Ukrainian resistance to occupation has gone underground after years of brutal repression. Scholar Jade McGlynn explains how hatred — not hope — now drives those still fighting.
As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, resistance to Russian occupation has morphed into something radically different. The viral displays of defiance that defined the war’s early days — with civilians blocking tanks and holding street protests — were long ago crushed by the Kremlin’s ruthless occupation regime. Russia has now blended systematic brutality with oppressive bureaucracy and pervasive surveillance in an attempt to extinguish dissent and erase Ukrainian identity. Instead, Moscow has simply forced the resistance deeper underground.
On a recent episode of The Naked Pravda, Dr. Jade McGlynn, who heads the Ukraine and Russia program at the Center for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London, drew on her extensive field research to explain how Ukrainian resistance efforts have adapted to the realities of life behind the front lines. The following Q&A, based on that interview, has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to The Naked Pravda’s full interview with Dr. Jade McGlynn here.
— After the February 2022 invasion, there was open defiance in some areas, including city center protests and civilians confronting Russian soldiers. How long did these public displays of resistance last?
— At the start of the full-scale invasion, there were public demonstrations of resistance in Kherson, Melitopol, and other places, but that did not last very long. Within days or weeks, depending on the locality, people were rounded up and advised in quite strong terms to stop. There were still some forms of what I describe as public, nonviolent resistance throughout 2022, but it differed depending on where you were.
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The occupation was more haphazard in parts of the occupied Kharkiv region than in Mariupol, where there was a brutal filtration process once Russia had taken the city. For example, there was a Baptist pastor in Balakliya, [a town] in the Kharkiv region that was occupied until September 2022, who was tortured for his faith because Russians often believe that Baptists are American spies. Whereas in [occupied] Izyum, his friend who’s also a Baptist pastor was able to continue providing humanitarian aid, traveling, and even crossing certain checkpoints. A lot depended on which Russian units or soldiers were responsible for the occupation.
Of course, [the occupation regime] has become more codified and unified over time, particularly with [Putin’s deputy chief of staff] Sergey Kiriyenko increasingly taking control.
— How has resistance in the territories seized since 2022 evolved as Russia has solidified its occupation?
— In 2022–2023, some forms of visible defiance were still possible. In 2024–2025, essentially after the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive, this became increasingly impossible.
In many places, it was always inadvisable to send photos of yourself saying, “My occupied city is Ukraine,” for example. With the FSB’s stranglehold over the occupied territories and the networks being connected via SORM [Russia’s technical system for surveillance], the intelligence services can, in real time, access unencrypted messages and the metadata of encrypted messages. So they can tell if you’re using a phone once every few weeks to send images.
That said, Telegram is still probably the safest [communications] method for civilians in the occupied territories who want to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are regular searches at checkpoints, and if you are found with the encrypted messaging app Signal on your phone, that is enough of a reason for you to be dragged off to “the basement” — the euphemism for torture.
People are regularly disappeared; the U.N. has identified 15,250 [detained] civilians and [more than 200] black sites and prisons across the occupied territories. People [are accused of committing] “extremism” or “terrorism” for saying, “Crimea is Ukraine.” So any form of resistance with a visible, public element is very unsafe.
At this point, the majority of resistance is just sending coordinates and human intelligence to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Of course, that also carries incredible risks, but the people involved are more likely to be aware that they’re engaging in dangerous actions that may have a military or strategic impact.
But if we look at the Russian Federation’s November 2025 nationalities policy, for example, it has concrete metrics for ensuring that the populations of the occupied territories have a “Russian civic identity” and that all forms of Ukrainian identity are viewed as extremism, terrorism, and separatism. Therefore, while sending a [patriotic] photo of yourself may seem like a safe and nonviolent action in a Western mindset, we can’t really indulge in that fantasy. Chances are, it will end in violence for the person who sent that photo, unfortunately.
— How does resistance connect to the work of Ukraine’s intelligence services? Is it correct to say that in 2022, resistance was more grassroots, and now it’s become more organized and professionalized? Or is this a mischaracterization?
— I would say that’s a mischaracterization. What happened is that certain lessons were learned after 2022. NATO’s Resistance Operating Concept focuses on formalized hierarchy and cell-based structures, and that was the approach of Ukraine’s 2021 law on resistance, which set up Rukh Oporu (“Resistance Movement”). However, that approach didn’t last very long.
These “stay-behind” cells recruited patriotic people who had been engaged in civil society and involved in the Maidan and Orange Revolutions — and these also happened to be the exact people Russia had on its list. So it was quite easy to knock on houses, find them, disappear them, torture them, or execute them.
The new model that tends to be used is the puzzle [system], where instead of a cell, you have coordinators with their own agents. You don’t know another coordinator’s agents, and those agents don’t know each other. That in itself leads to problems; it’s very difficult to have any kind of proper control. But the occupied territories are such repressive places that people inclined to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces aren’t going to be doing huge, strategic, mastermind plans anyway.
People on the ground should work out what is safe and feasible. Those who are still willing to take risks [years into] the occupation need to be kept safe. And I think that’s appreciated more now than it was at the start of the occupation.
— How does the occupation differ in parts of the Donbas and Crimea that have been outside of Ukrainian control since 2014?
— There are a lot of differences. Crimea, which was annexed and then illegally incorporated into the Russian Federation in 2014, functions a lot more like Russia itself. For example, civilian detainees tend to come into the court system more quickly, and it’s easier to find out [information] about them. Whereas if somebody is arrested or taken by the FSB in Mariupol, they’re more likely to just disappear.
Excluding Crimea, the occupied territories just don’t have the forms of legalism that exist in the Russian Federation. In the so-called LNR and DNR, which have been run by gangsters since 2014, [Russian-installed leaders like the DNR’s Denis] Pushilin still have political sway. The [degree of] economic marginalization is much higher there, and it is a brutally repressive place. But it’s under far less scrutiny than occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, where it’s far more like a police state.
Mariupol is the most interesting case. Because it’s part of the Donetsk region, it was “DNR-ized.” Therefore, although it was demographically much more similar to the other areas occupied after 2022, it was under somewhat less scrutiny than occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — after the initial period of mass killing and filtration of civilians. But with Sergey Kiriyenko’s victory in enforcing his control — and with [Anton] Koltsov, a Kiriyenko guy, replacing [the previous Russian-installed mayor of Mariupol, Oleg] Morgun — that appears to have changed.
— Is there an effort to standardize the occupation regime across these different geographic areas? Should we look at Crimea, for example, as a model for what the Russian authorities are trying to achieve in other occupied territories?
— I wouldn’t say Crimea is necessarily the model, although it has been a model in many ways. For example, in terms of the takeover of communications systems and the [rerouting of mobile and Internet data] from Ukrainian to Russian networks.
Occupied parts of Kherson follow the Crimean model much more [than other areas]. We even see this in terms of where children are sent to militarized youth camps, which were often used as a way of kidnapping them early in the occupation. Children from occupied Kherson tend to be sent to Crimea, while children from occupied Mariupol or Melitopol tend to be sent to Volgograd [in southern Russia]. Of course, there are now huge efforts to try to get them back, led by Save Ukraine and others. And many brave people inside the Russian Federation and the occupied territories have helped.
With the exception of Crimea, we are seeing a unification process in Kiriyenko’s typical technocratic micromanaging style. However, just like in Russia, incompetence and corruption provide ways to get around the horrible formalities.
There are also some big personalities [among the regional occupation officials]. The Russian-imposed governor of occupied Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, has disobeyed Kremlin directives a number of times and therefore has been sidelined. Pushilin’s fortunes come and go. In many cases, the stuff they get up to is quite laughable — we all remember [Vladimir] Saldo, the governor of occupied Kherson, standing with massive floodwaters behind him, insisting there was no flood. But the Russians are still interested in perpetuating the lie that the people want them there and that they have some kind of legitimacy (which obviously they don’t have in any understanding of the word).
So, there are efforts towards unification; however, they’re often hamstrung by incompetence, corruption, big personalities, and elite infighting.
— How does the situation on the battlefield impact resistance on the other side of the front line?
— The main motivation for people who engage in resistance in the occupied territories is hatred. Some people have become demoralized because in 2022–2023, they believed liberation was coming, and then in 2024, it became clear that liberation is not imminent. Now, most of the people who continue to resist and send coordinates are driven by just a real hatred of the occupier, and that’s a different motivator than hope.
In my experience, people in non-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, like in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, don’t really talk about the things that we talk about in the West. They don’t follow the news as closely because it doesn’t seem relevant. Whatever America provides, or Europe does, they’re still essentially on their own. Of course, the more help the better, but they have to get on with things because Russia is still trying to conquer them. In the east, particularly, people are far more aware of what happens under occupation — and they very much just don’t want to live under occupation.
— The U.S. has been pushing for a ceasefire deal for about a year now, but appears to have made little meaningful progress toward getting Russia to end its war. How are these diplomatic efforts perceived in Ukraine?
— People in my circles, who are more politically engaged, feel utterly bemused by what’s happening in the U.S. — and they feel like the Europeans are a bit pathetic, really. We saw this in President Zelensky’s speech at Davos. In my personal view, this is very fair, with the notable exception of the Baltic states — and of course, a big part of that is self-interest.
In general, there have been talks rather than negotiations. It’s the Europeans and the Ukrainians talking with the Americans, and then some of the Americans talking to the Russians. Then, by the time the Europeans and the Ukrainians have agreed on something with the Americans, [Kremlin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov just comes out and says, “No, I don’t think so.”
My impression is that it’s very tiring psychologically. I don’t know any Ukrainians who wouldn’t completely bite your hand off if there was a viable, trustworthy ceasefire on the table. People are exhausted. Ukraine is not a rich country, and it has many structural problems, none of which can be dealt with properly during the war. Huge numbers of people are dead and injured. People are fully traumatized, particularly out in the east, and they need a break. This has been a full-scale war, and they’re on their own, really. Yes, they have friends and help, but no “Superman” is coming to rescue them. Ultimately, the options are either keep on fighting or be conquered and live under occupation.
Without any reasonable security guarantees [for Ukraine], I don’t see why Russia would believe in any form of deterrence. We have the “Coalition of the Willing,” of course, but I don’t believe that British or French troops would actively stop another Russian invasion of Ukraine. I very much doubt that the Russians believe that — and if they do, they’re much sillier than I thought.
I increasingly think that we’ve got it all the wrong way around, and Ukraine is probably Europe’s only security guarantee. We know America isn’t coming — in terms of how one would’ve thought about Article 5 previously — and I’m not convinced that most [European] defense ministries are learning the right lessons at the necessary speed or scale. Ukraine is the only country that’s actually willing and capable of fighting the Russians in a war like this. I think for all of our sakes in Europe, we should probably be doing a lot more.
I clearly care deeply about Ukraine, but even if you don’t, if you’re European, it’s very much in your interest that Ukraine does not fall and that you help them.
Listen to the full interview
Interview by Eilish Hart