report the movements of Russian military and equipment to the Ukrainian security services. \u201cIf you see Russian equipment or occupiers,\u201d it tells its users, \u201csend the exact geolocation of their location, as well as photos and videos.\u201d A unit within the ministry then verifies the sender\u2019s identity through the Diia app<\/a>, which gives Ukrainian citizens access to their digital documents, such as ID card, foreign biometric passport, student card, and driver\u2019s license.<\/p>\n

This technology has paid off handsomely: Just recently, on May 2, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched its largest drone attack of 2025 on occupied Crimea, hitting four Russian airfields on the peninsula at Saky, Kacha, Hvardiiske, and Dzhankoi. According to Ukrainian sources<\/a>, the hits took out at least four radars used for missile guidance and two S-300V long-range surface-to-air missile systems, which \u201cdisrupted Russian air defense capabilities in Crimea.\u201d On May 5, Sevastopol\u2019s Russian \u201cgovernor\u201d called off the May 9 Victory Day parade to commemorate the Soviet victory in World War II due to safety risks.<\/p>\n

In February, Atesh announced on Telegram<\/a> that the Russian army command was withdrawing select air defense missile units from Crimea due to the targeted Ukrainian drone attacks. In the same message, Atesh claimed that it still has agents within the Russian Armed Forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia\u2019s counterintelligence system in the temporarily occupied territories is very well developed,\u201d Kyrylo, a special forces operative who asked to remain anonymous, told Foreign Policy. Under these conditions, \u201cit\u2019s extremely difficult to control an entire network of agents,\u201d he said, and often they fall into enemy hands. Even possession<\/a> of a telephone with the encrypted Signal messaging app is grounds for arrest. Because the Ukraine-Russia borderlands are so militarized, he said, Ukraine ferries the partisans supplies through the Baltics and then Russia proper.<\/p>\n

Since they are not officially soldiers, underground agents captured by Russians are not treated according to Geneva Conventions stipulations. (This said, bona fide Ukrainian troops are also regularly tortured and otherwise mistreated<\/a>.) The Russian courts hand down draconian sentences, even for children who resist the regime. In April in Donetsk, for example, a 17-year-old was sentenced to six years for \u201ctreason,\u201d namely supplying the Ukrainian internal security agency with information<\/a> on Russian troop locations.<\/p>\n

For some time now, the security services have been expanding their reach beyond Ukraine\u2014into Russian territory, even as far as Moscow, as the April 25 assassination<\/a> of a Russian general proved again. \u201cWe\u2019re exporting the war to inside Russia,\u201d said Kyrylo, the special operations agent, who noted that Atesh is one organization that operates inside Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ukrainian underground movement is at least several times more effective than Russian sabotage actions on our territory,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s because [the occupied territories] are their home, it\u2019s rightfully theirs, and they\u2019re being suppressed.\u201d Despite losses on the hot fronts, Ukraine is prevailing in other theaters of the war, including covert operations behind the front lines.<\/p>\n

The determination of these partisan movements has lent Ukraine\u2019s negotiators additional leverage in any cease-fire talks with Russia. But they could also complicate such negotiations, too. Even in the event of a cease-fire, there\u2019s good reason to think they would soldier on, even if their commanders order that they lay down their arms. The de facto loss of any of these territories, or even parts of them, would be a very bitter pill for those who have risked their lives to liberate their homelands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine\u2014On April 26, Ukrainian partisans operating in the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine knocked out a railway transformer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[18904,2000,299,657,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-89094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eastern-europe","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-ukraine","12":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114481512014289383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}