How a band of Ukraine civilians helped seal Russia's biggest defeat
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[February 09, 2023]
By Jonathan Landay and Tom Balmforth
KHERSON, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukrainian intelligence wanted confirmation
last autumn that officers of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB)
overseeing the occupation of Kherson were staying in a small hotel on a
back street of the southern port city.
The task was assigned to Dollar: the code name for a civilian who had
been secretly providing targeting coordinates and information on enemy
operations in Kherson and the surrounding region, the operative said.
Reuters held extensive interviews with Dollar and two other members of
the underground partisan network in Kherson after the city was captured
in early November.
Their separate accounts provide a rare window into how information and
sabotage operations were coordinated with Ukrainian intelligence
services behind enemy lines, operations that are still ongoing elsewhere
in Ukraine.
While Reuters could not corroborate the specific events they described,
two U.S. officials said that such operations by an underground of
intelligence operatives, ex-soldiers and amateurs helped hasten Russia's
withdrawal from Kherson - one of the biggest setbacks for the Kremlin in
a war that marks its first anniversary on Feb. 24.
Dollar, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said he
began driving by the Hotel Ninel – Lenin spelled backwards – with his
wife, a fellow operative who is part of the network and uses the code
name Kosatka, Ukrainian for killer whale.
The gun-toting security men they regularly saw outside the hotel
convinced the couple that FSB officers were staying inside; Dollar said
he texted his observations to his handler at the Security Service of
Ukraine (SBU).
Ukraine's SBU and Russia's FSB did not respond to requests for comment
on Dollar’s account or other partisan operations. The defense ministry
also did not respond to requests for comment.
Before dawn on Oct. 5, a huge explosion ripped through the hotel,
according to Ukrainian media reports and regional lawmaker Serhii Khlan,
who wrote on Facebook that two FSB officers and seven Russian military
officials died.
"I received an SMS (text) that said, 'Have a look and see how the Hotel
Ninel is doing,'" recalled Dollar, who took Reuters to view the
shattered hulk. "I went over and reported back: 'There is no more Hotel
Ninel.'"
Reuters was unable to review the text message. Dollar and other
partisans say they regularly deleted their chats and social media for
security reasons.
Dollar and Kosatka received decorations from Ukrainian Defense Minister
Oleksii Reznikov inscribed with thanks for "cooperating with the armed
forces," according to a photograph seen by Reuters dated Dec. 1 in which
the inscriptions are visible. Mart and Kolia, the other two members of
their four-person cell, were also decorated by Reznikov, Dollar said.
Asked about resistance operations in occupied territory, an official
from Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) said “the local
population is supportive,” declining to provide details of specific
activities.
Operations to target Russian security personnel and disrupt their plans
are continuing across swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine held by
Russia and its allies, according to several Ukrainian and
Russian-installed officials as well as members of the Kherson partisan
cell.
The Institute for the Study of War also says Ukrainian partisan warfare
is being waged in Melitopol, Tokmak and Mariupol in the south and
Donetsk and Svatove in the east.
Serhiy Haidai, the exiled governor of the eastern Luhansk province which
has been under Russian control since last June, said partisans there
were conducting sabotage operations there and attacks on suspected
Russian collaborators.
In an interview on Jan. 23, he credited partisans with a recent attack
on a railway line that Russia’s military was using to transport troops
and equipment. He declined to provide further details for security
reasons and Reuters could not independently confirm partisan involvement
in the attacks.
CAPTURED PARTISANS
Risking arrest, interrogation, torture and death, partisans in Kherson
hung Ukraine's blue-and-yellow national colors on trees and relayed
Russian positions on Google Earth and other online maps to Ukrainian
security officials, Dollar said.
Vitalyi Bogdanov, 51, a regional council member, said that during the
eight-month Russian occupation, he collected and relayed to law
enforcement authorities in Kyiv information later used to launch
investigations into suspected collaborators.
"We were able to start a very big number of criminal cases," he said. He
declined to provide further details because the investigations were
ongoing.
Kolia, part of the 4-member Kherson cell, said that the group was told
by its handlers not to use firearms because information was a more
potent weapon.
Other partisans took up arms.
Alexei Ladin, a lawyer in Russian-occupied Crimea, told Reuters he was
defending two Ukrainians held there, accused by the FSB of violent
attacks against the Russians.
Pavlo Zaporozhets served in the Ukrainian army from 2014-17 and joined
Ukraine's GUR military intelligence during the occupation of Kherson,
Ladin said.
Zaporozhets was arrested while attempting to attack a Russian military
night patrol and faces up to life imprisonment on charges of
international terrorism, Ladin said.
He said Zaporozhets was being held in a detention facility in Simferopol
and that he and his client attended a preliminary court hearing in the
Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don by video link on Feb. 2. The court
ordered Zaporozhets' transfer to a facility in Rostov, Ladin said.
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The remains of the Ninel Hotel, a hotel
taken over by Russian security officials that was hit by the
Ukrainian military on October 5, are seen in downtown Kherson,
Ukraine November 17, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Landay/File Photo
According to an FSB account seen by Reuters, Zaporozhets, then 31,
was arrested in Kherson by FSB officers on May 9 carrying two
grenades, a fishing line and two plastic bottles that he had made
into homemade bombs.
Zaparozhets told his questioners he was contacted by a Ukrainian GUR
handler codenamed Optium and agreed to carry out his orders for
30,000 hryvnias ($800) a month, according to the FSB case documents
seen by Reuters.
Ladin said the FSB account was based on testimony obtained when his
client was tortured during questioning and showed Reuters a copy of
a handwritten note from Zaporozhets dated from last August in which
he described being beaten and subjected to electric shocks while in
custody.
While some details about the FSB account were true, Ladin said, the
FSB falsely accused Zaporozhets of deliberately targeting civilians
as well as the night patrol. The military action was meant to be
carried out during the curfew with intention of avoiding civilian
casualties, Ladin said.
Ladin said the "optimal solution" would be an exchange of
Zaporozhets and another client, Yaroslav Zhuk - who was arrested in
Melitopol in June and accused of setting off a home-made bomb - for
Russian POWs held by Ukraine. Zhuk denies attacking civilian
targets, Ladin said.
The FSB has declined to recognize Zaporozhets as a Ukrainian
serviceman eligible for a prisoner swap, saying they could not
verify a document presented by the defense confirming his status,
Ladin said. In the case of Zhuk, Ladin says his client is a
combatant covered by the Geneva convention; the FSB has not accepted
the designation.
Reuters was unable to speak to the two detainees directly.
FLEEING KHERSON
Dollar, Kolia and Mart – another member of the cell - said they felt
compelled to resist the Russian takeover of Kherson because there
was no organized defense of their city when the Russians attacked on
Feb. 24.
Dollar and Mart’s first overt bid to confront the Russians came on
March 1, they said, when they drove a truck loaded with concrete
blocks toward the Antonovskiy Bridge, a main entry point to the
city, aiming to slow Russia's advance.
They turned around because they feared the invaders already were in
the city, they said.
Dollar considered his options: organize a civil disobedience
movement, take up arms or gather intelligence.
Friends put him in touch with an SBU officer. Dollar and Kolia, who
were old friends, agreed to collect and relay information on the
Russians and build a network of retired police officers, former SBU
officials, pensioners, and others, they said.
Kolia, a seasoned hunter who knew the Kherson countryside, solicited
information from local villagers, including an elderly woman who
would count Russian convoys as she milked her cow.
Between reconnaissance forays, the pair would meet sources in a
coffee shop to gather intelligence.
Over the summer one farmer gave Kolia the position of a Russian
truck-mounted missile launcher known as a Tochka-U around the
village of Muzykivka, about 12 km (7.5 miles) north of Kherson.
Dollar said he passed on the information.
The next day the farmer reported to Kolia that there was only a hole
in the road where the truck once stood, Dollar said. Reuters could
not independently confirm the attack.
Dollar's wife, Kosatka, recruited her own network of informants, he
said. Kosatka declined to comment for this story.
THE AIRPORT
At the same time, Mart pursued an independent intelligence gathering
effort, visiting people living near the Kherson International
Airport in Chornobaivka on April 10 and urging them in person and
over Telegram chats to send him information about Russian troop
movements. He codenamed his five-person cell Miami. Reuters did not
view the chats, which Mart said he deleted.
Russian forces in March had established their headquarters within
the three-square kilometre airport complex, which was repeatedly
bombed by Ukrainian forces.
Kyiv said large numbers of Russians soldiers were killed, including
at least two generals, while aircraft and ammunition stores were
also destroyed. Moscow withdrew its military hardware in October.
As Russian losses mounted, some members of the cell Mart had
recruited grew over-confident and began taking greater risks, said
Mart and Dollar.
When the Russians arrested four of the Miami members at the end of
August, Mart feared they would give him away. Reuters was unable to
determine what later happened to the four members.
Mart fled to Vasliyevka village in Zaporizhzhia province, the only
checkpoint where Russians allowed Ukrainian civilians to cross into
Ukrainian-controlled territory, and then made his way to Kyiv.
Despite the liberation of Kherson, Dollar said he and Kosatka would
continue aiding the resistance until Ukrainian troops recover
Crimea, where the couple owns an apartment.
"The end of the war for me will be when I move back into my
apartment," he said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Mike
Collett-White and Suzanne Goldenberg)
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