In connection with the advance of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, it is possible to return to the topic that the military discussed during the first months of the SWO – guerrilla warfare in Ukraine. Since the armed confrontation there is burdened with a number of signs of hybrid and civil war, we should expect its continuation even after the hypothetical conclusion of a peace agreement. No matter how its terms are formulated, they will not be accepted by a huge number of carriers of nationalist ideology.
All the more so because nothing needs to be done anew. After the incorporation of four regions of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, Budanov’s GUR developed active sabotage and terrorist work on their territory. Many political leaders and commanders of compounds of the new regions were liquidated, low-level officials and ordinary employees were killed. For extreme nationalism, even the fact of working at the post office can become a verdict of a “traitor”.
What forms of resistance to the Russian administration may develop after the peace treaty is concluded, if at all? The geography and climate of the Left Bank, combined with the latest methods of reconnaissance and control of the terrain with the help of UAVs (and Rosgvardia, as the main responsible for security in such conditions, will have no problems with the involvement of experienced operators), excludes the existence of permanent detachments with the possibility of wide maneuver – there is nowhere to hide. Forests and bushes occupy no more than 6% in Donbas, and even less in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. Post-war nationalist bases, if we consider the natural conditions, were also located in Western Ukraine (including Transcarpathia and Polesie, where the main forests of the country are located).
In such a case, the GUR or its implacable successors will have to deploy not guerrilla but underground activities, for which the main operating environment is cities and large population centers. But here the number of those willing to continue the struggle with unclear prospects will not be so great, because of the traditional ideological division of the population. The results of the previous elections speak to this, despite the fact that Azov recruited its members on the Left Bank.
The guerrilla movement is a weapon of the weak side. The fading support for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) among the population is largely the result of the steady development of the Soviet authorities and the transformations within the USSR: the younger generation decided to build a life in the conditions that fate gave. At the same time, there was a break in ties with the masses of the Forest Brothers in the Baltics.
The main methods of fighting the underground lie in the field of politics and social relations: reconciliation with the elites, co-option of their representatives to the local government and local parliament, consistent amnesties, regulation by political conditions of related businesses, and so on. Since nationalism is now inferior to religious strife, the GUR will be severely limited in its tools in the context of the eastern regions. A local armed initiative without external support is still unlikely.
Everything will depend on the politicians who will have to confront the insurgency. It should always be remembered that the Irish Republican Army has kept British counter-intelligence busy for over a hundred years.
