Ukrainian partisans in the occupied areas of the country are stepping up attacks and sabotage efforts against Russian forces and their local collaborators, with organized clandestine efforts appearing to be spreading.
Six Russian border guards were killed last week when their position was attacked near the Zernovo border checkpoint in northern Ukraine. Two days later, an explosion struck near the office of Evgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.
The escalation of partisan warfare, especially in the south of the country around Kherson, follows warnings at the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine that any area under occupation could see the outbreak of guerrilla warfare.
The issue is one of the most murky in the Ukrainian war. Both sides have an interest in exaggerating their prevalence: the Russians to justify repression in the areas they occupy and the Ukrainians to demoralize Russian troops.
It also complicates the question of assessing the extent to which attacks are carried out by Ukrainian military sabotage groups or local resistance groups.
Partisans often define themselves as members of an armed group formed to secretly fight an occupying force, for example in Nazi-occupied Europe. The term has more positive connotations than insurgent.
The Melitopol incident, which involved a car full of explosives, was significant enough to focus renewed attention on a phenomenon that has been occurring since almost the start of the war.
Some analysts believe they are seeing evidence that partisan activity in Ukraine is on the rise. Among them is Alexander Motyl, a historian and expert on Ukraine at Rutgers University.
Writing for the 1945 Defense-focused website last week, Motyl noted: “I collected data from Ukrainian websites that explicitly identified the perpetrators of these actions as partisans.
“It is, of course, possible that the Ukrainian special forces were involved in some of these actions; the data is also likely to be incomplete, as some actions have probably not been reported.
“However, the number of guerrilla actions is impressive and shows a growing trend towards partisan activity.”
Commenting on the Melitopol explosion, pro-Kremlin authorities in the city explicitly blamed Ukrainian partisans. The Russian Investigative Committee blamed the “Ukrainian saboteurs”.
The attack in Melitopol took place a few days after an assassination attempt on Andriy Shevchyk, a pro-Kremlin and self-proclaimed mayor of Enerhodar, in the Zaporizhzhia region, who was seriously injured in an explosion.
In other incidents, railway lines in areas occupied by Russia have been damaged while leaflets circulating threatening Russian troops and collaborators.
The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank, suggested that Russian authorities in Luhansk Oblast, which has been the scene of the most intense recent clashes, were preparing for increase partisan attacks in the area.
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“Russian authorities are likely to anticipate Ukrainian partisan pressure on Luhansk,” he suggested in his June 1 update on the fighting.
“The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine (GUR) announced on June 1 the launch of the” Partisan Luhansk “project to galvanize resistance to Russian attempts to consolidate control of Luhansk Oblast.
“A Russian Telegram channel reported that the Russian Interior Ministry is sending a special detachment of its employees on” leave “to the [self-styled separatist] Luhansk People’s Republic (NRL), which is a likely attempt to strengthen Russia’s administrative presence in the NRL in the face of growing internal and partisan discontent. “
Some of the alleged incidents in recent months involving partisans are likely to be fanciful misinformation, along the same lines as the non-existent fighter pilot “the ghost of Kyiv”, which turned out to be a carefully constructed fiction.
While the claims of Russian soldiers fed poisoned cakes are impossible to verify, there have been credible reports of Russian collaborators and soldiers being killed or missing. Some claims suggest that the number of soldiers killed by partisans so far could be as low as a few hundred.
What is clear is that the partisan war plan was long and well prepared.
Ukrainian partisan forces began training after Russia’s intervention in 2014, but became part of Ukraine’s state structures last summer, according to Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Center for Security. and Cooperation, a Ukrainian think tank specializing in military analysis.
Partisan forces, along with the Ukrainian Territorial Army, were part of the new self-defense measures introduced across the country, Kuzan said.
While thousands had joined the territorial army, hundreds had also volunteered to be trained as Ukrainian supporters, Kuzan said. Both forces are made up of people from a certain region.
Ukrainian partisan forces were trained to be a clandestine resistance movement in case their region was occupied, Kuzan said. His job is to build networks of informants, launch information campaigns against the occupiers, return information to the Ukrainian authorities and kill high-level political collaborators and occupier commanders, Kuzan said.
Ukrainian partisans were led and trained by Ukrainian special forces, who were responsible for carrying out acts of higher-level subversion, Kuzan said.
“The idea is for the occupant to always feel the presence of supporters and never feel safe,” Kuzan said. “Recently, partisan forces in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions carried out a coordinated campaign of stickers and flyers against the so-called Russian world.”
As Ukrainian partisan fighters are legally part of the Ukrainian defense forces, the Ukrainian state is obliged to look after them. The families of most supporters were evacuated from areas that may have been occupied before or just after the invasion, Kuzan said.
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Ukrainian partisans only operated in occupied Ukraine and did not deviate across borders because this would be seen as a pretense of escalation by Russia, Kuzan said.
But it is clear that some subversive activity is taking place on the other side of the border. As well as the alleged attack on border guards, Russian oil storage facilities, railways and Russian Defense Ministry buildings near the border with Ukraine, they appear to have been targeted since it began. the war in February.
“We all understand that oil depots and military bases in Russia have been exploding in recent months,” Kuzan said. “But Ukraine’s official response is ‘someone was smoking in the wrong place and they must have done it themselves.’