“Resistance is always a risk, but security and risk are two incomprehensible concepts for those of us who experience life with invaders. When Kherson fell, we organized in small groups, although most of us acted individually in various forms of resistance, such as sabotaging the occupation authorities, refusing to cooperate, publishing patriotic pamphlets, monitoring their positions…”, Viacheslav Cherniavskyi, 28, explains to this newspaper.
And it is that part of the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, is free after eight and a half months of Russian occupation. And knowing how its population resisted so many Russian months also gives unexpected clues about the path of success of the Ukrainian resistance against Russia.
Surprise: if you talk about nonviolent resistance, it is partly due to Russian action itself.
“When asked about the resistance of the locals, they answer that there was hardly any, because they associate it exclusively with the armed struggle and their life was without weapons, although with a fierce opposition to the Russians for dominating the symbolic space”, Oksana Mikheieva and Serhiy Danylov relate in a recent report of interviews with local population of areas occupied until recently.
And here, “although both men and women actively resisted the occupiers,” they continue, “Ukrainian women became the face of the opposition. They were more active. And it is that if the Russian soldiers treated the men as a threat, the women were not treated seriously, probably due to the patriarchal nature of the occupation regime. This has contributed to diversify the means of expression of resistance and dissidence”.
This, it is explained, has given rise to an influential Ukrainian non-violent resistance, whether it is to remove the Russian flags and put the Ukrainian one in their place, to graffiti symbols of Ukraine in the occupied public space, paint monuments identified with Russia, distribute leaflets, stickers and yellow and blue ties or wear shirts with traditional embroidery of the country and claim the Ukrainian language.
All this when "it is known that the main task of the Russian occupiers is to destroy any sign of Ukrainian identity: books, language, religion, etc.", explains to La Vanguardia Igor Semyvolos, from the School for the Construction of Peace in Ukraine, considered one of the greatest experts on the resistance, and who draws on first-hand information to confirm it: he works in recently free areas.
“An elderly woman, a unique expert in her field, agreed to work with the occupiers only after they said 'Glory to Ukraine!'; Some schoolteachers refused to work with the Russians despite the risk and secretly continued to teach children at home using the Ukrainian curriculum”, the study by Mikheieva and Danylov specifies by way of example. “Every act of sabotage immediately inspires people to new acts of nonviolent resistance. People are inspired by the examples of desperate people”, sums up Semyvolos.
Ukrainians living under Russian occupation also have one of their mainstays in the language: “They use a dialect or an accent that allows them to distinguish friends from enemies. The surzhik, a mixture of Ukrainian and standard Russian, has lost its negative connotation and instead of indicating a person with little education, it identifies the local, and therefore indicates that he is trustworthy.
On the other hand, it is recognized that in recent months the situation has deteriorated with more forced disappearances and deportations and more military mobilization. Also because there is greater linguistic pressure in favor of Russian.
"There is still resistance and non-cooperation in areas like Zaporizhia and Crimea and less so in the Donbass," summarizes here after much work on the ground Felip Daza, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. In fact, he himself, in a recent investigation for the ICIP in Barcelona, explained how these actions are generally distinguished by being informal and decentralized, in networks based on social trust and how, since the invasion, they have seen three waves.
From February 24 to the end of March 2022, massive protests and symbolic actions and nonviolent intervention such as physically interfering with the Russian advance, building barricades, or manipulating traffic signals stood out.
Since April 2022, due to increasing repression, clandestine protest actions through graffiti, hanging flags, yellow and blue ties in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and the first action of non-cooperation, such as not selling grain to the occupiers or hiding before their mobilization. Until June with special intensity in Jerson and Zaporiyia territories.
Finally, from November 2022 to today, there is the consolidation of the yellow ribbon campaign, cultural resistance and actions in defense of human rights and the participation of minority communities such as the Crimean Tatars are also key.
The nonviolent resistance of the first phases of the invasion, like this, is not so intense now, admits Semyvolos. There are constant raids, searches, phone checks, demands to obtain a Russian passport, tight control of citizens' movements between settlements and document control on bridges, cities and towns, he says.
Under this pressure, many pro-Ukrainians were forced to leave the occupied territories, and those who remained are under constant surveillance. Furthermore, there are synergies between armed and nonviolent resistance, at least at the level of information, explain the experts consulted, a reality that still goes largely unnoticed in the West, and is key behind Russian lines, they insist.
“We will know more after the release. Now, for security reasons, there is little information and it is understandable because they are illegal activities in the occupied territories in the face of a harsh enemy counter-espionage regime”, concludes Semyvolos.
