From the first days of the war I started to act and my smartphone became my weapon, in every sense of the word. I don't know what would have happened to me if they had found it with its geolocation tags. I probably wouldn't be writing this."
Vyacheslav Cherniavský, 28, one of the partisans in Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, an area in part still invaded by Russia and with another already free, details his day-to-day war in La Vanguardia; his work incognito between bombs, sabotage and more, behind enemy lines. Keep on:
"I tried to go out as little as possible so that the invaders wouldn't see me, and geography played a role in that, since my house is near one of the main roads where large columns of the occupants - between 25 and 40 units - passed, which I counted, identified and sent to the bot. And I also did it with the night bombardments with S300 missiles from the Oleishki area, where I determined the distance and location of the launch site through echo and sound. During the day I made photographic records of their air defenses and also received information from family and friends about the location of their equipment, control points, where and when they operated, and placed all this information on a map.
His story, however, is no exception.
The start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 is getting further and further away. The war does not end and since then there have been thousands of dead and millions of refugees from the conflict, in addition to kilometer-long fronts of a war filled with trenches closer to those of the First World War a century ago than to those that could be expected in the 21st century. And yet, almost nothing is known about the partisan struggle within occupied territory that Moscow considers another part of its Federation.
But there are.
“We are talking about illegal activities in occupied territories in the face of a tough enemy counterintelligence regime that would not have been possible without the significant support of the local population, which provides information, weapons and the necessary explosives, although in most cases violent resistance is a separate part of the war in which, in addition to the local population, members of the Ukrainian special services with the appropriate knowledge participate. The operations are complicated by the fact that the territory is mostly a meadow without forests where the guerrillas would be more successful", summarizes Ígor Semivolos, considered one of the most important local experts in the resistance, to La Vanguardia.
Nevertheless, the resistance continues, with its sabotage and distraction actions, even assassinations of prominent collaborators of Russia. And their last confirmed action was in June, according to the Institute for the Study of War, with sabotage on the crucial railway line in eastern Crimea.
Although she is not the only one.
Also in June, local businessman and collaborator Serguei Didovodiuk was assassinated in Mikhailivka with a car bomb. In May, an attack was made against the house of a police command in Melitòpol. In April, a pro-Russian local leader died after his vehicle exploded in Novà Kakhovka. In March they tried it in Mariupol with the police chief imposed by Russia, Mikhaïl Moskvin. And in February they succeeded in Enerhodar, near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, against Yevgeny Kuzmin, Minister of the Interior of the occupied zone. In January, in Berdiansk, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, one of the organizers of the referendum in favor of Russia, was hospitalized after a bomb attack.
Actions don't stop.
And all of them, the Institute for the Study of War insists to this newspaper, are just "the Ukrainian partisan attacks verified using visual evidence, remote sensing data, corroborated by sources in Russia and Ukraine...
There are others reported that have not reached this threshold and, thus, it is likely that these data are a small subset of all the real ones”.
These data allow us to distinguish, apart from this, different phases of partisan intensity since February 24, 2022, since the beginning of the Russian invasion more than a year ago, and the summer of last year and the first months of this one stand out above all. Especially, for actions with explosives.
"At the beginning of the occupation, guerrilla actions were mainly spontaneous, a reaction to the violence committed by the enemy against the civilian population. They were often an act of desperation and over time this guerrilla movement became structured. For the Government, the main task is the liberation of the Ukrainian territories from the Russian invaders. The guerrillas coordinate their actions with the local governments forced to move to the free territories. Many times, however, people act on their own spontaneously, making the decision under the influence of circumstances," says Semivolos. Partly because it is believed to make betrayal more difficult, he adds.
A very recent example: on the coast of the Sea of Azov, two teenagers attacked a Russian soldier and a collaborator and were killed by a sniper.
This is how there continues to be resistance and non-cooperation prominently in Zaporizhia and Crimea and less so in Donbass, it is stated. But also, it is admitted, a resistance that is not so intense now because they are under pressure with constant raids and a ferret control of movements.
Felip Daza, professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, specifies from his sources on the ground, moreover, as in recent months there is even more linguistic pressure in the face of non-violent resistance. Because civil-military cooperation is a whole in one that still works, it is insisted, although not without problems.
In the areas of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia, ZminaHuman Rights Center estimates that there are more than 150 political prisoners captured and deported. Alternative Human Rights Center seconded it.
But even in these conditions, the sabotage of trains, attacks against collaborators and patrols or the precise missiles against camps of Russian equipment and ammunition, which would be impossible without adjustments on the ground, demonstrate, it is pointed out, that the partisan resistance continues.
"Of course I would do it again despite the risk and danger involved. It was worth it. The life I had under the occupation taught me a lot, but the main lesson was that freedom has no price, that you have to fight for freedom until the end", concludes the young partisan Cherniavskí.
