Most of the Ukrainian population supports their own government and resists the Russian invaders. But there are also pro-Russian Ukrainians, especially in the occupied territories, who are helping the Russians. They should break the resistance of their countrymen.
Shortly after the war began, southern Ukraine fell into the hands of the Russian army. Since then, Kremlin troops have occupied the area around the Black Sea coast from Kherson to Mariupol and south of Zaporizhia. Compared to the other parts of the country, the Russians were able to advance quickly in the region and seize entire areas – without any significant Ukrainian resistance.
The Ukrainian government is convinced that the Russians were helped by Ukrainian collaborators. That is why President Volodymyr Zelenskyy carried out a “self-cleansing of the authorities” in July, and several high-ranking security forces were dismissed. These included the head of the domestic secret service, a general prosecutor and also a regional secret service chief who was responsible for southern Ukraine.
“We may have lost sight of the fact that the Russians in the south of Ukraine achieved considerable success within a very short space of time, took possession of large areas without major fighting,” says Wolfgang Richter, former Colonel of the Army of the Bundeswehr, in the ntv podcast “Again what was learned” back to the beginning of the Russian war of aggression.
Richter suspects that Ukraine may have underestimated how many pro-Russian citizens there are not only in the east, in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but also in the south of the country. “Perhaps people overlooked the fact that there has always been a minority in Ukraine that defined itself as more affinity with Russia. You could see that in the election results in the past. You can also see that in the large number of banned parties that Kyiv describes as pro-Russian classified”.
According to Richter, there are not only large numbers of pro-Russian Ukrainians in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. “Even in the south, some Ukrainians went to the other side. You can see that from the fact that many administrative officials are now organizing the administration under the Russian flag.”
It may have been easy for the Russian invaders to invade southern Ukraine. Also because of the help of pro-Russian Ukrainians. But it is also true that the occupiers have encountered considerable resistance from the Ukrainian civilian population since then.
Many people refuse to work with Russian troops and administrative officials in the occupied territories. The think tank “Institute for the Study of War” reports that in the almost completely destroyed city of Mariupol, for example, the Russians are finding it difficult to repair war damage, reopen shops, let alone build up some kind of basic state service.
The opening of Russian banks – important for the exchange of Ukrainian for Russian money – is therefore complicated. The problem is lack of staff. Many Ukrainians are said to refuse to work for a Russian bank.
In order to break the resistance of the people, Russia is increasingly relying on the pro-Russian residents of the region. These are intended to sabotage the cohesion of the Ukrainian population – the Russian troops have published a “manual for organizing resistance against the puppet government in Kyiv” as instructions, the Ukrainian military intelligence service has reported.
It says on 14 pages how the pro-Russian Ukrainians should urge their fellow human beings to sabotage their work. For example, they are recommended to work in a particularly bureaucratic manner, i.e. more complicated than necessary to annoy their co-workers. They should answer questions in a particularly confused and illogical manner. They should go to the toilet often and gladly during working hours. They should only order new hygiene articles, garbage bags, toilet paper when everything has already been used up, so that bottlenecks arise. In medical professions, they should be particularly wasteful with medicines and bandages.
In order to uncover collaborators on Ukrainian territory, security authorities imposed a curfew on the first weekend in August in Mykolaiv to search specifically for people who work with the Russians. The city of 480,000 is northwest of Cherson and is in Ukrainian hands.
For Wolfgang Richter, the curfew is a sensible measure to uncover collaborators with house-to-house raids. But the ex-colonel also sees the danger of informers. “Of course, these measures also spread distrust in your own population, you encourage denunciation. This can mean that it’s not about collaborators at all, but that personal scores are settled.”
It is unclear exactly how many Ukrainians are on the side of the Russians. Since the beginning of the war six months ago, however, it seems that there have not been any more. And the majority of people who have not fled the occupied territories are still on the Ukrainian side. At least that’s what reports indicate that the Russians are finding it difficult to establish something like state order there. And the mere existence of a manual on labor sabotage shows how desperate the Russian occupiers are.