Resistance Under Occupation in Ukraine

In October 2024, Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) boasted online about an attack on a Russian collaborator in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The HUR announced on social media that a car bomb had killed a judge suspected of treason, adding pictures of the burnt-out vehicle and a video of fire and smoke over the roofs of the residential area where the alleged collaborator lived. The timing, images, and knowledge of the target made it clear that the HUR was behind the attack. The next day, though, the judge reappeared unharmed. The explosive device had detonated under an empty car.

The HUR’s bravado proved costly for two locals who were captured by Russian forces within a couple of days of the failed killing. They are still in detention, waiting to be sentenced as members of an organised terrorist group. The Russian security services, the FSB, might get the wrong people, but they always make sure to get someone. Reports of spies, instigators, saboteurs, and terrorists caught and sentenced in the occupied Ukrainian territories have become almost routine.

Civilian resistance

The dangers that civilians in the occupied part of Ukraine face for the sake of publicity had received little attention in the country until last month, when the Kyiv Independent, a prominent Ukrainian media outlet, published a controversial piece about Yellow Ribbon, an umbrella enterprise for civilian resistance volunteers.

The name refers to one of the activities that the group’s volunteers have been invited by a Telegram bot to perform: taking a picture of a yellow ribbon with a place in the occupied part of Ukraine in the background. The tasks have evolved to become more complicated and risky. According to the Kyiv Independent article, those responsible for the bot are private individuals who instruct volunteers from afar, with dubious knowledge of the security situation under the Russian occupation and with no responsibility for the volunteers’ safety.

In today’s Ukraine, public scandals are frequent – and thus short-lived. The Kyiv Independent piece has already been sidelined by newer ones and nearly forgotten. Yet the arguments made subsequently by those either in support of or against the points raised in the article are too significant for the discussion to simply move on to whatever is next on the agenda.

Collaboration and resistance form a familiar story in Europe. However, this is the first major war and occupation conducted with the assistance of social media and AI. As Yellow Ribbon’s critics pointed out, CCTV cameras make it easy to find people taking pictures of yellow ribbons. Advanced technology allows the FSB to detect even deleted content on residents’ smartphones. Is a picture of a ribbon worth years in prison?

At the same time, residents of the occupied territories have carried out numerous risky endeavours since the occupation began. As Yellow Ribbon’s supporters argued, the residents needed to do this for themselves, not only to resist but also to make their resistance visible. Hundreds of people in the occupied part of Ukraine had been kidnapped, tortured, or held in captivity for political reasons long before Yellow Ribbon appeared.

The fate of political prisoners

In late February 2022, Russia occupied a vast area in the south of Ukraine virtually overnight. When, on the first morning of the full-scale invasion, residents went to military recruitment offices to demand weapons, they found the doors closed and the offices abandoned. So while in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine volunteers were queuing to join the country’s territorial defence units, in the occupied south they flooded the streets with non-violent anti-Russia demonstrations. The rest of the country watched on as those under occupation chanted for the Russian invaders to go home.

It was also in the early days of the full-scale invasion that Ukrainian intelligence called on residents of the occupied territories to report the movements and stationing of Russian troops and equipment. Numerous volunteers answered the call, eager to join the fight by any possible means. On the other side of the front line, for many in Ukraine, the decision to stay in the occupied territories needs some kind of justification. Residents are expected to engage in resistance as a way of proving that they are not guilty of being trapped there.

The persecutions started immediately. Hundreds of people have been killed or kidnapped, and many are still held in secrecy in Russian detention facilities, as Moscow has nothing to charge them with but is determined not to let them go. In April 2026, Russian media published a document citing a secret 2022 order by the Russian president about the extrajudicial detention of those who ‘undermine the special military operation in Ukraine’, a term not found anywhere in Russian law.

The Media Initiative for Human Rights, an NGO, has studied cases of persecution of people allegedly involved in the organised reporting of Russian troops and equipment to Ukrainian intelligence via Telegram. Some of those caught for interacting with the Telegram chat in question have been held in captivity incommunicado since August 2023, while others have been sentenced to between 14 and 26 years in prison on terrorism charges.

Freeing political prisoners and bringing them back from Russia are near-impossible tasks. Some are stuck in Russia even after serving their full sentences, as the Russian authorities use any pretext for not letting them go. The established – but highly controversial – practice is to include them in prisoner exchanges, which are normally used for prisoners of war. International pressure on Russia is needed to liberate these political prisoners. Meanwhile, a broader discussion is needed within Ukraine’s traumatised society about the themes of occupation, collaboration, and resistance – a discussion of the kind briefly triggered by the Kyiv Independent.

Yulia Abibok is an independent researcher and journalist. Since September 2025, she has been a fellow in the Ukraine Research Network@ZOiS (UNET), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.