Understanding the conflict two years on.
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Two grim milestones just passed for Ukraine: the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion and a decade since the seizure of Crimea. Ukrainians commemorated and grieved. They did so in the midst of mounting uncertainty over the trajectory of the war, the solidarity of their leadership, and the continuance of international support.
Two grim milestones just passed for Ukraine: the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion and a decade since the seizure of Crimea. Ukrainians commemorated and grieved. They did so in the midst of mounting uncertainty over the trajectory of the war, the solidarity of their leadership, and the continuance of international support.
Beneath the headlines, however, Ukrainian resistance adapts and evolves. Among Ukrainians, cease-fires and territorial concessions remain broadly anathema. The question is not if resistance should continue, but how.
From the very beginning of Russia’s war, the Ukrainian people self-mobilized en masse. Their proactive agency has been fundamental to Ukraine’s ability to stave off Russian aggression, and it has been lauded as the gold standard in whole-of-society resistance. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, for example, volunteer organizations and civil society groups leapt into action, buying vital time for the military to regroup. In the years that followed, nongovernmental organizations and private interests were integral to sustaining Ukraine’s position in a so-called frozen conflict.
In 2022, as Russian armor surged across the border, ordinary civilians flooded the ranks of the Territorial Defense Forces. These units waged impromptu and ultimately successful localized campaigns to defend cities such as Sumy and Chernihiv, which were fundamental to the disruption of Russia’s invasion plan.
Ukrainian citizens stepped forward to take nonviolent action as well. At times, this occurred in coordination with government entities. Far more often, it was the result of independent initiative. Actions included large-scale street protests, the blocking of roads, and the protection of critical infrastructure. The broader endeavor was punctuated by exceptionally well-amplified face-to-face confrontations and social media campaigns.
Within government-held areas of Ukraine, civil society remains engaged. Key efforts include adapting of drones and other civilian technologies for military use, providing support for displaced families, and raising funds for veteran care. Behind Russian lines, meanwhile, resistance networks have blossomed as well. Some are engaged in sabotage and other guerrilla warfare tactics.
More prevalent, however, have been those engaged in nonviolent resistance. Independent civilian networks have grown dramatically in size and scope, despite limited media attention from the West and negligible external support.
What is their place in Ukraine’s resistance strategy, and how can their achievements inform broader debates over concepts such as “total defense” and the realities of whole-of-society resistance?
Images from the Yellow Ribbon Group show a person holding a note that reads “Yalta is Ukraine” (left) and a sign that says “Berdiansk is a Ukrainian city” (right). Yellow Ribbon Group via Telegram
As Russia consolidated its hold over areas of southern and eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2022, Ukrainian resistance endured devastating initial setbacks behind the front lines. Most of the “stay behind” partisan groups established by the Ukrainian government were promptly betrayed by pro-Russian collaborators and annihilated. Surviving networks were thereafter culled by Russian intelligence agencies, using surveillance, torture, and collective punishment.
Russia’s occupying administration also enforced a brutal crackdown on civil disobedience and open protest. The result was an utter stifling of overt action. This, combined with Russia’s success in unraveling and destroying clandestine guerrilla networks, created profound unease within the Ukrainian government at the prospect of orchestrating resistance actions (particularly by civilians) behind enemy lines.
Instead, the preference shifted toward hit-and-run raids by Ukrainian special operations forces, launched from government-held terrain.
Despite the Ukrainian government’s uncertain, hands-off approach to civil resistance and the dangers posed under Russian occupation, nonviolent resistance has flourished. Critically, it has done so without the sort of government direction and support envisaged within the total defense paradigm that is increasingly popular within the NATO alliance, and without reliance upon “pre-existing ties and networks” similar to those that have been fundamental to classic resistance movements around the world.
Over the past two years, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have participated in nonviolent resistance activities. Women have been front and center, and new technologies have been pivotal to the scaling, de-risking, and amplification of the enterprise. The actions and outcomes of nonviolent civil resistance have focused overwhelmingly on target audiences within occupied Ukraine, however, and so they remain inadequately understood and appreciated.
Nonviolent resistance has been orchestrated by a decentralized amalgamation of independent groups that reach deep behind the front lines. Rather than building on existing social connections, they have coalesced digitally and anonymously in response to Russian aggression. Maintaining only occasional and informal communication with the Ukrainian government, they have pursued independently conceived courses of action in the furtherance of Ukraine’s national interests.
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One of the best-known groups, the Yellow Ribbon Group (YRG), provides an example of this paradigm in practice. The YRG, one of the only resistance groups to garner attention from Western media, originated in Kherson Oblast after the area’s conquest by Russia in the first days of the war. Cut off from Ukraine and unable to take up arms, young people came together to find ways to resist.
“We wanted to be a part of something,” recalls the YRG’s founder, who is not named here to protect their safety. The founder went on to say that they also wished to exert agency in the face of oppression.
Initial resistance activities were predominantly one-off actions by lone individuals. They ranged from tagging pro-Ukrainian graffiti to attaching Ukrainian flags to balloons in order to raise them into the sky. Photos of these actions circulated widely via Telegram channels and on social media, prompting a surge of interest from Luhansk to Crimea.
After Russia’s withdrawal from the right bank of Kherson in November 2022, the YRG expanded its work. Operating from the relative safety of government-held areas, members reached digitally across the front lines to support their fellow Ukrainians enduring occupation. The continued growth and security of practitioners were enabled thereafter by high-tech innovation.
This came in the form of a custom-developed secure messaging platform that allows the practitioners of nonviolent resistance in occupied areas to access an artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot, which provides access to a breadth of information and resources that are automatically customized in response to a user’s prompts.
Examples include instructions on how to print fliers, best practice recommendations for the conduct of certain actions, inspiration for messages and themes. (The latter are often related to current events, such as Elon Musk’s October 2023 assertion that there is no “significant insurgency” in occupied Ukraine, and that Ukraine should cede land for peace.)
Images from the Yellow Ribbon Group show notes that read “Elon we are here! Yalta is Ukraine” (left) and “Elon we are here. Makeevka is Ukraine. Yellow ribbon.” Yellow Ribbon Group Telegram
Within this system, the YRG has established the digital backbone of a resistance network unlike any other in history: one with a single hub run via artificial intelligence (as opposed to an identifiable leadership team) and an unlimited series of anonymous, untraceable, individual spokes. The entire application can be deleted from the user’s phone at the push of a button, and full anonymity means that members of the network cannot be compromised by Russia.
YRG practitioners have also produced posters exposing the identities and activities of administrators within the occupation bureaucracy. At times, these efforts target high-profile public figures—such as the infamous pro-Russian politician and former Kherson Mayor Vladimir Saldo—but primary focus goes toward midlevel officials imported from Russia to prove that the resistance knows who they are. In a number of instances, these exposés have compelled the individuals in question to relocate, which in turn adds an additional burden on the occupation and heightens the sense of insecurity.
A satirical campaign poster reads “Vladimir Saldo, the last candidate left alive!”Yellow Ribbon Group
In a pattern evident throughout the nonviolent resistance movement in occupied Ukraine, the more active that YRG becomes, the more that it grows in numbers. The structure of its digital platform is such that it can accommodate any and all new entrants, while its architecture mitigates any damage that might accrue through Russian penetration.
According to internal system metrics, the YRG’s platform has approximately 10,000 registered users, with an average of 3,000 active users within a given week. Sources within the YRG note that numbers fluctuate dramatically at any given moment, since users will delete the application on a regular basis when approaching checkpoints and other high-risk areas.
Another prominent nonviolent resistance network leveraging technology, anonymity, and female agency is the Angry Mavkas. The group is comprised exclusively of Ukrainian women, and it draws its name from a siren-like creature in Ukrainian folklore that lures men to their deaths.
Two images show depictions of Mavka, a character in Ukrainian folklore that has been reclaimed by women in Russian-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine. Alya Shandra/Euromaidanpress via Telegram
The Mavkas began in Melitopol among a small group of women who wanted to push back against Russian aggression and sexual assault, which has been systemic under occupation. The Mavkas’ reputation spread quickly, and the group’s founders were inundated with requests from women and girls across the occupied territories to contribute to their cause.
As with the YRG, the Mavkas utilize their own anonymous communication platform to share resources and stories, coordinate activities, and present digital evidence of their actions. The result creates an interesting duality: It is a forum that provides Ukrainian women the opportunity to connect with one another and vent their fears and frustrations under occupation, but it is also a space of anonymous, digital strangers.
Discussions with participants in Ukraine’s nonviolent resistance movement emphasize the value of both the act of practicing resistance as well as the outcomes that it generates. Taking action has been a powerful means of asserting agency and “speaking freely” under occupation. Practitioners noted what they called the “self-imposed schizophrenia” that is required of Ukrainian patriots, wherein one must publicly acquiesce to Russian rule in order to survive. For example, accepting a Russian passport is now a precondition for access to basic medical care, pensions, and permission to leave one’s city in the occupied territories.
As Russian surveillance and counterintelligence capabilities grow increasingly robust, there is little opportunity for respite or self-expression. As such, public trust has been badly degraded in occupied territories—a further constraint to the practice of resistance via traditional social groups. In the view of a senior figure within the Mavkas, the ensuing “social atomization” evokes the communist era. In the words of another practitioner, “our lives have become compartmentalized.”
Trapped in a world where one must say and do things that run counter to one’s core beliefs, and where one cannot express true feelings outside of extremely narrow circles of trust, even the smallest acts of resistance imbue powerful psychological impacts for the practitioner—and also for their fellow Ukrainians enduring occupation, who witness the results.
The successes of the nonviolent resistance movement have catalyzed shifts in Russian messaging as well. Initially, Russian officials ignored such acts of resistance. As activity grew to the point that it could not be ignored, the Russians sought to dismiss and discredit the endeavor. According to sources in the YRG, nonviolent resistance is said by the Russians to be the work of “a duped, intellectually deficient few.” They say that the YRG has been cast as “a band of degenerates” and “while the Mavkas are alleged to be “a psyop [psychological operations] run from Kyiv” as well as tools of the U.S.
In contrast to the devastating early losses suffered within traditional partisan networks established and run by the Ukrainian government, the decentralized and anonymous digital networks established by civil society are thriving. The YRG and the Mavkas continue to expand while other groups are still emerging. The Combat Seagulls blend violent and nonviolent practices in Crimea, while Atesh (meaning “fire” in Crimean Tartar) is a network of saboteurs and informants drawn primarily from Tartars forcibly conscripted by Russia.
Resistance is growing in occupied Ukraine, both in scale and sophistication. Armed partisan networks are making their presence felt behind the front lines while nonviolent resistance groups continue to expand. Critically, the Ukrainian government is recognizing integrated resistance as a strategic lever.
This two-pronged approach to resistance—violent and nonviolent actions synchronized in support of a shared objective—offers a compelling paradigm. This is particularly true as nonviolent civil networks have shown the ability to move beyond small-scale symbolic actions and toward more ambitious campaigns.
In early 2023, for example, the Mavkas orchestrated the large-scale production of counterfeit 50-ruble notes, with a twist. With several details changed—only noticeable after close inspection—the notes were designed to grab the attention of Russians and others when left in public places, for example, at ATMs.
A typical Russian ruble note is shown at left. A revised Ukrainian protest version is shown at right. Slide to compare the differences (detailed below):
1. The “Bank of Russia” logo is replaced with “Bank of angry Mavka.” 2. The serial number is replaced with the date of Prigozhin’s march on Moscow. 3. “Counterfeiters will be prosecuted” is changed to “The ruble is as worthless as Putin’s threats to Prigozhin.” 4.. The original scepter is now topped with the Ukrainian national emblem. 5. The Mavka’s head replaces the original. 6. “Banknote of Russia” is changed to “This is not Russia.” 7. The Mavka logo is tagged on the monument. 8. “Fifty rubles” is changed to “You are In Ukraine!”
Activists were able to print and disseminate bills in Crimea, Melitopol, and parts of Kherson. Entering broadly into circulation, the notes initiated a flurry of official condemnation from Russian authorities.
The second campaign, conducted by a partisan network that has not yet taken public credit, was launched during the elections conducted by Russian authorities across occupied Ukraine in September 2023. In the run-up to the vote, aspiring local politicians put up posters to advertise their candidacy.
In the midst of this activity, a partisan network produced realistic posters of its own for fictitious candidates in the occupied territories, complete with scannable QR codes similar to those used by the official politicians These QR codes led in different directions: Some links went to videos of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, others to resources describing human rights violations within Russia, and others to spoof voter registration websites. These resources were hosted on secure platforms that had been paid for with cryptocurrency, which the Russian government could neither hack nor trace.
On the contrary, this subtle but effective campaign not only disrupted the so-called elections in occupied Ukraine, but also exposed the futility of Russia’s attempt to use democracy as a weapon.
Russia reacted sharply, and in ways that subverted narratives with which they have sought to legitimize conquest and occupation. First, high-level figures from Russia’s Central Election Commission publicly and aggressively condemned the effort and Rostelcom, the Russian state-owned digital services provider, pressed the relevant hosting services to take the websites down. Second, Russian media entities such as the news agency TASS, the website “War on Fakes” (widely understood to be linked to the Russian Ministry of Defense), and the popular show Solovyov Live alleged that the campaign was the work of scammers or Ukrainian psyops units. The net effect was official acknowledgement of substantive local opposition within the occupied territories, and the amplification of Ukrainian resistance to audiences across Russia.
As Ukraine explores the potential of nonviolent resistance—potentially aligned with a wider campaign of guerrilla activity in the occupied territories—the government must find a way to harness civilian networks without subsuming them. Civil society under government control is no longer civil society, irrespective of the statist assumptions baked into total defense and resistance paradigms proffered within NATO. Leaders in Kyiv need only to look across their northern and eastern borders to witness the toxic fallout of an instrumentalized populace.
There is ample room to coordinate and support the work of civilian resistance networks. Critically, that effort relies on mutual trust: for practitioners to be supported and empowered, and for the government to establish constructive strategic dialogue with the networks in question.
Nonviolent resistance has been a spontaneous expression of national will. It has been the civilian counterpart to the formidable Ukrainian “will to fight” evident on the battlefield, and its potency comes from the legacy of a decadeslong progress through which civil society has stepped forward, time and again, to shape Ukraine’s political future.
In the wake of two somber anniversaries, facing an interminable war of national survival with uncertain support from abroad, the Ukrainian people remain Ukraine’s most potent strategic asset. Within the occupied territories, civil resistance is vital to subverting Russian propaganda and framing the terms of any future negotiations. On the global stage, the sustained commitment and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people remains the most potent argument for continued international support. Re-establishing their place as the face and voice of resistance—a status that they achieved to extraordinary effect during the initial moments of the full-scale invasion—offers Ukraine its best opportunity to endure the challenges to come.
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