Ukrainians tap tradition in training for fear of war with Russia

On Sunday, Sergey Ignatovsky will vote in Ukraine’s snap general election, and put his faith in pro-western politicians to lead his country to victory in its war with separatist rebels and their Russian backers.

But, like a growing number of his countrymen, the Kiev lawyer is also, as he puts it, “preparing for the very worst”.

"We are getting ready to fight an underground war if necessary," he says. "For years we didn't see Russia as a potential enemy and were not ready for aggression from our neighbour. Our defence officials and generals were drinking vodka, selling equipment and making money."

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Guide Miroslav Boiko outside a cave near Bilche Zolote, western Ukraine, which was used as a hideout by resistance fighters during the 1940s. Photograph: Daniel McLaughlin

“At the start of the conflict in the east, our soldiers – even special forces – lacked training and modern gear and experience. They are learning fast, but Russia has been fighting in Chechnya and elsewhere for 20 years.

“So civilians must be ready to resist. Everyone involved should know their role and how to act in a guerrilla war – who to contact, where to go, how to hide, where to get weapons. We need to prepare small groups to act against the enemy, if necessary, across the whole country. And we are starting to train for that now.”

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, insists his country is not involved in a war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that has killed more than 3,600 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

But serving Russian soldiers have been killed and captured fighting in Ukraine, the West has produced satellite images that allegedly show Russian forces crossing the border and firing artillery into the country, and Kiev's soldiers say it was the Russian army they fought in a major "rebel" counterattack in August.

That bloody shift in battlefield momentum forced Kiev to agree a ceasefire deal with the separatists, and convinced many Ukrainians that Putin would do whatever was necessary to ensure the failure of post- revolution, pro-EU Ukraine.

Volunteer battalion

It also prompted Semyon Semyonchenko, leader of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion Donbas that is fighting in the east, to call on his compatriots to prepare to resist a possible Russian invasion of regions further west, or the incitement by Moscow of insurrection in regions such as Odessa and Kharkiv.

Training weekends are now taking place in several cities, with instruction from army veterans now serving with Donbas – which is named after the industrial, mostly Russian-speaking area that includes Donetsk and Luhansk.

“We don’t just need people who can shoot,” says Ignatovsky. “We need doctors and engineers and communications and information specialists. Lots of different people are involved already – among my friends there are lawyers, businessmen, IT guys and even insurance guys.”

Speaking fluent English between sips of cappuccino in a swish bar in Kiev, Ignatovsky (39) does not come across as a military fantasist or macho “weekend warrior”.

“I’m not an idiot, I have a wife and daughter and I don’t want to die. But I will fight if I have to. And my wife supports me and is taking a medical training course.”

He says the volunteer spirit, which has spawned dozens of fighting battalions and now would-be partisan cells, was kindled by last winter's revolution, when protesters sustained a huge protest camp on Kiev's Independence Square for almost three months – until corrupt, Kremlin- backed president Viktor Yanukovich and his allies fled to Russia.

Countless people contributed in different ways to help the opposition movement and the main Maidan camp survive, and Ignatovsky and friends delivered food, firewood, clothes, tents and generators to the protesters – as well as petrol for the Molotov cocktails radicals hurled at riot police.

“Now we and others are doing something similar in the conflict zone,” he says.

“Our soldiers had terrible equipment: old helmets and flak jackets and not enough of them. So people started to raise money through social networks to buy what our forces need. And it’s better and quicker to do it all ourselves, to avoid official bureaucracy and corruption.”

“Like on Maidan, it started chaotically and quickly got more organised. Up to now we have taken everything from food to night-vision goggles, flak jackets and even improvised armoured vans to our soldiers in the east.”

The guerrilla tradition goes back centuries in Ukraine, however, and on Maidan it was striking to see Cossack leaders invoked in what protesters saw as a struggle to free the country from the grip of corruption, oligarchs and Russian domination.

Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Alongside the nation's blue-and-yellow flag, the most common colours on Maidan were the red-and-black flown by generations of nationalists, with many banners invoking the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) loyal to Stepan Bandera.

The UPA sought to carve out an independent state in western Ukraine amid the bloody chaos of the second World War, fighting against both the Nazis and Soviets but also forming occasional alliances of convenience with German units. The insurgent army – which at its peak had tens of thousands of members – massacred and expelled thousands of Poles and is accused of committing atrocities against Jews.

Bandera's guerrillas are lionised in western Ukraine, however, as patriots who battled massively superior Nazi and then Soviet forces and resisted the Red Army and KGB in isolated units, hiding in deep caves and forests, until the 1950s.

For decades the Kremlin has portrayed Bandera’s movement as a murderous rabble of Russian-hating fascists, in what many Ukrainians see as a crude but successful attempt to discredit their drive for real independence from Moscow and to obscure Soviet crimes against Ukraine – including massacres and deportations and a man-made 1932-1933 famine that killed several million Ukrainians.

Symbols of independence

There are neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, and some dominate certain volunteer battalions, but the vast majority of people who now chant UPA slogans and wave its flags see them and Bandera as symbols of independence and resistance to Russia.

“The UPA didn’t go to Moscow to kill anyone. They were just protecting their land from people who came here to enslave them, nothing more. They protected their right to be Ukrainians and to live in an independent state,” says Miroslav Boiko, as a sharp wind tugged at his camouflage jacket.

He is a guide to vast cave complexes in western Ukraine, where UPA fighters sheltered, recovered from battle and even practised shooting – bullet scars and fighters’ nicknames and nationalist emblems still mark some cave walls. He says the war in the east has only intensified western Ukrainians’ already powerful association with the UPA, and self- defence units are springing up around the area.

“People are training to dig trenches, lay ambushes and survive in different wild nature conditions,” he says.

“But if you are preparing for partisan war the information should be secret. So the ones who are really ready for underground activity say: ‘Let [the enemy] come to us and we will show them.’”

For Ignatovsky, finishing his cappuccino and preparing to return to his law practice, the UPA is an example and model for Ukraine’s new partisans: “We are trying to base our system on the UPA – this is our country’s history and tradition.”

And in Sunday’s election he will vote for a new party that he thinks captures the spirit of the times.

“The party wants people to go out and do something – to act,” Ignatovsky says, “and I like its name: Self-Reliance.”