Sarah Rainsford reports in the BBC:
Ukraine's shadow army is a network of agents and informers who operate behind enemy lines. Shortly before this war, Ukraine bolstered its Special Forces to build and manage a resistance movement. It even published a PDF booklet on how to be a good partisan, but some have a more active role: tracking Russian troop movements inside Kherson. (One) team flies drones into Kherson to spot targets for the military. Civilians, not soldiers, all are volunteers and fundraise on social media to pay for their kit. They are also building a database of "collaborators" "so no one can claim later they were with the resistance."As Ukraine's military steps up its strikes on Kherson, hinting at a new offensive to recapture the region, there is another force working alongside. They are Ukraine's shadow army, a network of agents and informers who operate behind enemy lines.
Our journey to meet the resistance fighters takes us through a landscape of sunflower yellow and sky blue to Mykolaiv. The first major town on Ukrainian-controlled territory west of Kherson, it has become the partisans' headquarters on the southern front.
Driving through military checkpoints, we pass giant billboards showing a faceless, hooded figure alongside a warning: "Kherson: The partisans see everything." The image is designed to make the region's Russian occupiers nervous and boost the morale of those trapped under their rule.
"The resistance is not one group, it's total resistance," the man standing in front of me insists, his voice slightly muffled by a black mask he's pulled up from his neck so I can't see his face as we film him, in a room I can't describe so that neither can be found.
I'll call him Sasha.
Shortly before this war, Ukraine bolstered its Special Forces in part to build and manage a resistance movement. It even published a PDF booklet on how to be a good partisan, with instructions on such subversive acts as slashing the tyres of the occupier, adding sugar to petrol tanks or refusing to follow orders at work. "Be grumpy," is one suggestion.
But Sasha's team of informers have a more active role: tracking Russian troop movements inside Kherson.
"Say yesterday we saw a new target, then we send that to the military and in a day or two it's gone," he says, as we scroll through some of the many videos he's sent from the neighbouring region each day. One is from a man who drove past a military base and filmed Russian vehicles, another is from CCTV footage as Russian trucks pass by, daubed with their giant Z war-marks.
Sasha describes his "agents" as Ukrainians "who have not lost hope in victory and want our country to be freed".
"Of course they're afraid," he says. "But serving their country is more important."
Working alongside Sasha are a team who fly drones into Kherson to spot targets for the military. Civilians, not soldiers, all are volunteers and they fundraise on social media to pay for their expensive kit.
The man in charge cultivated decorative plants before the war, but Serhii tells me he joined the fight to free the south after seeing the bodies of civilians executed in Bucha during the Russian occupation there. "I couldn't just stay at home after that," he says. "I didn't know what else I could do or think of, while this war is going on."
The task he chose instead is extremely dangerous. His team of four get shelled by the Russians every single time they go out, though no-one has been killed. "I know to some extent it's a matter of chance," Serhii shrugs, and breaks into a soft smile. "But at least if it happens to me, then I will know it was for a cause."
The partisans are fighting to prevent Russia's hold over Kherson becoming permanent: to block a referendum that Moscow appears to be planning to stage. Russia has already introduced the rouble and its own mobile phone networks to the region and is pumping its propaganda from state-run TV channels into Ukrainian homes. Local journalists have either fled, or gone to ground.
The acting head of the region, Dmytro Butrii, now exiled to Mykolaiv and a small back office protected by sandbags, insists that a vote on joining Russia would be a sham, a "total fake" and unrecognised by any "civilised" government.
These days, that wouldn't matter much to Moscow.
For Russia, the region is strategic: it's the source of water for Crimea, which it annexed illegally in 2014, and the last section of a much-discussed 'land bridge', or stretch of territory that links Russia-proper to the peninsula.
Some locals have switched sides to help the Russians. So Sasha's team are building a database of those "collaborators", using information from the inside. "It's so that no one can claim later that they were with the resistance," he explains.
But it's also for intimidation. Partisans are encouraged to stick threatening posters outside the collaborators' homes with designs that include the person's face and a coffin, or a "Wanted" poster offering big rewards for their death. The activists then photograph the results to send to Sasha.
"There's a lot of graffiti. People write things like 'stuff your referendum' as well as sticking up their posters," Sasha describes his latest reports from Kherson. "It shows how many people are not afraid: in a city with military patrols everywhere, they manage to print leaflets then walk round with glue when they could be stopped at any moment and things would end very badly."
There has been a spate of assassination attempts against those who've joined the Russians. A blogger was shot, an official in the Russian-installed administration was killed and others have been injured in car bombs. The most prominent figures to switch sides now wear body armour as a matter of course. The men I meet all say they have nothing to do with the attacks, but they have no sympathy either.
"Other than the word traitor and scum, I have no other words for them," Sasha shrugs. "They're our enemy."
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