We know the traitors who help Russia. We have a ‘special gift’ for them all, says partisan leader

One by one, the men slipped out of their houses into the night in plain clothes, breaking the Russian curfew. Dodging patrols and moving quickly but quietly, they gathered at the site of a weapons cache hidden two years earlier.

Selected from a wide network of Ukrainian partisans in the nation’s occupied south for their weapons training and physical prowess, they were about to embark on their most daring mission of the war to date; one that would almost cost one of them his life.

The partisans have not revealed details of their operations before, because of the risk of reprisals against their families, but they and their handlers in military intelligence agreed to meet The Times — to send a message to those collaborating with President Putin on a staged referendum aimed at annexing the occupied Kherson region into the Russian Federation next month.

 “The guys from the south are preparing for September 11,” said “Rebel”, 34, a former military intelligence officer who trains and leads partisan bands across the country. “We know all the traitors. We know everyone who helps the Russians. A big surprise and many gifts await them before this date.”

Some of those “gifts” have already been delivered: Volodymyr Saldo, the Kremlin-installed leader of Kherson region, was poisoned this month and is in a coma. Vitaly Gur, an occupation official in Nova Kakhovka, was shot dead near his apartment. Others have been targeted with car bombs or grenades.

In the north of the country, where partisans played a significant role in repelling Russia’s assault on Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion, they are preparing to defend against a potential new attack on August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day. The date also marks six months since the invasion began.

Independent Belarusian media organisations have been reporting a build-up of missile systems and attack helicopters near the Ukrainian border, and the partisans believe Belarus will finally enter the war to assist Putin’s exhausted forces.

For now, it is the southern partisans that see the most action. “Caveman”, 28, is among a band of young civilian men and women carrying out daredevil reconnaissance, sabotage, assault and assassination missions deep inside Russian-controlled territory in Kherson and Zaporizhzhya. Fair-haired, with a warrior’s beard and steely blue-green eyes, he walks with crutches that serve as a reminder of the mission a few weeks ago that nearly cost him his life.

It was 4am when his squad collected their Kalashnikovs along with parts for three rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers and a heavy machinegun. They carried the weapons concealed in rucksacks to their target, a Russian command centre in a secluded village. They had been watching it for more than a week and knew where the senior officers slept, the number of sentries and the best approach.

 “Since this area was in a village from which almost 80 per cent of the people left, the Russians were almost alone there and felt free to go about their business,” Caveman said. But the invaders had failed to account for hostile villagers passing on information about their movements. “The guards walked around very relaxed: they were in the rear, five miles behind the front line. They were not in combat readiness.”

The partisans moved slowly and carefully, taking four hours to creep forward less than two miles. The area was mined and fortified, but they ghosted through the Russian positions as the sun rose. Their heavy machinegunner hung back to cover others who approached the house where the officers slept.

Three partisans armed with RPGs crawled into positions around the house. Each aimed for a separate window from a distance of 50 yards. “For this house, it was quite enough. Everyone fired a shot. One of us fired again. So, in total, we launched four rockets. Everything that was in the middle was blown to pieces,” Caveman said with quiet satisfaction.

Nearby Russian sentries staggered away concussed, while other soldiers leapt for cover. A close-quarters firefight broke out as soon as the enemy had recovered from their shock. “One of the Russians ran out around the corner and realised where the fire was coming from. He started aiming an RPG at myself and another partisan. We were about 60 yards from him,” Caveman said. “Just at that moment, our machinegunner, who was covering everything there with fire, saw this Russian movement and opened fire. He aimed directly at the Russian rocket launcher and hit the projectile.”

At this point in his story Caveman’s brothers-in-arms, already familiar with the events, burst out laughing, and Caveman explained: “The machinegunner saw that only the legs of the Russian remained. Yes, we call it funny, because for us every dead Russian is a pleasure. This is also a story of good fortune. This machinegunner, he saved my life. I constantly tell him about it. He is my guardian angel.”

The Russians pulled back to re-group, and the partisan squad took advantage of this to withdraw about 320 yards from their target. But they chose a different route to their approach: the path was mined, and at this point Caveman’s luck ran out. Shrapnel from an exploding mine tore through his legs and signalled the group’s location to the pursuing Russians. A hail of enemy fire kicked up the earth around the Ukrainians as Caveman’s colleagues strapped on a tourniquet and dragged him to cover in a treeline, leaving a trail of blood behind them.

Fighting without body armour or helmets, the squad were dressed in civilian clothes to enable them to blend in after a mission. Their position in the treeline was precarious. “All this time the Russians were firing at us behind the trees, there was minimal protection for us. The boys decided to move me further from the fire and treat my wounds there,” he said.

The team stopped the bleeding and applied a splint, but Caveman could not walk. “Both my legs were injured,” he said. “One of them was in a very bad condition with bones sticking out. We didn’t have a stretcher, so the guys put some padding under my ass, and started dragging me again for another two miles.” His rear was “absolutely torn to shreds,” he recalled. “In my first week in the hospital, I could not sleep on my back at all.”

Transporting a wounded partisan across enemy lines to a Ukrainian hospital is no easy matter. After the raid his comrades melted away back into their homes and anonymous civilian life, but Caveman spent a week hidden by sympathetic civilians in their home, recovering his strength and waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Each guerrilla unit knows a nearby safe house they can rely on for treatment when they undertake a dangerous mission, he said. “I had everything I needed. Stocks of food, painkillers, medicines. I had wounds all the way through, so they saved me from infection and gangrene until we could find a way out.”

The partisan teams report to Ukraine’s formidable military intelligence branch, the GUR, providing information used to make decisions on how and when to strike Russian targets. From the celebrated Himars long-range missile strikes against ammunition depots to elite special forces raids behind the lines, partisans are involved. Their latest success is their contribution to a series of mysterious explosions in occupied Crimea, striking Russian air bases, infrastructure and ammunition depots with spectacular effect.

The GUR, a branch of Kyiv’s Ministry of Defence, looks after them in return. Assaults by GUR special operations units regularly open gaps between Russian positions along the 250-mile southern front, which are then used to bring in fresh weapons and supplies, as well as evacuate the wounded. Using one such opening, Caveman’s comrades helped him to navigate between foxholes 650 yards apart, close enough to the fighting for a Ukrainian vehicle to reach him and get him out.

Initially, much of Ukraine was reluctant to believe American warnings of an imminent invasion, but the GUR has been preparing for an all-out war with Russia for years, and accelerated those efforts as the Kremlin massed troops on the border from December last year. In the three months before the invasion began on February 24, GUR veterans trained droves of civilian men and women in the basics of weaponry, combat medicine, reconnaissance and handling explosives.

Those efforts proved crucial to Russia’s initial defeat in northern Ukraine. As the defending forces scrambled to respond to the advance on Kyiv, Rebel was tasked with stealing Russian armoured vehicles for use by Ukrainian forces. He formed an assault group 100 strong, with 50 Ukrainian scouts and 50 foreign veterans, who attacked resting Russian troops and cut them off from their vehicles, allowing a team of 15 drivers and mechanics in the rear to hijack them.

 “I have a fighter with the call sign Rambo,” Rebel said. “He leaps on a moving vehicle, opens the door, stabs the enemy mechanic, knocks him out of the car, then uses his pistol to eliminate the commander, gets behind the wheel and drives to our positions. All of this during pitched battle,” he added, shaking his head with incredulity. Over two months of fighting until the Russian retreat in April, Rebel’s unit managed to hijack 12 enemy fighting vehicles, he said.

Across Ukraine, the guerrilla commanders pay close attention to the specific skills of each partisan, seeking to build on any existing experience and expertise. The resistance movement has also inspired veterans around the world, Rebel said, with networks of former intelligence agents from other countries arriving to join the fight. “A foreign legion of intelligence veterans from other countries was created under the auspices of the GUR,” he said. “And when, for example, the Americans came, they asked ‘how many people do you have? A hundred? OK, I’ll give you another hundred’.”

A significant role for the guerrillas of the north had been to liaise between local civilians and Ukrainian military units operating in the area, one of the partisans’ commanders said. The GUR commanders aim to build contacts and trust with local communities, “so when the soldier comes and tells a civilian that there will be a tank in his yard, then this civilian will most often say ‘OK, I understand what all this is for’,” he said.

With Ukraine engaged in a counteroffensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions, such relationships could prove crucial to ensuring an embattled population in the south remains on their side, should Ukrainian troops eventually have to force their way into urban areas. However, as long as they have effective partisan, special forces and long-range Himars strikes, Ukraine is in no rush to do that, another senior military intelligence officer said: it would focus instead on wearing down the enemy, demonstrating the futility of occupation to the Russians and their collaborators.

 “Our objective here is to let the Russians and their friends know that whoever you are, wherever you go, as long as you are on the territory of Ukraine — we will find you. And we will kill you.”