‘The occupier should never feel safe’: rise in partisan attacks in UkraineUnderground efforts appearing to spread, say analysts, after reports of explosions and attacks on Russian border guardsUkrainian partisans in occupied areas of the country are increasing attacks and sabotage efforts on Russian forces and their local collaborators, with organised underground efforts appearing to spread.
Six Russian border guarders were reportedly killed last week when their position came under fire near the Zernovo border checkpoint in Ukraine’s north. Two days later an explosion struck close to the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.
The increase in partisan warfare, particularly in the country’s south around Kherson, follows warnings at the outset of Russia’s war against Ukraine that any area under occupation was likely to see the emergence of guerrilla warfare.
The subject is one of the murkiest of the war in Ukraine. Both sides have an interest in exaggerating its prevalence: the Russians to justify crackdowns in areas they occupy and the Ukrainians to demoralise Russian troops.
Also complicating the issue is assessing the extent to which attacks are being carried out by Ukrainian military sabotage groups or homegrown resistance groups.
Partisans are usually defined as members of an armed group formed to fight secretly against an occupying force, for instance in Nazi-occupied Europe. The term holds more positive connotations than insurgent.
The Melitopol incident, involving a car packed full of explosives, was significant enough to focus renewed attention on a phenomenon that has been occurring since almost the beginning of the war.
Some analysts believe they are seeing evidence that partisan activity in Ukraine is escalating. Among them is Alexander Motyl, a historian and Ukraine expert at Rutgers University.
Writing for the defence-focused website 1945 last week, Motyl noted: “I gathered the data from Ukrainian websites that explicitly identified the perpetrators of these actions as partisans.
“It is, of course, possible that Ukrainian special forces may have been involved in some of these actions; it is also likely that the data are incomplete, inasmuch as some actions probably went unreported.
“Even so, the number of guerrilla actions is impressive and bespeaks a trend toward ever-greater partisan activity.”
Commenting on the Melitopol explosion, pro-Kremlin authorities in the city explicitly blamed Ukrainian partisans. Russia’s Investigative Committee blamed it on “Ukrainian saboteurs”.
The attack in Melitopol came just days after a reported assassination attempt on Andriy Shevchyk, a pro-Kremlin and self-proclaimed mayor of Enerhodar, in the Zaporizhzhia region, who was badly injured in an explosion.
In other incidents, railway lines in Russian-occupied areas have been damaged while leaflets have circulated threatening Russian troops and collaborators.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, suggested that Russian authorities in Luhansk oblast – which has been the scene of the heaviest recent fighting – were gearing up for an increase in partisan attacks in the area.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... rge-russia 
