While Russia's war continues in the east, the Ukrainian authorities have warned that a separatist underground flourishes in other parts of the country -- with subversives plotting bombings and using well-organized campaigns on social media to recruit new members.
In one such case, a Mariupol resident was detained on July 7 for running 500 different websites calling for a violent overthrow of the Ukrainian authorities and support for separatists in Donbas. A statement released by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the female suspect, who was not identified, had gained more than one million followers on the politically charged websites.
Investigators are now trying to determine whether she was coordinating activities with Russian-separatist forces in Donbas – possibly helping them recruit, or acting as an informant.
Vyacheslav Tseluiko, an expert at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, said such groups – which operate mostly in the dark, unlike the separatist fighters in the east – are still a serious threat to the rest of the country.
“Such propaganda enables the consolidation of anti-Ukrainian forces, so it might help with the recruitment of separatists, who might carry out sabotage within Ukraine or go fight in the east, or even go to train in Russia for further attacks,” Tseluiko said.
The case serves as a stark reminder that there is a second front in the war in Ukraine, one the SBU said includes Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhiya, Kherson and Mykolayiv oblasts.
More than 16 months into Russia’s war, numerous websites in support of “people’s republics” still remain – and many of them are asking for donations to support the separatist cause.
While similar websites may be harmless, authorities are concerned that they may be used to groom new recruits for the separatists, or to provide them with financing.
This week alone, 14 people were detained on suspicion of plotting bombings in Odesa and Mykolayiv, and another three were arrested in Kharkiv, according to the press service of the SBU.
The suspects, who have not yet been identified, were “planning explosions on railways, in areas close to volunteer centers, bridges and military bases,” reads a statement from the SBU released on July 6.
Searches of the group’s residences revealed a well-coordinated scheme and impressive array of weapons: detonators, explosive devices and materials, photographs of targets, and pro-Russian symbols.
“One of the leaders of the terrorist organization planned to travel to a western European country after the bombing with the aim of reporting on his work to his supervisors in the Russian security services,” the statement said.
Members of the group are believed to have been responsible for other such attacks, including one on a railway in Odesa.
Judging by the number of those detained for such offenses in recent weeks, the problem is proving to be a many-headed Hydra for the authorities.
Ihor Rassokha, an activist in Kharkiv who witnessed a fatal bombing of a pro-Ukraine rally in February, said while the Ukrainian authorities have been keeping things under control in the city, a “Russian underground still remains.”
Those seeking to carry out bombings “are clearly not being managed by locals,” he said, citing an incident last year in which subversives mistook a local theater for the administration building.
“But there are locals in this Russian underground as well, especially from the ranks of Berkut (former riot police) and fired police officers,” Rassokha said.
Diana Berg, a pro-Ukrainian activist in Mariupol, which was taken back from separatist control by Ukrainian forces in June of last year, said separatism still plagued the city.
“But separatist supporters here are generally more passive now than they were before,” she said, adding that “there are still a lot of people here who sympathize with the separatist cause.”
It should come as no surprise then that Vasyl Khrytsak, the new head of the Security Service, identified regions in the center of the country as “hot spots” susceptible to guerrilla groups.
“We have recorded direct and indirect contact of the executors with both the organizers of these attacks and their Russian supervisors,” Khrytsak said in an interview with Channel 5 earlier this week, speaking about the suspects detained in Odesa and Mykolayiv.
While the SBU has frequently said Russian politicians and Russian security services were financing anti-Ukrainian partisan groups, a simple search on the popular Vkontakte networking site reveals dozens of “people’s republics” asking for donations to support the cause.
Sites for the Kyiv’s People’s Republic, the Kherson People’s Republic, the Odessa Underground and the Zaporozhiya People’s Republic are successfully operating, many of them providing financial details for donations. They all have at least 1,000 subscribers, and some have several thousand.
Tseluiko said it was hard to say whether the administrators of such websites were receiving payment for their work.
“I’m sure some of them are getting paid to do it, but not all of them. There are many people with separatist sympathies who will do it for free,” he said.
He said this was less likely to be true for saboteurs and guerilla groups plotting bombings, like the Odesa Underground and Kharkiv Partisans.
A grass-roots organization in Odesa known as Oberig has claimed that saboteurs get a hefty paycheck of at least $2,000 to plant bombs.
Regardless of the money involved, Tseluiko said the separatist underground would continue to be a silent but deadly threat for months and maybe years to come.
“Considering that terrorism in these cases is a pretty cheap way to wage a struggle, it will be very difficult to completely suppress these underground groups,” he said.
“Even if they aren’t very active right now, that doesn’t mean there is no threat. They are just dormant for a period — either waiting for financial support or for orders about their next target.”
Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]
